THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
December 2006
Week One
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"How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully's ego?" -- Paul Krugman, December 4, 2006
Iraq Study Group to recommend withdrawing almost all forces from Iraq by early 2008
- December 1: The bipartisan Iraq Study Group plans to recommend withdrawing nearly all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving behind troops to train, advise and support the Iraqis, setting the first goal for a major drawdown of US forces.
Iraq war and occupation
The ISG, headed by Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton, will release its official report next week, but some of the conclusions and recommendations of the report have been leaked to the press. Bush is expected to reject many of the ISG recommendations, and says he is waiting for his own "internal" review of his Iraq policies to be completed. The ISG plan would shift the US mission in Iraq to a secondary role as the fragile Baghdad government and its security forces take the lead in fighting a Sunni insurgency and trying to halt sectarian violence. As part of major changes in the US presence, the plan recommends embedding US soldiers directly in Iraqi security units starting as early as January 2007 to improve leadership and effectiveness. The call to pull out combat brigades by early 2008 would be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it. But panel members believe that it is vital to set a target to put pressure on Iraqi leaders to do more to assume responsibility for the security of their country. "It's really about transitioning from a combat to a support role, and basically making very clear that this is no longer an open-ended commitment and we're going to get this done whether the Iraqis like it or not," says one of the sources who provided the information. "Everybody understands that we're at the end of the road here." - The recommendations do not include any specific timetables. Democrats, who will take over leadership of Congress in January, and some Republicans have called for a timetable, but Bush has refused to consider any such idea, saying that a timetable for withdrawal would amount to surrender and could destabilize Iraq even further. "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever," Bush says. (See related item.) Aides later spin Bush's recalcitrant statement, telling reporters that, in essence, Bush doesn't mean what he says. "That's not the case," says one senior official who insisted on remaining anonymous. "His position is he's not entering this process with defeat on his mind" for the sole purpose of getting out. Some options being discussed by the Iraqi Study Group and his own administration's internal policy review are "things that he's very open to." And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicates to a CBS reporter that she is more open to the concept of drawing down forces. "The whole goal here is to transfer responsibility to the Iraqis and to give them enough capability to take those responsibilities," she says. "Obviously, as those responsibilities are transferred, as the capability improves, then American forces will be less in evidence and less needed. That's a natural outcome." Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki says that his security forces will be ready to take over in six months, a bold prediction that many experts have difficulty believing.
- Congressional Democrats are cautiously optimistic about the ISG recommendations. "I think that the Baker report is...going to change the debate in this country," says Senator John Kerry. Senator Christopher Dodd adds, "I suspect there may be a growing bipartisan support in this country for what Jim Baker, Lee Hamilton, the other members of that commission have put together." And Carl Levin, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says, "It's a welcome change in course, although it's not as specific, or it's not as pointed, or it's not as clear as I would like." (Washington Post)
- December 1: Bush refuses to consider any plans for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, saying that soldiers will "stay in Iraq to get the job done, so long as the government wants us there."
Iraq war and occupation
After meeting with Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, he calls Maliki "the right guy for Iraq." Bush and Maliki spent about two hours discussing how to reduce violence in Iraq, and how to better train Iraqi military and security forces to take over responsbility for Iraq's internal security. Bush's stubborn refusal to countenance any troop withdrawals is considered something of a preemptive strike against the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, which is expected to recommend gradual drawdowns of US troops over the next year. Although not asked directly about the ISG's expected recommendations, which have been partially leaked to reporters, Bush says "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever." National security advisor Stephen Hadley tries to soften Bush's recalcitrance later that day, telling reporters that Bush will begin making changes in his Iraq policy soon after receiving the study group's recommendations and the reports of other high-level review panels. "There is a real sense of urgency, but there is not a sense of panic," Hadley says. - Maliki, meanwhile, declares that he is moving to disarm militias in Iraq and expects government forces to assume full control of security duties by June 2007. "I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready, to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June, our forces will be ready," Maliki says. He says he will "definitely" disarm militias such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shi'ite cleric. "And the government is doing that with all militias, with no exception," he adds. "There will be only the arms for government troops." But saying that he will disarm the militias, particular Sadr's, and actually doing it are two different things. Sadr is perhaps the most powerful political leader in Iraq, and his militia is the largest and most violent of the numerous Shi'ite militias active in Iraq. Worse for Maliki, Sadr's supporters make up a critical bloc in the Iraqi parliament, and are necessary to prop up Maliki's government. Maliki has to walk a political tightrope between Sadr, Bush, and the needs of his populace. Sources say that Bush did not pressure Maliki to sever ties with Sadr or take stronger action against the Mahdi Army or other Shi'ite militias. US commanders in Baghdad have repeatedly called the Shi'ite militias the principal impediment to restoring order in Iraq.
