CA-10: DeSaulnier's Endorsement Trouble

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has based a lot of his campaign strategy in the quick-sprint Congressional race for CA-10 on endorsements. Not a day goes by when he doesn't release some endorsement by one character or another into my inbox. The other day he touted that he received a "majority of endorsement votes" from California Democratic Party delegates, without mentioning that he did not reach the 60% threshold that would be required for an official CDP endorsement.

However, one endorsement has caused DeSaulnier a bit of trouble - the support of the former holder of this seat, Ellen Tauscher. DeSaulnier has made no secret of that endorsement, including it in mailers and on his TV advertisement. One problem with all this: with Tauscher now at the State Department, some have raised concerns that her endorsement while working at a federal agency violates the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from participating in partisan politics. DeSaulnier's camp has countered that the endorsement, which was made before Tauscher was confirmed for the post at State, always says "Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher" and thus indicates that it was made prior to that appointment. But the State Department has weighed in, asking DeSaulnier's campaign to remove the endorsement.

The U.S. State Department has asked 10th District Congressional candidate and state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier to remove all references in his campaign materials to his endorsement from former congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, who is now undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. State Department.

While a legal adviser to the U.S. State Department concludes that the endorsement broke no laws or policies, “Under Secretary Tauscher is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, on behalf of Undersecretary Tauscher, I have asked Senator DeSaulnier to remove all references in his campaign material of any endorsement she may have made,” wrote James Thessin, deputy legal adviser and designed agency ethics official.

The DeSaulnier campaign is fingering John Garamendi for complaining to the State Department about the use of Tauscher's name. Actually, the complaint was made by Jason Bezis, an individual who claims not to be affiliated with any campaign, but who apparently enjoys filing complaints with the State Department and the FEC (he filed one there against DeSaulnier's campaign over a health care mailer). It looks like the DeSaulnier campaign won't change current materials already printed, but will consult the State Department "about what qualifies and what doesn't under their request."

I actually question whether this means as much as the DeSaulnier team seems to think, but their strategy all along has been to gather up local endorsements.

CA-10: Yet Another California Democrat Bails Out

After a day or two of rumors, this is official: Ellen Tauscher is leaving Congress:

“For the past 13 years, I have had the honor and privilege of serving you in Congress. Representing California’s 10th Congressional District always has been and remains – especially in these trying times – my first priority.”

“Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked me to serve as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.”

“While her offer is both generous and flattering, I did not take the decision lightly. I accepted it after much soul searching and long discussions with my family and friends.”

Her mission will be an important one - to fulfill the Obama Administration's goal of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons, and in the near term reducing stockpiles through trade agreements with Russia and ensuring the security of loose nuclear materials around the world. Given that she has supported the Reliable Replacement Warhead system in the past, which would usher in a new generation of nuclear weapons and work directly counter to proposals like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, I am dubious that this is her best role:

Those of us who are interested in working toward a world free of nuclear weapons realize that progress will involve many steps, some large, some small. One important step will be ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Some CTBT supporters suspect that the outlines of a deal are coalescing: those who want the RRW will try to make the CTBT and the RRW a package deal, arguing that we will be able to maintain a reliable, safe nuclear deterrent without testing, as the CTBT would require, only if the weapon labs are allowed to proceed with weapon modernization. The Congressional Strategic Posture Commission interim report appears to be at least sympathetic to this view. This artificial link is based on both faulty logic and a long list of unstated and unsupportable assumptions.

The assertion that our nuclear weapons need any modernizing implies, usually implicitly, that current weapons are antiques that are not quite up to snuff. Chilton, in the article cited above, specifically links U.S. modernization to Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons. This superficially makes sense: after all, we don’t send our military out to fight with World War II vintage tanks, ships, and airplanes. Certainly the United States should be armed with the latest and best nuclear weapons; at the very least, our weapons have to be at least as modern as any possible competitors, right? The simple analogy to conventional weapons doesn’t hold because of the types of tasks assigned to nuclear weapons and some confusion about just what a “nuclear weapon” is [...]

Simple uranium bombs with high reliability and yields of twenty kilotons (or the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima) or more would be easy to manufacture. We could design such a weapon, perhaps build one or two, and put the plans on the shelf in case we ever needed it. I can’t help but imagine those language-free schematic assembly instructions that come along with unassembled Ikea furniture, describing how to put a bookshelf together without special skills or complex tools. We should design the Ikea Bomb. The DOE’s arguments for a new nuclear bomb design would be a lot more convincing if DOE were eagerly trying to design themselves out of a job rather than looking at a future that has them building nuclear weapons forever.

Nuclear weapons modernization is a complete myth, and Tauscher has perpetuated it. Regardless of the positives of her leaving Congress, she is a terrible choice for the safety of the world. I'll leave it to you to determine the relative benefits of the trade-off.

The Governor will not need to announce any special election for this seat until Tauscher is confirmed, which could take "weeks, if not months," as she notes. District sources tell me that labor's voice matters here, and all the serious candidates come from the legislature, in particular Asm. Tom Torlakson and Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (who lives outside the district in Concord, but that's not required under state law). Of the two, only one will run, and Torlakson has been gearing up for a statewide run for a while, though Congress may offer a more attractive platform. While Buchanan has seemingly been groomed for this position, it's probably too soon for her to make the jump, and AD-15 does not have a deep Democratic bench and would be likely to flip back to the Republicans if she vacates. Either way, we're looking at a special election for Congress, followed by another special election for the legislature. At this rate, the legislature will be missing bodies until early 2010. And that's horrible news, given the conservative veto and the need for every single vote on budget and tax issues.

