Charlie Brown On FISA

I had the opportunity to speak with CA-04 candidate Charlie Brown about the awful FISA bill that wormed its way through the House on Friday. Unlike Steny Hoyer and practically everyone else in the House, Brown has actually gathered intelligence in his career. He served two rotations in Saudi Arabia, coordinating surveillance flights over the No Fly Zone in Iraq. So he has an understanding of how intelligence is collected and what ought to be done when such collection results in information gleaned from Americans.

As soon as I brought up the FISA bill, Brown sighed. He said there was no way he could support the bill that was passed in the House, and he in particular cited the telecom immunity aspect for a variety of reasons. "When I was gathering intelligence, if I ever picked up information outside what was authorized, I would have to flag the tape and immediately deliver it to my commanding officer for destruction," he said. "If I didn't, I'd be sitting at Leavenworth." To treat the phone companies in a different way that he would have been personally treated seems unfathomable. Brown's main argument is that the world is a dangerous place and foreign surveillance within the law is sometimes warranted. But the precedent of giving phone companies a free pass after the President supplies them with a piece of paper allowing them to break the law is quite dangerous. "This is exactly what happened in 1973. In the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext to get us into that war, and the resolution passed was misused to escalate that conflict without the control of Congress. in 1973 Congress reasserted itself and passed the War Powers Act to ensure that never again could the executive go to war without expressed approval of the legislative body. And that was ignored for the next 35 years." Passing a FISA bill that is the "exclusive" means for electronic surveillance is part of the same deception. Laws don't need to be reasserted, they need to be enforced.

Brown was concerned that we seem to continue granting immunity to the wrong people, and not just the telecoms. We bail out Bear Stearns but not individual homeowners. We throw individual privates in jail for Abu Ghraib but never go up the chain of command. "There is an accountability problem in Washington, DC," as Brown put it. And the Title I aspects of the bill, which allow warrantless spying of bulk targets under executive-proclaimed "exigent circumstances," particularly with no need to throw out the intelligence gained that way if later found to to be illegal, was a concern as well.

If Charlie Brown can manage to run for office in what has traditionally been a heavily Republican district and understand that Constitutional principles and federal statutes must come first, then it's just impossible to take Bush Dogs who voted for FISA out of fear seriously. "Conservative Republicans should never vote for this kind of bill... they ought to be skeptical of government power and protective of civil liberties."

It's important that as we go forward we support those candidates who understand these issues, who will not be swayed by what a lobbyist or a leadership PAC will suggest, but who have the experience and strength to vote based on their own principles. There's no question in my mind that Charlie Brown is that kind of candidate.

And While You're Studying, We Create Our Own Reality

Scott Ritter spoke at the local public library last night, and while the auditorium was full and I had to go to the multi-purpose room upstairs and watch a video feed, I guess i can say that I saw him speak. And he was forceful and adamant, the kind of insistence one gets from someone who was proven right about so many things, yet still gets marginalized in the public debate (he talked about how the media got it wrong in Iraq, and how they're trapped by their own record, forcing them to put idiots like Ken Pollack on their shows, when he was in fact wrong about everything in the Middle East).

But he was most forceful about Iran, and this coming war which is moving at the speed of a freight train, with little or no resistance from anyone who can stop it. Ritter said that Iran and Iraq are part of the same policy of regime change in the Middle East. Iran is listed 16 times in the National Security Strategy of the US as the number one threat to security, and Bush feels that he already has all the authority he needs to go to war yet again. You don't put three carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf simply to pull back. And there are wanton lies being told about the actual threat that Iran poses. First it was that they we're ten years away from a nuclear weapon; to quote Ritter, EVERY COUNTRY on Earth is ten years away from a nuclear weapon. As to the more recent accounts of the IAEA saying that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium for a warhead in a year, this is theoretical and not actual practice; realistically, Iran can't do it and everybody knows this.

As for the casus belli that Iran is supplying Iraqis with weapons that kill Americans, not only could these EFP (explosively formed penetrator) weapons be made by anyone with a bare minimum of machine tools, but revelations in recent days show that this is exactly what Iraqis may have been doing:

The cache included what Maj. Marty Weber, a master explosives ordnance technician, said was C-4 explosive, a white substance, in clear plastic bags with red labels that he said contained serial numbers and other information that clearly marked it as Iranian.

But while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue.

Among the confusing elements were cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran. One box said in English that the tubes inside had been made in the United Arab Emirates and another said, in Arabic, “plastic made in Haditha,” a restive Sunni town on the Euphrates River in Iraq.

So we have a country, Iran, which is likely not to be arming Shiites in Iraq, is likely not to be able to acquire nuclear weapons in as urgent a time frame as was assumed, but a country which is under threat of attack at any moment by a US government making the exact opposite claims. And in the process, as Seymour Hersh explains in his bombshell piece for The New Yorker, we are actually doing the arming of insurgents who mean to kill American troops OURSELVES.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites [...]

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

So the Administration is running an off-the-books series of covert operations, aligned with the Saudis - the "16 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11" Saudis - to crush the growing Shiite sphere of influence that WE TOUCHED OFF by eliminating both of Iran's major rivals in the region, Iraq and Afghanistan. This, frankly, is unbelievable. We created a mess in the first place, and now we're creating a bigger one. We are literally IN LEAGUE WITH SUNNI RADICALS, not unlike those which make up Al Qaeda. Josh Marshall explains the incoherence at work here.