- Few in Iraq are pleased with the results of the meeting between Bush and Maliki. Sunni legislators in particular say they are disappointed by the outcome of the meeting, and had expected Bush to take a stronger stand. "We heard more support for this government from the Bush administration," says Saleh al-Mutlak, leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, the second-largest Sunni Arab party in Iraq's parliament. "It's a support for failure." (Washington Post)
- December 1: The Bush administration is considering whether to abandon US reconciliation efforts with Iraq's Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shi'ites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government.
Iraq war and occupation
The proposal is part of a crash White House assessment of its Iraq policies and follows an assessment that the ambitious US outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. US officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq. Some insiders call the proposal the "80 percent" solution, a term unpopular with many other parties to the White House policy review cringe. Sunni Arabs make up about 20% of Iraq's 26 million people. US officials say this change would not be an abandonment of the goal of building a unified government out of Iraq's three fractious communities, but instead would leave leadership of the thorny task of reconciliation to the Iraqis. The proposal has met serious resistance from both US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and military commanders in Iraq, who believe that intensive diplomatic efforts to bring Sunni insurgents into the political process are pivotal to stabilizing the war-ravaged country. State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, author of the proposal, argues that the US has compromised its prospects of success by reaching too far. (Washington Post)
ATS violating citizens' privacy for four years without their knowledge
- December 1: Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing US borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by US government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.
Domestic spying
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years. The Bush administration calls the system a necessity after the 9/11 attacks, but privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts. Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered. Although the program has been in use for four years, it was just recently disclosed when DHS put a notice detailing ATS in the Federal Register. The few civil liberties lawyers who had heard of ATS and even some law enforcement officers said they had thought it was only used to screen cargo. David Sobel, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to civil liberties in cyberspace, says, "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected." Government officials refuse to say whether ATS has helped in apprehending any terror suspects. "Homeland Security ought to focus on the simple things it can do and stop trying to build these overly complex jury-rigged systems," says Barry Steinhardt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, citing problems the agency has had developing a computerized screening system for domestic air travelers. That data-mining project, now known as Secure Flight, caused a furor two years ago in Congress. Lawmakers barred its implementation until it can pass 10 tests for accuracy and privacy protection. - Of ATS, Sobel says, "Some individuals will be denied the right to travel and many the right to travel free of unwarranted interference." He also says that the government notice raises the possibility that faulty risk assessments could cost innocent people jobs in shipping or travel, government contracts, licenses or other benefits. The government notice says some or all of the ATS data about an individual may be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring decisions and in granting licenses, security clearances, contracts or other benefits. In some cases, the data may be shared with courts, Congress and even private contractors. "Everybody else can see it, but you can't," says Cornell law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr. According to Customs spokesman Jayson Ahern, ATS was first used to rate the risk posed by travelers in the late 1990s, using personal information about them voluntarily supplied by air and cruise lines. A post-9/11 law vastly expanded the program, requiring airline and cruise companies to begin sending the government electronic data in advance on all passengers and crew bound into or out of the country, starting in 2002. All these names are put through ATS analysis, Ahern says. In addition, at land border crossings, agents enter license plates and the names of vehicle drivers and passengers, and Amtrak voluntarily supplies passenger data on its trains to and from Canada. DHS has unilaterally exempted ATS from many provisions of the Privacy Act designed to protect people from secret, possibly inaccurate government dossiers. As a result, travelers cannot learn whether the system has assessed them. Nor can they see the records "for the purpose of contesting the content." According to DHS, "an individual might not be aware of the reason additional scrutiny is taking place, nor should he or she" because that might compromise the ATS' methods. (AP/Yahoo! News)
- December 1: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, interviewed by Al Arabiya TV during her trip to Jordan, admits that the Bush administration has made mistakes in Iraq, but will refuse to discuss them until after she leaves office.