State Department House Blogger

We're hardly talking about our relationship to the world these days, what with us being so mired in economic meltdown. But especially with the globalized nature of our world, re-engagement and an end to discredited and tired Bush policies is vitally important. In her inaugural blog post as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton discusses some of these challenges.

Over the past 30 years, I've had the privilege of traveling to a very different Asia. Today, Asia is on the cutting edge of so many of the world's innovations and trends. In making my first trip as Secretary of State to Asia, I hope to signal that we need strong partners across the Pacific, just as we need strong partners across the Atlantic. I have become fond of saying that America is as much a transpacific power as it is a transatlantic one.

The Obama Administration believes that the futures of the United States, countries in Asia and around the world are increasingly inextricably linked. As you may know, I spoke from the Asia Society in New York City on Friday afternoon where I outlined the opportunities that I see for stronger bilateral, regional, and global cooperation and ongoing collaboration to deal with the economic crisis, to strengthen our alliances, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to build on efforts to face challenges like climate change, clean energy, pandemic healthcare crises and so much more.

As I've said before, America cannot solve the problems of the world alone, and the world cannot solve them without America. A Chinese aphorism says, "When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together." The wisdom of that aphorism must guide us today.

Secretary Clinton hasn't always offered the best policy remedies, but this perspective of re-engagement is important. Not a lot of Americans are going to be watching these developments, yet they will make us a stronger country in the long run.

Blackballed?

So the New York Times reports that Blackwater was denied a license by the Iraqi government to operate inside the country.

Blackwater Worldwide, the security firm whose guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians on a crowded Baghdad street in 2007, will not receive an operating license from the Iraqi government, a decision that will likely force American diplomats here to make new arrangements for their personal protection, officials said Thursday.

Unlike many security contractors in Iraq, Blackwater has been operating without an Iraqi government license, although it had recently applied for one.

The request was turned down during the past few weeks by the Iraqi government, officials said.

“They presented their request, and we rejected it,” said Ala’a Al-Taia, an official with Iraq’s Interior Ministry. “There are many marks against this company, specifically that they have a bad history and have been involved in the killing of so many civilians.”

Presumably this would mean they would have to leave the country and the State Department would have to find a new contractor or use US military personnel for security. But Noah Schachtman says that while Blackwater may have to go, their employees are likely to stay:

Sure, Blackwater as a corporate entity probably won't be roaming the streets of Baghdad or Mosul for much longer. But the individual mercenaries who've been working for years in Iraq, serving as a Praetorian Guard for the State Department's diplomats -- those guys likely will be able to stay.

The State Department has a contract for "Worldwide Personal Protective Services" with three firms: Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy. If Blackwater is no longer allowed to operate in Iraq, a lawyer steeped in the field tells Danger Room, there's no legal reason why the other two firms can't scoop up Blackwater's employees. "State simply issues a new task order to DynCorp or Triple Canopy, who turn around and hire some or all of Blackwater's employees," he says.

The Iraqi government hasn't blackballed those who worked for Blackwater in the past, just the corporate entity. Those employees are willing to work in Iraq and experienced with high-level security. Despite their culpability in the indiscriminate murder of civilians, they'll be first in line for the new jobs. But not wearing Blackwater vests.

I guess that's progress?

(Actually, the real progress would be ending the use of private military contractors entirely)

We Need A Bigger State Department

I would have thought that the cable shoutcasts would have been all over yesterday's New York Times story about Hillary Clinton seeking to increase the role of the State Department. I figured they would read it strictly in the terms of personality politics and despair over how Hillary is "taking over the government" and somehow impinging on Obama's authority. I guess the Blagojevich report and the shiny object known as Caroline Kennedy must have mollified them, because there was nary a peep.

And that's a good thing, because an expanded State Department with a bigger budget and a greater balance with the Defense Department is pretty much what I voted for - more diplomacy and less state-sponsored killing.

Mrs. Clinton is recruiting Jacob J. Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Mr. Lew’s focus, they said, will be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps. He and James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Mrs. Clinton’s chief lieutenants [...]

The incoming administration is also likely to name several envoys, officials said, reviving a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard C. Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East [...]

The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in which the Pentagon, the vice president’s office and even the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over American foreign policy.

I can quibble with the names of those envoys, but having people committed solely to finding peaceful solutions in global trouble spots is change I can believe in. The last eight years have seen very little use of focused envoys in this regard, and the one (sort of) exception, Christopher Hill in North Korea, has had among the best diplomatic results of Bush's tenure. In addition, allowing State Department officials to do civilian-type work, like reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of the Defense Department, makes perfect sense.

Keeping this kind of expanded portfolio requires a bigger budget and expert management, and so the inclusion of former OMB director Jacob Lew to insure that budget increases and that the State Department bureaucracy is reorganized, and James Steinberg, who called for withdrawal from Iraq very early, as a top lieutenant, is very powerful and encouraging.

I'm less enthused by Clinton pushing for a role for State in the global economic crisis, however.

Mrs. Clinton’s push for a more vigorous economic team, one of her advisers said, stems from her conviction that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis. Economic issues also underpin some of the most important diplomatic relationships, notably with China.

In recent years, the Treasury Department, led by Henry M. Paulson Jr., has dominated policy toward China. Mr. Paulson leads a “strategic economic dialogue” with China that involves several agencies. It is not yet clear who will pick up that role in the Obama administration, although Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is frequently mentioned as a possibility.

