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BULLETIN ITEM: New York Time Opines On "The Real Agenda" Of the
Bush/Cheney Junta
MWM: Hooray for the New YorK Times, after six years of non-stop lying
out of the White House, the NY Times has finally figured out that they
REALLY are liars who are stripping people of their rights and Republic.
Perhaps they will now begin to figure out and report back to us in
about two years that the 911 Hoax REALLY was a fraud after all. Less
facetiously, what is most amazing about the Gangsters who control the White
House is that six years of duplicities have essentially cost them the
credibility of mainstream people at 911 ground zero. From this we can
see the jig really is up. New York and California will turn first, at
the people level, with increasing dramatics pushing all envelopes, but
of course all the neutered institutional gov/media people will do their
best to Sieg Orwell to the bitter end.
From: June Wortman <junesrag@cox.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: THE REAL AGENDA NY Times editorial
Don't miss an astounding fact in the seventh paragraph.
<www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16...16sun1.html
*The Real Agenda*
The New York Times | Editorial
Sunday 16 July 2006
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full
picture of the Bush administration's response to the terror attacks is
becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting
Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.
Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between
following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power,
the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when
the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative
Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While
no one questions the determination of the White House to fight
terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by
another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and
always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded
on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a
less effective war on terror.
*The Guantánamo Bay Prison*
This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme
Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both
applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment,
it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it
could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the
president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure
for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as
suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.
But by week's end it was clear that the president's idea of
cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made
it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush's
illegal actions - to amend the law to negate the court's ruling instead
of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva
Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically
blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international
consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.
The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military
lawyers - who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were
established - endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the
Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and
obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not
coddling the masterminds of terror.
The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting
terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the
life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken
captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and
sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first - as military
lawyers wanted to do - many would never have been kept in custody, a
continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would
actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the
world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding
of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder
that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the
terrible crimes of 9/11.
The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly
humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the
mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with
limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to
do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose
political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most
embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could
not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which
has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a
century, was too vague. Which part of "civilized peoples," "judicial
guarantees" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" do they find confusing?
*Eavesdropping on Americans*
The administration's intent to use the war on terror to buttress
presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping
program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls
of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special
court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch
warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And
Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process
in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the
administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became
public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the
rules. As usual, the president's most loyal supporters simply urged that
Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Mr. Bush on
how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that the
president was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.
The bill the president has agreed to accept would allow him to go on
ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to
obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about - or
for any other program - from the special intelligence surveillance court.
It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket
approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants
required by the Constitution. Once again, the president has refused to
acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.
And while the bill would establish new rules that Mr. Bush could
voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal
challenges to the president's wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court
made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is
unconstitutional.
If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will
promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of
the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Mr. Bush had a
record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make
the determination. In addition, Mr. Bush could appeal if the court ruled
against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the
surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.
*The Cost of Executive Arrogance*
The president's constant efforts to assert his power to act without
consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and
sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion
and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need
to go it alone - everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in
Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession
with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to
occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned
more efficiently within the rules.
Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the
constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3
issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick
Cheney's long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of
Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed
more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.
To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take
up this cause behind the shield of Americans' deep insecurity. The
results have been devastating. Americans' civil liberties have been
trampled. The nation's image as a champion of human rights has been gravely
harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the
prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents
"disappear" people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to
torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed
at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress
has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as
pro-terrorist at election time.
We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court's powerful
and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to
account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has
made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground
Bush/Cheney Junta
MWM: Hooray for the New YorK Times, after six years of non-stop lying
out of the White House, the NY Times has finally figured out that they
REALLY are liars who are stripping people of their rights and Republic.
Perhaps they will now begin to figure out and report back to us in
about two years that the 911 Hoax REALLY was a fraud after all. Less
facetiously, what is most amazing about the Gangsters who control the White
House is that six years of duplicities have essentially cost them the
credibility of mainstream people at 911 ground zero. From this we can
see the jig really is up. New York and California will turn first, at
the people level, with increasing dramatics pushing all envelopes, but
of course all the neutered institutional gov/media people will do their
best to Sieg Orwell to the bitter end.
From: June Wortman <junesrag@cox.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: THE REAL AGENDA NY Times editorial
Don't miss an astounding fact in the seventh paragraph.
<www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16...16sun1.html
*The Real Agenda*
The New York Times | Editorial
Sunday 16 July 2006
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full
picture of the Bush administration's response to the terror attacks is
becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting
Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.
Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between
following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power,
the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when
the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative
Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While
no one questions the determination of the White House to fight
terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by
another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and
always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded
on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a
less effective war on terror.
*The Guantánamo Bay Prison*
This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme
Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both
applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment,
it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it
could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the
president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure
for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as
suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.
But by week's end it was clear that the president's idea of
cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made
it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush's
illegal actions - to amend the law to negate the court's ruling instead
of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva
Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically
blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international
consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.
The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military
lawyers - who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were
established - endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the
Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and
obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not
coddling the masterminds of terror.
The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting
terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the
life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken
captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and
sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first - as military
lawyers wanted to do - many would never have been kept in custody, a
continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would
actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the
world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding
of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder
that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the
terrible crimes of 9/11.
The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly
humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the
mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with
limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to
do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose
political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most
embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could
not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which
has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a
century, was too vague. Which part of "civilized peoples," "judicial
guarantees" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" do they find confusing?
*Eavesdropping on Americans*
The administration's intent to use the war on terror to buttress
presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping
program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls
of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special
court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch
warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And
Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process
in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the
administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became
public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the
rules. As usual, the president's most loyal supporters simply urged that
Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Mr. Bush on
how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that the
president was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.
The bill the president has agreed to accept would allow him to go on
ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to
obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about - or
for any other program - from the special intelligence surveillance court.
It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket
approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants
required by the Constitution. Once again, the president has refused to
acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.
And while the bill would establish new rules that Mr. Bush could
voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal
challenges to the president's wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court
made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is
unconstitutional.
If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will
promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of
the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Mr. Bush had a
record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make
the determination. In addition, Mr. Bush could appeal if the court ruled
against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the
surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.
*The Cost of Executive Arrogance*
The president's constant efforts to assert his power to act without
consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and
sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion
and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need
to go it alone - everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in
Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession
with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to
occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned
more efficiently within the rules.
Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the
constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3
issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick
Cheney's long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of
Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed
more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.
To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take
up this cause behind the shield of Americans' deep insecurity. The
results have been devastating. Americans' civil liberties have been
trampled. The nation's image as a champion of human rights has been gravely
harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the
prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents
"disappear" people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to
torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed
at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress
has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as
pro-terrorist at election time.
We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court's powerful
and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to
account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has
made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground
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