Iraq war and occupation
Rice says to a question about US mistakes in Iraq, "As to whether the United States has made mistakes, of course, I'm sure, we have. You can't be involved in something as big as the liberation of a country like Iraq and all that has happened since, and I'm sure there are things that we could have done differently; but frankly, we are looking ahead. And when I'm back at Stanford University, I can look back and write books about what we might have done differently." The progressive Web site Think Progress clarifies Rice's statement: "In other words, Rice realizes that -- as bad as things are in Iraq -- the Bush administration must have made mistakes. But she refuses to think about them until she leaves office. The problem with this approach is the there are 140,000 troops in Iraq right now. There is an imperative to identify and correct mistakes in our strategy. Instead, Condoleezza Rice and President Bush are staying the course." (State Deparrment/Think Progress) - December 1: Incoming Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi selects Silvestre Reyes to head the House Intelligence Committee.
Congressional Democrats
Pelosi passes over two higher-ranking Democrats, ranking committee member Jane Harman and fellow member Alcee Hastings, who had the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. Pelosi's choice of Reyes is considered a strong one for many reasons. Reyes, a Vietnam veteran and former Border Patrol official, will spearhead tough questions and investigations of the Bush administration on the Iraq debacle. And in choosing Reyes, Pelosi not only gives the Congressional Hispanic Caucus some much-desired representation in the House leadership, but avoids battles over Harman, who is considered too supportive of the war in Iraq by many Democrats, and Hastings, whose controversial past -- as a judge, he was impeached for corruption and fraud, though he was acquitted of the charges -- would be sure to set off a firestorm of media criticism. "When tough questions are required, whether they relate to intelligence shortcomings before 9-11 attacks or the war in Iraq, or the quality of intelligence on Iran or North Korea, he does not hesitate to ask them," Pelosi says of Reyes. Reyes immediately pledges a forceful questioning over current intelligence programs. "It is important for the committee to ask the tough questions and enact strong policies to keep us safe while protecting the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans," he says. Reyes, a veteran law-enforcement official, received the Purple Heart for wounds while serving in the Army as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam in 1968. His congressional district includes Fort Bliss, one of the Army's largest installations, outside El Paso. Pelosi says she chose Reyes because of his "impeccable national security credentials. ...He has served our country as a soldier in combat [and as] a senior law enforcement officer on our southern border." Reyes also has been one of the Democratic Party's most vocal critics of Republican-led immigration proposals and an opponent of legislation that would build 700 miles of fencing in cities along the US-Mexico border. Harman endorsed Reyes for the post once it became clear that she would not get the job herself. (San Antonio Express-News) - December 1: Former secretary of state Colin Powell, speaking at an economic conference in London, says that the US should open negotiations with both Iran and Syria, and doubts the US will attack Iran.
War with Iran
He tells a reporter, "Iran is a regional power and it will have to be dealt with. We should find ways to speak to them and also speak to the Syrians." Both Iran and Syria have been accused by the US government of sponsoring terrorism and fomenting violence in Iraq. Iran has also been accused of trying to build nuclear weapons. Both countries deny the accusations. "I hope that over time Iran will play a responsible part in the region," Powell says. "As you know Iran is doing very well now, they have no particular pressure on their nuclear program." Powell says the Bush administration will have to work with the United Nations and Russia to keep Iran from evolving its nuclear program beyond power generation. (Reuters/Yahoo! News) - December 1: Two reporters for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz bluntly predict that there will be a war in the Middle East next summer, and perhaps two, both outside of Iraq and both involving Israel.