But wait ... Only a short time ago we were told that Cheney and his crew at the White House wanted to take the side of the Shi'as in Iraq's burgeoning civil war. In other words, for all the attention to who we're going to attack and how and how many soldiers we need to do it, there appears to be a basic debate (to be generous) or confusion (to be less generous) within the administration over which side we're even on.

We talk a lot about the 'surge' and that's important since it assumes a intensive military commitment in Iraq for years into the future. We worry about tactics and strategy and whether the White House is going to plunge us into another war as a way to wriggle out of the blame for the current one. But this is a level of folly that transcends all of that: at the most basic level, the folks running the show can't even decide who's side we're on. There's no real strategy here or grand aim or even stable aim -- more like a rather panicked set of improvisations aimed at finding a way to retrospectively justify the mistakes that got us here in the first place.

I think it's incoherent only to the reality-based community. For those that create their own reality, this is perfectly logical. It's time for another war to show everybody in the world who's boss, and it's time to plant some evidence proving that Iran is the gravest threat the world has ever known. America has allowed for strange bedfellows in the past (though ones who repeatedly and rampantly kill thousands of Americans as part of their ideology, well, that's a new one). So the neocons are creating their own reality, hoping that fear and ignorance will get the public on their side once again.

It's a sad irony that the only thing which may be standing between peace and war in Iran is a military coup, as five top generals are prepared to quit in the event of a strike:

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

But generals have resigned their posts before under this Administration, most notably Gen. Shinseki, and the military machine has moved mightily along. Until the public and the leaders in Congress are engaged on this issue BEFORE it happens, we will be moving inexorably toward war. Arthur Silber has a powerful post about this, about the need to speak out right now, about the need to tell the truth.

1. The criminal and immoral nature of an attack on Iran in the present circumstances and in the foreseeable future must be identified and stated with all the force imaginable, without qualification, in virtually every interview, every television appearance, and every news story that any politician (or any other public figure) takes part in, beginning tomorrow. THE INSANITY AND CRIMINALITY OF SUCH AN ATTACK MUST BE MADE NATIONAL TOPIC NUMBER ONE, UNTIL THIS ADMINISTRATION FULLY AND COMPLETELY DISAVOWS ANY AND ALL SUCH INTENTIONS AND PLANS -- AND UNTIL THE MAGNITUDE OF PUBLIC OPPOSITION CONVINCES US THAT THEY MEAN IT.

2. In every statement about an attack on Iran, no opponent of this administration can accept any of the terms of debate chosen by the administration. Such opponents must argue on completely different terms. If you argue within the framework they prefer to any extent at all, you will lose -- and the next global war may begin.

It's time to call your Representatives on this one. They're speaking in general terms about Iran, wary of Administration motives and wanting them to get authority from Congress before any attack. But the President doesn't feel like he needs that authority, the Congress is immobilized by partisanship (particularly in the Senate), and a lot of this stuff is being done without Congressional oversight anyway. Stop the Iran War is a clearing house of activism and information. The time is right now. We have to end this endless re-creation of reality. The purpose of citizenship, of our intelligence community, is to challenge everything and view every official source with suspicion, precisely the opposite of what this lapdog Lieberman suggested today. It's time to challenge the Administration on Iran.

Blame Game

The wheels of the Iran bamboozlement train are officially off.

After initially hyping and standing behind the blockbuster briefing in Iraq detailing how the highest levels of the Iranian government were funneling explosive material to Shiite militias, the White House not only backed off, but blamed those who handled the briefing they had hyped:

HENRY: Some new information coming from my colleague Barbara Starr at the Pentagon that General Peter Pace is expected to have a media availability later today. All eyes will be on that to see exactly how he puts this given this confusion over the last couple of days.

Other information we have gotten is that apparently this anonymous intelligence briefer went a little too far in saying that the highest levels of the Iranian government were behind this. But that begs the question why the administration has taken so long to clarify those comments, Soledad.

O’BRIEN: And that’s a big going too far. I mean, that’s a critical piece of information.

HENRY: Especially given what happened in the run-up to the Iraq war. The administration knows full well about the credibility questions. And you would think in this case they would want to make sure they have all their ducks in a row.

They thought the lesson of the Iraq war was that they could successfully fool the media and the public into thinking there was an imminent threat without any fear of consequences. Why wouldn't they do Iran in the exact same way?

But sadly, 2007 isn't 2002. And this attempt to blame the "rogue briefer" is laughable. The government approved the briefing. They quoted it all week. They used it as evidence. They even delayed the initial briefing to make sure that the intelligence was rock-solid. Now it's all the briefer's fault?

It's also amusing that the Bush Administration has no problem blaming rogue officials and claiming plausible deniability for themselves, but not for their enemies. Salon's Tim Grieve had the riposte of the day:

Wednesday, President George W. Bush: "What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did. But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know?"

Maybe it's reasonable to assume that people in the highest levels of Iran's government know what members of the al-Quds unit are doing. Maybe it's not. Our view? We'll start making the leap of faith about what high-level Iranian officials must know just as soon as the White House starts accepting the same sort of arguments about itself.

How does this one sound, Mr. President? What we do know is that members of the U.S. military were responsible for acts of torture at Abu Ghraib. We know that. And we also know that the U.S. military is part of the U.S. government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of the U.S. government ordered the U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib to do what they did. But here's our point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they did it. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know?

The White House has so destroyed their own credibility that I wouldn't believe a "The Sun is Hot" briefing from them.