There certainly is a role to play for State in China policy, but I'd prefer that we decentralize power and focus these federal agencies on their core missions rather than carving out new jobs for themselves.

Overall, a larger, more robust State Department sends the signal to the world that we are out of the empire business and are instead interested in rebuilding relationships with allies and use multilateral institutions to foster conflict resolution instead of bombs and tanks. This got lost during a campaign that was focused on economic issues, which was probably to the liking of Democrats who habitually shy away from foreign policy. But Clinton's role at State can signal a new direction, where Democrats actually articulate principles in dealing with the world, and act on them. Obama was willing to hint at this during the campaign, but it got swamped by the recession. I think a major diplomatic initiative early in the term could really change the tone.

End Of The Line For Blackwater

Shooting and killing 17 innocent people in the middle of a busy square typically does little for corporate PR. In the case of Blackwater, it hasn't totally knocked them out of the security business. But the State Department's advisory panel is belatedly expressing that their contract not be renewed.

A State Department advisory panel is recommending that Blackwater Worldwide be dropped as the main private security contractor for American diplomats in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.

A senior official familiar with a report commissioned by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the AP on Wednesday that the panel has called for Blackwater's contract not to be renewed when it expires next year. A decision on the recommendation will be left to the Obama administration, which will be in place when the contract comes up for renewal in the spring.

Rice ordered a review of the department's use of private security firms last September after an incident in which Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad. Five guards have been indicted on manslaughter and other charges stemming from that incident. The company was not implicated.

More specifically, it will likely be left to Hillary Clinton. Now, during the campaign she called for the ban of ALL private contractors, including Blackwater, to provide security for diplomats and State Department employees in Iraq. This is one campaign promise that she can fulfill. The Blackwater PR spin in the piece claims that State relies on private contractors for security because they have more manpower and equipment, and that nobody has more resources than Blackwater. But Clinton didn't call for a selective ban, but the end of ALL private mercenary support for the State Department.

In a growing recession, dropping the $4 billion dollar contract provided to Blackwater and staffing security with State Department personnel seems like a win-win as well.

It's her move.

Reason To Be Concerned

I find it difficult to argue with Christopher Hayes' assessment of Obama's cabinet selections thus far.

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There's tons of things the left is right about that aren't even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we're moving there.

And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?

A few things. I don't think Obama ever presented himself as anything other than a mainstream centrist Democrat. In fact he went out of his way to do so. His policy platform was surely more progressive than John Kerry's in 2004, but in this election it was to the right of his primary contenders, on balance. As the center moved left, as Hayes mentions, Obama kept up, but he didn't exactly stick his neck out. However, his liaison to Congress is progressive Henry Waxman's longtime chief of staff, and his policy director is a former SEIU political organizer. It appears that the sausage-makers are pretty far to the left, which is good. But let's be clear - Obama isn't tilting to the center, he's in the center and always has been. Where his policy is progressive - on health care, the environment, and labor - it's because he's been pushed there, by either events or movement progressives. We have to keep doing so.

The other thing is that it's unclear how much power Cabinet secretaries will actually have. In Bush's White House half of the Cabinet could have telecommuted two days a week. They were given no power beyond making speeches faxed over from the political shop. In Clinton's White House, by contrast, the Treasury Department directed fiscal policy. It's unclear where Obama will fall along those lines, with one notable exception I'll address later in the post.

But clearly, there aren't a lot of encouraging signs. Jim Jones at NSA means that all of the rumored national security picks are pretty hawkish.

Let's say that all of the leading contenders for Obama's national security team end up in his administration. This would give him a core foreign policy team of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Jim Jones, and Robert Gates. That is, overall, a center-right foreign policy team lacking any clear progressives (at least, foreign policy and national security progressives). All of them, with the possible exception of Jones, supported the Iraq war from the outset. At least two of them, Gates and Napolitano, opposed withdrawing troops as recently as 2007 (although the new agreement with Iraq has rendered that debate moot). Also, two members of this group, Gates and Jones, supported McCain. This team would oversee roughly 60% of discretionary federal budget spending, military operations, and all diplomatic relations.

That all of these people supported the war is particularly depressing for the antiwar movement. While Iraq is largely out of our hands at this point, it doesn't bode well for new conflicts. And at a time where the public is warming to the notion of cutting defense spending as more knowledge about the truly bloated waste in that department, do you really think this team would recommend that?

And hiring John Brennan, the former chief of staff to George Tenet, to run the CIA would be astonishing.

The simple answer to the question - what length do we want to go? - is to abide by the rule of law. Why is that so hard to understand? And yet Brennan and Tenet didn't. They authorized clear torture sessions. Why is such a man even considered for the post under Obama? This man cannot end the taint of Bush-Cheney. He was Bush-Cheney. In fact, if Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals. It would be an acknowledgment that Tenet himself is not a war criminal, while the facts indisputably prove that he was.

While Brennan will probably institute whatever policy he's given, you cannot totally divorce the beliefs of the individual senior staff from the policy outcomes. I think that ends up looking like an apology.

I think there are some decent picks here, like Napolitano at DHS, and there are rumored names, like co-chair of the Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva at Interior, which would be solid. Overall, however, there is reason to be concerned.