Middle East unrest
Reporters Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff use Israeli Army reports to conclude, "Only the sector has not been chosen yet." The war will likely center around Lebanon and/or the Gaza Strip. Israeli Defense Forces analysis predicts a war against Hezbollah, the terrorist organization currently in control of large portions of Lebanon, and perhaps against Syria as well. The IDF also predicts a quick failure of the recent cease-fire achieved with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. IDF soldiers may well end up attempting to occupy and "pacify" the area in a huge military operation not seen since 1993. The Israeli Army is already training and preparing for military operations in Lebanon. But one defense official says the preparations and signals about any move against Lebanon are more about image than actual substance. The extremist assessment of the good chances of a conflict in the North is designed to present the army with a target (and more important, with a target date), he says. By summer preparations will be completed, and the IDF will brush itself off and restore the professional capability that it mistakenly thought it had when Israel so hastily went to war last summer. - As far as Syria goes, at least one senior Israeli official, Amos Yadlin, the chief of military intelligence, says that Israel needs to reexamine the idea of renewing peace negotiations with Damascus. Like his predecessor Ariel Sharon, prime minister Ehud Olmert is chilly to any talk of negotiations with Syria. However, Olmert recently reexamined the possibility of compromising with Syria on the question of the Shaba Farms region. A UN team has begun a project to map the area in order to decide on the size of the controversial region. The mapping work is being done at UN headquarters in New York, on the basis of maps and satellite photos. Olmert has been told that there is little chance that Syria would agree to an arrangement in which Israel would transfer this area to Lebanon. According to this assessment, Syrian President Bashar Assad is not enthusiastic about the possibility. So signals are definitely mixed.
- Relations between Israel and Palestine are as bad as they have been in years. The Hamas government of Ismail Haniyeh is still battling for control of the Palestinian government with rival group Fatah; it will be weeks at best before any semblance of a unity government is in place, giving Israel little options in negotiations. Israel continues to work towards the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and its recognition of a Palestinian government, but the chaos within the Palestinian governmental structures is difficult to overcome for any side. Talks between Hamas leader Haniyeh and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmous Abbas continue without serious progress. The relationship between the two is souring fast; Abbas recently told Haniyeh he had no intention of forming any sort of unity government with Haniyeh's participation. Abbas and his supporters are particularly frustrated with Egypt, who has been trying to broker a deal between Abbas and Haniyeh, but is being too cozy with Hamas for Abbas's liking. Abbas's people worry that if the Shalit deal is finally completed, only Hamas will benefit from it. The release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons will be attributed to the force of Hamas' arms, rather than to the conciliatory approach of Abbas, in spite of Olmert's promises to release the prisoners to Abbas's group. Harel and Issacharoff write, "As things look at the moment, Hamas is emerging strengthened from the cease-fire, and its position will continue to improve after the Shalit deal. The surprising support from Egypt will further solidify the position of Haniyeh and Meshal in the unity government contacts." The best outcome for Fatah is the possible release of senior Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti. "The release of Barghouti, who was sentenced in Israel to five cumulative life sentences for his part in the murder of Israeli citizens during the intifada, will ease the sting of the Hamas achievement and will restore Fatah's men in the field to public awareness," they write, but such a release has strong opposition among Israeli lawmakers.
- Meanwhile, Hamas is building an infrastructure in Gaza similar to what Hezbollah has created in southern Lebanon, abetted by the cease-fire in smuggling in more arms and weapons. Harel and Issacharoff write, "The calm will collapse at the time most convenient for [Hamas], not for Israel." The IDF still waits for direction as to how to respond to Hamas. Currently the argument over the ownership of land around the Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- Palestinian or Israeli -- continues to boil over. (Ha'aretz)
- December 1: With no fanfare, Bush has appointed Mary Beth Buchanan to head the Office of Violence Against Women, where the 1994 Violence Against Women Act is enforced. Buchanan has a long track record of battling against women's rights and civil liberties in general, leading blogger Morra Aarons to call her "[former attorney general] John Ashcroft in a dress."
Partisan Bush appointees
Buchanan, currently the US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, has said that the USA Patriot Act actually preserves Americans' civil liberties. She may be best known for her $12 million "Operation Pipe Dreams," which busted 55 people, including actor Tommy Chong, for the heinous crime of selling bongs. She introduced Chong's fictional pot-smoking characters in court as evidence of what she called his "frivolous" attitude towards drug laws. Buchanan has crusaded against pornography, even relatively tame examples well within the laws, leading observers to believe she is interested in enforcing her own brand of morality, as in the words of the legal director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the ACLU, who once called Buchanan "the vanguard of Ashcroft's attempt to impose his morality on others." Buchanan joins Dr. Eric Keroack (see related items on the November 2006 page) and a raft of judicial nominees as further evidence of the hateful, extremist candidates for public office preferred by Bush. (Feminsting/BlogHer) - December 1: Conservative pundits and columnists, dutifully enabled by mainstream media outlets such as CNN, are creating a controversy out of nothing centering around newly elected Democratic representative Keith Ellison.
Conservative smear campaigns
Ellison, a Muslim and African-American from Michigan, has essentially been accused of being a terrorist supporter by right-wing agitator Glenn Beck of CNN's Headline News, when Beck told Ellison on November 14, "...you are a Democrat. You are saying, 'Let's cut and run.' And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'" To his credit, Ellison was far more gracious in his response than Beck was in his ugly questioning. - More recently, right-wing columnist Dennis Prager made the false assertion that Ellison intends to perform his swearing-in as a House member using a Koran instead of a Christian Bible. Prager wrote that Ellison has "announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran." He went on to foam that Ellison's "act undermines American civilization," and, unbelievably, compared it to being sworn in with a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
- In a vicious irony, Prager was appointed by Bush in September to a five-year stint on the taxpayer-funded United States Holocaust Memorial Council. On December 4, the Council on American Islamic Relations calls on Bush to remove Prager from this position: "No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policymaking position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society. As a presidential appointee, Prager's continued presence on the council would send a negative message to Muslims worldwide about America's commitment to religious tolerance." And the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, a group battling anti-Semitism and other bigotry, calls Prager's views "intolerant," "misinformed on the facts," and "downright un-American."
- Besides the incredible insult to Ellison and to Muslims everywhere, Prager is a liar: the swearing-in ceremony for the House of Representatives never includes a religious book. Prager wrote, "Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath." Prager's understanding of the Constitution is lacking; in Article VI, Section 3, it clearly states: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." According to the Office of the House Clerk, the swearing-in ceremony consists only of the members raising their right hands and swearing to uphold the Constitution. The Clerk spokesperson says neither the Christian Bible, nor any other religious text, had ever been used in an official capacity during the ceremony. Occassionally, members pose for symbolic photo-ops with their hand on a Bible. But no religious text is used during the swearing-in ceremony, period. Even though Prager has been completely discredited, he is still mounting his attack, saying that even though it "may welll be unconstitutional" to attempt to force Ellison to use a Bible in his swearing-in ceremony, he doesn't care. "I'm not arguing legality. I'm arguing what you should do," he told a USA Today reporter, adding that even though he himself is a religious Jew, he would take an oath of public office using the Christian Bible. "The New Testament is not my Bible but it is America's Bible," Prager says, and notes that Jewish officeholders who have insisted on using the Hebrew Bible were "secularists" who didn't believe what was in it anyway. So Prager not only smears Muslims, but members of his own faith.
- The reaction from left and right has been, well, mixed. The American Family Association issued an "Action Alert" asking its members to "send an email asking your US Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of representatives and senators." Conservative blog proprietor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit took a more sensible position, writing, "Prager's argument that oaths must be on the Bible is absolutely nonsensical." And a number of liberal bloggers have blasted Prager, with one diarist at The Nookular Option writing, "The extremism of Dennis Prager gives all conservatives a bad name." The leftist Democratic Underground mockingly calls Prager "a giant bigot [and] mind-blowingly ignorant of the Constitution." For himself, Ellison has told the Minnesota Monitor that "the Constitution guarantees for everyone to take the oath of office on whichever book they prefer. And that's what the freedom of religion is all about."
- Most political observers believe that conservatives have decided to focus much of their ire and hatred on Ellison because of his religious faith, and because the usual conservative targets have become either sources of mockery against conservatives -- the so-called "war on Christmas" being a prime example -- have become, for the moment, irrelevant -- i.e. attacks on John Kerry -- or just aren't whipping up enough of a frenzy among the base. Expect the attacks against Ellison to escalate. (CNN/Daily Kos, TownHall/Think Progress, USA Today, Democratic Underground, Think Progress)
- December 1: A Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune editorial calls Bush's statements on Iraq policies "nonsense."