And that brings me to Hillary Clinton, and the notable exception I mentioned before. It definitely seems like she's going to take the Secretary of State job, passing up a Senate leadership position to be the public face for the American government around the world. Now I've gone back and forth on the Clinton pick - Steve Clemons makes a compelling case. But one of the reasons I supported Obama in the primary over Clinton, in fact the main reason, was his new way of thinking about foreign policy. Ezra Klein notes Samantha Power's memo during the campaign (I thought Power was a sure bet for one of these foreign policy positions):

It was Washington’s conventional wisdom that led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of US foreign policy. The rush to invade Iraq was a position advocated by not only the Bush Administration, but also by editorial pages, the foreign policy establishment of both parties, and majorities in both houses of Congress. Those who opposed the war were often labeled weak, inexperienced, and even naïve. Barack Obama defied conventional wisdom and opposed invading Iraq. He did so at a time when some told him that doing so would doom his political future...Barack Obama was right; the conventional wisdom was wrong. And today, we see the consequences. Iraq is in chaos. According to the National Intelligence Estimate, the threat to our homeland from terrorist groups is “persistent and evolving.” Al-Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. Iran has only grown stronger and bolder. The American people are less safe because of a rash war...Barack Obama’s judgment is right. It is conventional wisdom that has to change.

And then he goes and puts in place at the State Department a practitioner of the very conventional wisdom Power was arguing against, which has real-world consequences in a variety of ways. Clinton's judgment, which Obama's campaign here basically calls flawed, will have the ability to flourish and make decisions with a legitimate impact. Perhaps more important is how Clinton may stack Foggy Bottom with her team of CW fountains, instead of all the Obama foreign policy people who got the war right and flocked to this idea of a new mindset around these issues.

In addition, some Obama loyalists wonder whether the same people who attacked Obama on foreign policy during the primaries can implement Obama’s agenda from State Dept. perches. “Look, Clinton and Obama are both smart people,” said one Democratic official who would not speak for the record, “and I’m sure their one-on-one relationship would be OK. But when you hire a Clinton, you hire more than just that one person, you get the entire package.” If Clinton becomes secretary of state, it’s possible that the fissures between her loyalists and Obama’s would be a significant undercurrent of the administration’s foreign-policy decision-making [...]

Some progressive Obama supporters think the arrival of Clinton at the State Dept. will mean they’ll be frozen out. That would have implications for their advancement in subsequent Democratic administrations.

“Basically, you have all of these young, next-generation and mid-career people who took a chance on Obama” during the primaries, said one Democratic foreign-policy expert included in that cohort. “They were many times the ones who were courageous enough to stand up early against Iraq, which is why many of them supported Obama in the first place. And many of them would likely get shut out of the mid-career and assistant-secretary type jobs that you need, so that they can one day be the top people running a future Democratic administration.”

In the foreign-policy bureaucracy, these middle-tier jobs — assistant secretary and principal-deputy-assistant and deputy-assistant — are stepping stones to bigger, more important jobs, because they’re where much of the actual policy-making is hashed out. Those positions flesh out strategic decisions made by the president and cabinet secretaries; implement those policies; and use their expertise to both inform decisions and propose targeted or specific solutions to particular crises.

Perhaps the biggest reason why you don't see a lot of progressive names in the Cabinet is that they don't have the requisite experience. Previous Democratic Cabinet heads picked their own Third Way, DLC acolytes as senior staff, and progressives never had a way up. There hasn't been a Democratic Secretary of Defense since 1996, for example. If progressives can't get in the door, the same foreign policy consensus perpetuates all by itself. There isn't a progressive bench right now, and these picks make it much harder to grow one.

Which isn't entirely Obama's job - his role is to choose the best people for the job. But don't tell me that there won't be consequences. The job of persuasion to move left on these issues just got harder.

See, We Tried

Some may be pleasantly surprised by the breaking news that Bush is sending the #3 at the State Department for talks with the Iranians on their nuclear program (Coverage in WaPo and NYT), but I'm not. This looks to me like a fig leaf so the Administration can say "see, we tried to talk to them." For the moment it validates Obama's position on negotiation, but the envoy will not be authorized to offer anything to Iran and the upshot will be that they can't be trusted and Obama is naive to think otherwise.

I mean, look at the early reporting:

The Bush administration will send a senior envoy to international talks this weekend with Iran about its nuclear program, in what U.S. officials described as a "one-time deal," designed to demonstrate a serious desire to resolve the impasse over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

In a significant departure from longstanding policy, Undersecretary of State William J. Burns will join a scheduled meeting in Geneva between European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, according to a senior State Department official.

Burns will not negotiate with the Iranians nor hold separate meetings, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced. Instead, he will advance the White House's position that serious negotiations can only begin after Iran suspends its enrichment of uranium.

That's no different than the message they've been saying through the media for years. That is the opposite of demonstrating a serious desire to end the impasse.

It'll be fun to watch neocon heads explode for a day or two, because just being in the same room as an Iranian envoy is enough to get them sputtering "Chamberlain! Appeaser! Democracy Whisky Sexy!" But this seems like a setup to me, designed to be the "last straw" before the bomb bay doors open.

Breach

Earlier today I was talking about federal agencies as a campaign outreach arm. Apparently they're part of the oppo research shop, too.

Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.

Spokesman Sean McCormack Thursday night confirmed instances of what he called "imprudent curiosity" by the State Department employees.

McCormack said the department itself detected the breaches, which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.

The three people who had access to Obama's passport records were contract employees of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News reported.

A senior official told NBC News there was "no political motivation" to the incidents, adding that the three were low-level contract employees doing administrative work and accessed Obama's records out of "curiosity."

Riiiight.

The same thing happened to Bill Clinton's passport records in 1991, and then as now, two State Department employees were fired. The Obama campaign is calling for a full investigation.