Iraq war and occupation
It compares Bush's characterization of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as "the right guy for Iraq," with his characterization of FEMA's Michael Brown as doing "a heck of a job," and says, bluntly, "[o]n Iraq, as on Katrina, Bush has completely slipped the moorings of reality." While Bush was praising al-Maliki, the violence in Iraq -- some led by al-Maliki's patron Moqtada al-Sadr -- continues to escalate. "Whatever happens now in Iraq will have little to do with what the United States wants to happen," the editorial notes. Bush's failures to grasp the realities of the situation was further reflected in his stopver in Latvia earlier in the week (see the related item on the November page of this site). "He refused to acknowledge the civil war that is plain to see; pronounced, incredibly, that al-Qaida is the major threat in Iraq, and pledged, again, that he would 'not pull American troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.' If the troops still have an actual mission in Iraq, it should be to hunker down and stay safe until someone figures out how to get them home." After discussing the hoped-for impact of the Iraq Study Group's imminent report, which aims to, in the words of one ISG member, "move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out," the editorial concludes, "A horrific bloodletting may now be inevitable in Iraq no matter what anyone wants. We hope this report, with the pressure it will put on both Bush and Al-Maliki, can help avoid that, but it's a long shot. Through arrogance, willful ignorance and stubborness, Bush has created in Iraq a real dog's breakfast -- a mess." (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune) - December 1: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, host of Countdown, is doing what so many in the news and entertainment fields have done before him --defying conventional wisdom to create tremendous success for himself.
Keith Olbermann
Conventional media wisdom dictates that there is too much "liberal bias" in the news, and the only way to "counter" this bias is to inundate the news consumer with one more conservative viewpoint after another. Olbermann's MSNBC colleagues are either staunch conservatives like Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson, or mushy, right-leaning centrists like Chris Matthews. Fox News lines up the conservatives one after the other, with lone outsider Alan Colmes primarily on board to be Sean Hannity's punching bag. CNN features the jingoism and hateful spewings of former radio talk show host Glenn Beck on its Headline News channel. And all the news channels feature far more conservative guests than centrist, moderate, and liberal guest combined, as many media studies have shown. But Olbermann is no conservative handpuppet, and as a result, his determination to have his own voice has seen his ratings steadily pole-vault past his competitors until he trails only one -- the dyspeptic, increasingly dysfunctional doyen of television talk, Bill O'Reilly. Countdown is, hands down, the most-watched show on MSNBC, though he still trails O'Reilly's Fox News show by more than a 2-1 margin. - Olbermann, described as "bold and eccentric" by Nation reporter Daphne Eviatar, is a former ESPN sportscaster who joined the political talk-show fray with little fanfare or impact. He first made news during MSNBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina when he delivered a powerful, evocative indictment of the federal government's handling of the rescue effort, saying with scathing, bitter sarcasm, "These are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping this country safe. [The government] has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water." Olbermann was not the only newscaster and pundit to break with conventional wisdom and actually air criticism of the government during the Katrina debacle -- CNN's Anderson Cooper comes to mind -- but Cooper and his fellows quickly pulled back into their comfortable shells after the disaster had passed from the headlines, censoring their own criticisms and returning to their usual fawning over White House and Republican leaders. But Olbermann did not, and his ratings have continued to climb ever since. Olbermann says, somewhat sardonically, "I like to say that we are to some degree like [Comedy Central's] Daily Show, but for half an hour we're not allowed to screw with the news at all. The bar is a little higher over here. Well, the jokes don't have to be as good, but at least 50 percent of the show has to have actually happened."