My question is really what kind of information you can get from a passport file, which is a larger question about how much personal data is stored all over these federal agencies, ready to be swooped up at a moment's notice. And these are the people we're supposed to "trust" with a program of warrantless wiretapping.

In a surveillance state, none of your data is particularly safe. And with this Administration, that means it will be espied, downloaded, and used.

Sanity Breaking Out All Over

This is encouraging:

House and Senate negotiators working on an intelligence bill have agreed to limit CIA interrogators to techniques approved by the military, which would effectively bar them from using such harsh methods as waterboarding, congressional aides said Wednesday.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees decided to include the ban while working out differences in their respective bills authorizing 2008 spending for intelligence programs, according to the aides, who spoke anonymously because the negotiations were private. Details of the bill are to be made public Thursday.

That will set the stage for another veto fight with President Bush, who last summer issued an executive ordered allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what's allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual.

Fight Bush. Make the Republicans cast a vote for torture. Expose them.

Why I say that sanity is breaking out all over is that I'm including this deal on freezing mortgage rates that actually might (gasp!) help some people.

The Bush administration has hammered out an agreement to freeze interest rates on certain subprime mortgages for five years to combat an escalating number of home foreclosures, congressional aides said Wednesday.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been released, said the five-year moratorium was a compromise between desires by banking regulators for a time frame of up to seven years and mortgage-industry arguments that the freeze should last only one or two years.

Another person familiar with the matter said the rate freeze would apply to borrowers with loans made from Jan. 1, 2005, through July 30 of this year with rates that are scheduled to rise between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 31, 2010.

"Fixing the reset period is an important action, and it's good that everyone now seems to be pushing in the same direction," said Michael Barr, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

It's a stopgap, but anything that allows some homeowners a little relief from predatory lending is a positive step.

And...

A new agreement between the Pentagon and the State Department gives the military in Iraq more control over Blackwater Worldwide and other private security contractors.

The agreement was signed Wednesday at the Pentagon by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, whose department uses Blackwater to guard its diplomats. It spells out rules, standards and guidelines for the use of private security contractors.

The agreement also says contractors will be accountable for criminal acts under U.S. law. That partly clarifies what happens if a contractor breaks the law, but leaves the details to be worked out with Congress.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say we had a functioning government that responds to challenges.

UPDATE: It should be noted that the deal to freeze subprime rates should only effect about 12 precent of all borrowers in distress. That's better than 0%, but is insufficient to deal with the crisis. Atrios thinks it won't do a damn thing. I maybe jumped the gun.

The Shocking Truth: Blackwater Not Telling Truth

As new allegations of Blackwater shootings have cropped up, the FBI has completed its investigation of the incident that raised public awareness about the private military contractor - and they're basically calling bullshit on Blackwater's cover story.

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.

This is of course the problem, since the complex web of laws serve to immunize Blackwater employees from accountability. Not to mention that the internal investigative arms of the State Department, who hired Blackwater, are irretrievably flawed. One of the reasons that State is so lenient and forgiving with Blackwater, believing their stories of "acting in self-defense," is tied up in a conflict of interest.

At the beginning of today's House oversight committee hearing on State Department Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) dropped a bombshell: Krongard's brother, former CIA Executive Director A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, sits on Blackwater's advisory board. Blackwater, of course, is a State Department contractor.

Calling Krongard's case one of seemingly "reckless incompetence," Waxman reminded the hearing that one of the charges against Krongard is that he squelched an investigation into a State contractor -- since named as Blackwater -- smuggling weapons into Iraq. According to Waxman, Howard Krongard concealed his brother's association with Blackwater from "his own deputy."

Krongard has now recused himself from Blackwater investigations after confirming that his brother sits on the board. Clearly, Blackwater's modus operandi is to cultivate relationships with those who may be in a position to impact their bottom line. It's standard stuff.

Such A Success, Nobody Wants To Go There

At what point does this cross over into forced labor?

Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.

At a town hall meeting in the department's main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers, some of them criticized fundamental aspects of State's personnel policies in Iraq. They took issue with the size of the embassy -- the biggest in U.S. history -- and the inadequate training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone. One woman said she returned from a tour in Basra with post-traumatic stress disorder only to find that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment.

Yesterday's internal dissension came amid rising public doubts about diplomatic progress in Iraq and congressional inquiries into the department's spending on the embassy and its management of private security contractors. Some participants asked how diplomacy could be practiced when the embassy itself, inside the fortified Green Zone, is under frequent fire and officials can travel outside only under heavy guard.

Service in Iraq is "a potential death sentence," said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. "Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause.

What the... don't these diplomats know that we've turned the corner and they're in the last throes?

Let's be clear, these public officials, who know a bit more about the situation on the ground than the layman, are resisting attempts to be deployed to the GREEN ZONE, ostensibly the most secure area in all of Iraq. Now, it could be because they're just afraid of being caught in Blackwater's crossfire, but now that the military will be taking control of convoys, that should be less of a problem. So maybe it's just that these State Department employees know what the GAO has determined:

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have failed to take advantage of a dramatic drop in violence in Iraq, according to a report issued Tuesday by a U.S. watchdog agency, which warned that prospects were waning "for achieving current U.S. security, political and economic goals in Iraq."

Iraqi leaders have not passed legislation to foster reconciliation among Shiite Muslims, Sunnis and Kurds, and sectarian groups still retain control of ministries and divide Iraqi security forces, according to the Government Accountability Office report.