- Olbermann is no traditional liberal -- in fact, it is hard to discern his own political views on issues. What he is, is a harsh, discerning, absolutely bold critic of the government, particularly of its incompetence and its dishonesty. One telling example of Olbermann's take on a major issue as opposed to the media's conventional wisdom is the comparison between Olbermann's coverage of the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the coverage by the New York Times. The MCA is one of the most important and transformational pieces of legislation ever to be signed into law, and one of the most fundamentally anti-American, with its abrogation of over 800 years' worth of canonical law and its severe inroads into fundamental civil liberties. The Times buried its October 18 story on page A20, never named the bill, and never informed its readership about the actual contents of the bill. Prominently featured in the article were several quotes from Bush praising the bill, and farther down in the article, a few boilerplate objections from Democrats. Nowhere in the article were readers actually told what the MCA was all about. On the other hand, Olbermann's October 17 broadcast took a different approach. Olbermann's story began with a laudatory statement from Bush: "These military commissions are lawful. They are fair. And they are necessary." Olbermann then cut in: "And they also permit the detention of any American in jail without trial if the President does not like him." Olbermann went on to decry the new law as a shameful moment in American history, and told his listeners that the Military Commissions Act -- which he did name, unlike the Times -- will be the American embarrassment of our time, akin to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 or the 1942 executive order interning Japanese-Americans.
- But what has really gotten the public's notice are his hard-charging "special comments." Olbermann frames his commentaries, usually attacking a central issue or fundamental assertion made by Bush or a senior official, in historical perspectives, likening Bush's recent acts to John Adams's jailing of American newspaper editors, Woodrow Wilson's use of the Espionage Act to prosecute "hyphenated Americans" for "advocating peace in a time of war" and FDR's internment of 110,000 Americans because of their Japanese descent. Ours is "a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from," Olbermann told his viewers the day after Bush signed the Military Commissions Act. His special comments have become some of the most-watched video clips on the Internet -- his first, a late-August slamming of Donald Rumsfeld for challenging his critics' patriotism, was watched over 100,000 times in the month after it appeared on Countdown. Since that time, Olbermann's ratings have shot up over 55%. In November he was named a "GQ Man of the Year." And on November 7, he co-anchored MSNBC's coverage of the elections with Chris Matthews, helping send MSNBC's ratings up 111% from the 2002 election in the key 25-to-54 demographic.
- Certain segments of Olbermann's shows have actually beaten out his "nemesis," Fox's O'Reilly, the pundit Olbermann loves to hate. O'Reilly is a regular nominee for Olbermann's sarcastic "Worst Person in the World" segment. Unlike O'Reilly (and Matthews, and other interviewers), Olbermann never cuts off or shouts over his guests. Neither does he condescend to his guests or use their comments to spout his own diatribes. Instead, his show features a broad range of guests from the left and right, and includes in-depth interviews with prominent academics, public officials and journalists on serious, often overlooked events of the day. "Keith is a refreshing change from most of the coverage of civil liberties since 9/11," says law professor Jonathan Turley, a frequent guest on Countdown. "Reporters tend to view these fights in purely political terms, so the public gets virtually no substantive analysis. As long as two people disagree, reporters treat it as an even debate. They won't say that the overwhelming number of constitutional and national security experts say this is an unlawful program -- they'll just say experts disagree. It's extremely misleading." Olbermann himself, who steadfastly denies any partisan leanings and whose background doesn't suggest any besides a certain fascination with baseball, says his job is to report what is really happening, even if the public is loath to believe it. "We are still fundamentally raised in this country to be very confident in the preservation of our freedoms," he said in a recent interview. "It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live." He credits his sportscasting experience for his candid and historical-minded approach. "In sports, if a center-fielder drops the fly ball, you can't pretend he didn't," he says. "There's also an awareness of patterns, a relationship between what has gone before and what is to come that is so strong in sports coverage that doesn't seem to be there in news reporting." Of O'Reilly, Olbermann says, "Well, look, I'm confident he'll never get his tiny little mind around this, but the whole premise of the country is exactly the opposite of what he thinks it is. It is not conformity. It is not standing up and saluting a flag. It's standing up and saluting ideas. Most importantly, it's standing up and saying, 'I don't agree at all with what you're saying, but you have the right to say it.' To which his response is, 'Shut up!'"