Moreover, the Bush administration's efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq are plagued by weak planning, a lack of coordination with the Iraqi government and among U.S. agencies, and an absence of detailed information on "the current and future costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq," it said.

"U.S. efforts lack strategies with clear purpose, scope, roles and performance measures," the report said.

All of this "progress" could go up in a moment, because it's not sustained by any structural changes. It's a play-out-the-clock strategy. And when the clock runs out, these people forced to deploy to Iraq will be among the most vulnerable.

That's why I agree with Juan Cole: it's time to close the US Embassy.

Now is that time for all Americans to stand up for the diplomats who serve this country ably and courageously throughout the world, for decades on end. Foreign service officers risk disease and death, and many of them see their marriages destroyed when spouses decline to follow them to a series of remote places. They are the ones who represent America abroad, who know languages and cultures and do their best to convince the world that we're basically a good people [...]

The guerrillas in Iraq constantly target the Green Zone and US diplomatic personnel there with mortar and rocket fire. State Department personnel sleep in trailers that are completely unprotected from such incoming fire. At several points in the past year, they have been forbidden to go outside without protective gear (as if outside were more dangerous). The Bush administration has consistently lied about the danger they are in and tried to cover up these severe security precautions.

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed) [...]

The Democrats have been facing the dilemma that they are blocked from doing much about Iraq. This is something they can do. Cut off funding for the embassy and force most of the diplomats home. This is the way to start ending the war.

Now.

Amen.

Welcome To Your New World Order

A world where the State Department decides who gets tried for murder.

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

And once you give a runaway executive power, you're not going to be very successful in taking it away, either. Oversight is good but it only goes so far without accountability.

Lawless bastards.

A Compelling Reason

The US Embassy in Iraq is an absolute behemoth that sends a terrible message about American dominion over the country. The problem is that the State Department has no personnel who actually want to work in what is still an incredibly dangerous territory. So the top officials came up with a brilliant plan: forced labor!

The State Department will order as many as 50 U.S. diplomats to take posts in Iraq next year because of expected shortfalls in filling openings there, the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War.

On Monday, 200 to 300 employees will be notified of their selection as "prime candidates" for 50 open positions in Iraq, said Harry K. Thomas, director general of the Foreign Service. Some are expected to respond by volunteering, he said. However, if an insufficient number volunteers by Nov. 12, a department panel will determine which ones will be ordered to report to the Baghdad embassy next summer.

"If people say they want to go to Iraq, we will take them," Thomas said in an interview. But "we have to move now, because we can't hold up the process." Those on the list were selected by factors including grade, specialty and language skill, as well as "people who have not had a recent hardship tour," he said.

I understand the need to fill various positions, but I wonder what those positions will actually be. Perhaps they could do something about the paralegal running the anti-corruption office?

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) laid it all out. Not only are there duplicative U.S. offices in Baghdad to oversee anti-corruption efforts -- the Anti-corruption Working Group and the Office of Accountability and Transparency, to name two -- but coordination is so bad that the OAT for months boycotted the meetings of the AWG. Rice said she was "not aware" of that.

Another point she wasn't aware of: OAT has had, according to Rep. Tierney, four acting or permanent directors in the past ten months alone. The most recent one isn't a diplomat or a trained anti-corruption official at all, but rather a "paralegal" who works at the U.S. embassy. "I should get back to you with a sense of how we manage these programs," she replied.

I should note that this information came out in the great House Oversight Committee hearing where Condi Rice was forced to say over and over again, "Corruption is a major problem in Iraq" (in fact, it may be funding the insurgency). The sole reason that there has been these kinds of revelations is the tenacious work of my Congressman, Henry Waxman. He's the Kurt Rambis of the House, a role player who is just supposed to come in and throw some elbows through investigation. And this little guy has the White House completely spooked.

Waxman has become the Bush administration's worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran -- with a staff renowned for its depth and experience -- who has been waiting for this for 14 years.

These days, the 16-term congressman is always ready with a hearing, a fresh crop of internal administration e-mails or a new explosive report. And he has more than two dozen investigations underway, on such issues as the politicization of the entire federal government, formaldehyde in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, global warming, and safety concerns about the diabetes drug Avandia.

"We have to let people know they have someone watching them after six years with no oversight at all," said Waxman, 68. "And we've got a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick."

Someone is watching, and I think in the final analysis, there is an opportunity to roll back a lot of the abuses of the first six years.

Shit And Fan Coming Together At The State Department

We've had our first post-Blackwater resignation, from the top security chief.

The State Department's security chief announced his resignation on Wednesday in the wake of last month's deadly Blackwater USA shooting incident in Baghdad and growing questions about the use of private contractors in Iraq.

Richard Griffin, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, announced his decision to resign at a weekly staff meeting, according to an internal informational e-mail sent to colleagues.

It's obviously going to get much worse for the State Department, as Iraq has formally removed the cloak of immunity protecting private military contractors from prosecution for their actions. This was a holdover from the Coalition Provisional Authority days, and now it's no longer operative. As a result, the contractors could leave whether or not State wants them to stay.

Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association -- otherwise known as the private-security lobby -- took a cautious approach, saying he wanted to reserve judgment until the State Department and the Pentagon made its views known. But he pointed out that most contractors -- not just security contractors, but contractors involved in reconstruction, as well -- hire Iraqis to do significant amounts of grunt work, which westerners supervise. "If you say anyone not Iraqi is now under Iraqi law -- such as it is -- you'll lose a lot of oversight and management capabilities," Brooks says. That's because he expects his member organizations on the ground in Iraq to either shed their American staff or experience difficulty recruiting Americans to go to Iraq in the future. "It would be enormously risky to stay. Individual contractors would have to take a hard look" at remaining in Iraq.

The State Department has claimed that there's no alternative to using private military contractors to guard diplomats. Not only is that a crock of shit, it's about to be tested. Because Blackwater isn't going to expose themselves to prosecution.

Meanwhile, Blackwater is reduced to sending out emails to supporters begging them to astroturf the Congress:

The Blackwater family is comprised of dedicated and active service providers that work vigorously to support the American nation. In this tumultuous political climate, Blackwater Worldwide has taken center stage, our services and ethics aggressively challenged with misinformation and fabrications. Letters, e-mails and calls to your elected Congressional representatives can and will create a positive impact by influencing the manner in which they gather and present information.

While we can’t ask that each supporter do everything, Blackwater asks that everyone does something. Contact your lawmakers and tell them to stand by the truth. Correspondence should be polite and professional. We don’t support generating negative messages. Tell the Blackwater story and encourage your representatives to seek the truth instead of reading negative propaganda and drawing the wrong conclusions.

Suggested themes:
- Cost efficiency of Blackwater – saving the US taxpayer millions of dollars so that the US Government doesn’t have to take troops from their missions or send more into harms way
- Professional population of service veterans and mature law enforcement personnel
- Sacrifice in lives lost by Blackwater saving US diplomats without one single protectee harmed

Sad and hilarious.

UPDATE: Condi Rice does not recall.

Rice did not apologize in the hearing and avoided directly answering a question from Massachusetts Democrat Rep. William Delahunt who asked if she knew (Maher) Arar was tortured in Syria.

"You are aware of the fact that he was tortured?" Delahunt asked.

"I am aware of claims that were made," she responded.

But when asked if the United States had received any diplomatic assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured, Rice said her memory of the events had faded and she would have to respond later to the question.

Is the State Department MORE embarrassing than the Justice Department, or less? Discuss.

DoD to Blackwater: Game Over

The Iraqis have finished their probe in to the Nissour Square shootings, have unanimously declared that Blackwater is criminally liable, and is asking in no uncertain terms that they be removed from the country. For about the fifth time. But the Defense Secretary is starting to listen.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is pressing for the nearly 10,000 armed security contractors now working for the United States government in Iraq to fall under a single authority, most likely the American military, in an effort to bring Blackwater USA under tighter control, senior administration officials and Pentagon advisers say.

That idea is facing resistance from the State Department, which relies heavily for protection in Iraq on some 2,500 private guards, including more than 800 Blackwater contractors, to provide security for American diplomats in Baghdad. The State Department has said it should retain control over those guards, despite Blackwater’s role in a September shooting in Baghdad that exposed problems in the current oversight arrangements.

This has turned a bit into a power grab between State and Defense, but the truth is that private military contractors cannot continue to exist in an accountability-free zone, and if they're presumably under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, then they should be under the control of the military. I really don't want to see the military privatized at all, and putting them under the control of the military makes for easier outsourcing, so there's concern. But this would end something that has caused great hardship in Iraq. And this, of course, is why Blackwater, knowing that they've burned bridge, is scurrying around trying to pick up other jobs. The problem is that once the light is shines on you, it's hard to stay out of that spotlight.

Blackwater Is Fatwa'd

I thought this would have received more attention:

Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani lashed out at foreign security contractors on Friday accusing them of "belittling" Iraqis.

Sistani is demanding that the government pass legislation "that stops the shedding of Iraqi blood," his spokesman Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai said in the central shrine city of Karbala.

"The foreign security companies working in Iraq belittle innocent Iraqi citizens," a statement from Karbalai said.

If you lose Sistani, you've lost the Iraqi people, and there will be repercussions for years. The State Department has made overtures toward dropping Blackwater, but nothing permanent. Which could be why Blackwater is moving on to greener, and quieter, pastures.

Prince is prepping his company for even more lucrative contracts than the billion dollars Blackwater has received from the U.S. government since 9/11. As The Wall Street Journal reports today, Prince is looking to take on the biggest defense contractors in the country.

According to the Blackwater founder and CEO, private security -- guarding U.S. personnel in war-torn countries, as Blackwater does in Iraq -- shouldn't be what defines the company. "We see the security market diminishing," he told the paper. Instead, Blackwater wants to grow its training and logistics work, placing Blackwater in the center of what the WSJ terms "missions to which the [U.S. military] won't commit American forces." For example, Blackwater recently outbid Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and Raytheon for a five-year, $15 billion contract to "fight terrorists with drug ties." Get ready to see a lot of Blackwater in Colombia.

Blackwater has 40 aircraft, a 183-foot ship, and an armored-car production facility (wouldn't it be nice if the military could get some of those armored vehicles?) to make American street-legal cars. They're a moving target, preparing for other eventualities once the Iraqi adventure runs its course. They'd much rather operate without fanfare or publicity, becoming the Defense Department's new black-ops team, for example, or getting hidden in the CIA's secret intelligence ledger. They may leave Iraq, but they're not leaving the accounting books of the US government.

Blackwater Updates

A lot going on in the Blackwater case:

• The State Department is operating as an arm of a private corporation.

Nearly four weeks after the deadly shootings at a central Baghdad square involving the Blackwater USA private security firm, American military officials and Iraqi investigators say the F.B.I. and State Department are refusing to share information with them on their investigation into the killings.

The American military has not been allowed to speak to Blackwater employees who were in Nisour Square that day, nor have military officials been shown the Blackwater vehicle that the company and State Department officials have said was disabled during the events of Sept. 16 just west of the heavily fortified Green Zone, according to a senior American military officer [...]

However, Iraqi investigators say the F.B.I. and State Department have not provided information about the investigation to their Iraqi counterparts, despite repeated requests. A senior Iraqi investigator said that American military officers had also interviewed Iraqi witnesses, collected evidence from Nisour Square and talked to Iraqi investigators.

“We haven’t received any information from the Americans about their own two investigations,” the senior Iraqi investigator said. “F.B.I. investigators have asked us to help them and share our information, as they have started a third investigation.”

The vehicle is actually still sitting there in Baghdad. No forensic work has been done on it, no evidence has been collected. This is why I was skeptical of that press release masquerading as a news item that the State Department was about to drop Blackwater. Nonsense.

• The UN suggests that Blackwater has committed war crimes.

[Ivana Vuco, senior human rights officer] told a news conference that private security contractors were still subject to international humanitarian law and that meant there were specific consequences for any breach.

"Investigations as to whether or not crimes against humanity, war crimes, are being committed and obviously the consequences of that is something that we will be paying attention to and advocating for," she told a news conference.

This is almost the least of the human rights worries in Iraq, what with 4 million refugees and the like. But war criminals must not be allowed to avoid prosecution.

• And to that end, family members of those slain in Nissour Square are suing Blackwater in US court, under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is filing a lawsuit today under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of the families of three of the Iraqis killed, as well as another Iraqi who was injured, when Blackwater guards shot dead 17 Iraqis and injured many more [...]

SUSAN BURKE, CCR: We were approached by the families of three gentlemen who were shot and killed, as well as a gentleman who was very seriously injured. They came to us because they know of our work representing the torture victims at Abu Ghraib, and they asked us whether it would be possible to try to get some form of justice, some form of accountability, against this rogue corporation.

So we put together a lawsuit that is being filed this morning in federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of the families of three gentlemen who were killed: Mr. Atban, Mr. Abbass and Mr. Ibraheem The three gentlemen, amongst them, had fourteen children, including one, Mr. Atban, had a newborn baby daughter. So, needless to say, we are very interested in holding this company accountable and in pursuing the lawsuit vigorously.

Later in that interview, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, explained that the legislation which passed the House this week, which would put Blackwater under US law, is "problematic" because it legitimizes their use as a private sector alternative to the military. Not sure if I agree, but it's an interesting perspective.

Wake Me Up When It Happens

This article makes it sound like "Ooh, Condi's ever so close to cutting off Blackwater, just one more screw-up and they're out the door!" but I wouldn't be so sure. First of all, this is just a review. And after all, the federal government just gave a multibillion dollar "narcoterrorism" contract to Blackwater, just yesterday. Doesn't sound like a relationship on the outs.

(However, it could be that other areas of the government are compensating for Blackwater's eventual loss in Iraq.)

By the way, notice the mission creep there. The war on drugs now equals the war on terror! Fabulous! Now all the great strides we've made in BOTH those wars can be combined!

Blackwater: Military Hates Them, Hillary's Pollster Loves Them

The biggest argument you can make against Blackwater USA is that they harm the military effort in Iraq through their recklessness, which ends up boomeranging back on our troops. Now the military is agreeing with that assessment publicly:

U.S. military reports from the scene of the Sept. 16 shooting incident involving the security firm Blackwater USA indicate that its guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force against Iraqi civilians, according to a senior U.S. military official.

The reports came to light as an Interior Ministry official and five eyewitnesses described a second deadly shooting minutes after the incident in Nisoor Square. The same Blackwater security guards, after driving about 150 yards away from the square, fired into a crush of cars, killing one person and injuring two, the Iraqi official said.

The U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the shooting incident in Nisoor Square, in which hospital records say at least 14 people were killed and 18 were wounded.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official said.

Only the State Department's initial report has failed to corroborate this explanation of the attack, and that one was written by a Blackwater contractor.

Despite the initial report, the State Department is coming around to the reality that changes are needed to the private contractor security situation in Iraq. They are recommending major changes aimed at increasing oversight on security personnel, essentially guarding the guards. Boy, that's good value for our taxpayer money.

Of course, Blackwater isn't taking this news lying down. They're fighting back, particularly on the PR front, by hiring the powerful and connected firm Burson-Marsteller to do their crisis management. Burson-Marsteller, by the way, is run by Mark Penn, who is pretty much in charge of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Public relations giant Burson-Marsteller has vast experience steering companies through tough times. But there's a limit to how much it can help Blackwater USA, a new client that's been battered by negative publicity.

The State Department, which pays Blackwater hundreds of millions of dollars to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, has stringent rules barring the private security contractor from discussing with the media the details of its work, according to those familiar with the arrangement.

Under those limitations, it's difficult to repair a corporate image, said one official close to Blackwater [...]

Burson-Marsteller was brought aboard by the Washington law firms representing Blackwater — McDermott Will & Emery and Crowell & Moring.

One of the executives on the Blackwater account is Robert Tappan, a former State Department official. Tappan is a managing director of BKSH & Associates Worldwide, a Burson-Marsteller subsidiary.

The company claims that the relationship was temporary and has now ended. But if the braindead media wanted to push a story on Hillary, I don't think her laugh would be the one. How about the fact that her strategist is running a company that does business with the thuggish mercenary army that is destroying our reputation in Iraq single-handedly?