- Adding to the appeal of Olbermann's show is its fast-paced, quirky format and Olbermann's quick wit. Entertainment figures get their share of coverage, and his nightly comedic "Oddball" segments is one of his most popular. Olbermann appeals to many of the same viewers who say they get their news from Comedy Central's Daily Show and Colbert Report -- indeed, Eviatar says that Olbermann is "sort of a cross between Edward R. Murrow and Jon Stewart." And as long as Olbermann's ratings are high, MSNBC seems to be egging him on. Olbermann says his only issue with his bosses is to keep the number of special comments down. "The only issues I've had with my employers is to calm them down and say 'doing this every night won't work.' I have to do it only when I feel moved to." MSNBC's vice-president of prime-time programming, Bill Wolff, says, "The rise of Keith's skeptical or pointed comments are the mood of the country. He has given voice to a large part of the country that is frustrated with the administration's policies." Of course, the right has adopted Olbermann as a symbol of what they fear and hate, with a recent National Review article lambasting what they call his "angry and increasingly bizarre attacks on the Bush administration" and claiming that he offers nothing in the way of hard news. Unfortunately for the Review, it could not cite a single fact that Olbermann had wrong. And it did acknowledge that as O'Reilly's numbers sink, Olbermann's are climbing.
- Eviatar closes by writing, "While his views may seem radical for mainstream television news, they turn out to be a pretty safe bet for him and his network. Which may prove that the American public does have a taste for serious, even high-minded, news -- particularly when peppered with a sharp sense of humor. It's another unexpected Olbermann news flash: Dissent sells." (The Nation/Yahoo! News, Radar Online)
Rumsfeld memo, written before his resignation, proposes major changes in Iraq policies
- December 2: Outgoing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote a long, classified memo on November 6 that acknowledged the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq was not working, and called for a major course correction.
Iraq war and occupation
"In my view it is time for a major adjustment," he wrote. "Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." The memo stands in stark contrast to Rumsfeld's previous dogged insistence that everything in Iraq is going well and the only concern is to "stay the course" long enough to complete the mission. In his memo, Rumsfeld does not seem to believe that the administration is interested in developing any real alternatives to the current policies, so he recommends limiting the political fallout from shifting strategies by attempting to lower public expectations. "Announce that whatever new approach the US decides on, the US is doing so on a trial basis," he wrote. "This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.' Recast the US military mission and the US goals (how we talk about them) -- go minimalist." Rumsfeld expressed his frustration with the pace of change in Iraq, particularly with the inability or unwillingness of the Iraqi authorities to take responsibility for the security and functioning of their country. Rumsfeld wrote that the Iraqis must "pull up their socks," and suggests that reconstruction aid should be withheld in violent areas to avoid rewarding "bad behavior." Other options called for shrinking the number of bases, establishing benchmarks that would mark the Iraqis' progress toward political, economic and security goals and conducting a "reverse embeds" program to attach Iraqi soldiers to American squads. - Most interestingly, many of Rumsfeld's suggestions for change mirror suggestions made by some of Bush's most adamant critics, suggestions that have long been ridiculed by Bush, Rumsfeld, and other White House officials as "cowardly" or "cutting and running." The memo's discussion of possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Rumsfeld's frequent public assertions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests from American military commanders. It also puts on the table several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals, even as there have been recent pronouncements from American commanders emphasizing the need to maintain troop levels for the time being.
- Rumsfeld submitted the memo after it was clear that Republicans would suffer significant setbacks in the elections, and the day after Bush interviewed Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld. There is no indication in the memo that Rumsfeld knows he is about to be fired (or "resign," in the fiction perpetrated by the White House). Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff indirectly confirms that the memo is Rumsfeld's final thoughts on a policy he will no longer direct, saying, "As it became clear that people were considering options for the way forward, the secretary had some views on the subject, and this memo reflects those views." Rumsfeld is long famous for his "snowflakes," memos that drift down to the bureaucracy from on high and that are used to ask questions, stimulate debate and shape policy. This is seen by many as Rumsfeld's last snowflake. It is written in that spirit and with the same blunt aphorisms that Rumsfeld frequently uses in public.
- The memo lists a dozen "illustrative options," some contradictory and some that "could, and in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others." Titled "Iraq -- Illustrative New Courses of Action," the memo reflects mounting concern over a war that, as Rumsfeld put it, has evolved from "major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence." The memo divides the options into two groups, the more palatable "above the line" ideas and the less palatable and possibly more problematic "below the line" suggestions. Some of the "above-the-line" options appear to reflect Rumsfeld's long-held view that the United States should use relatively modest force in intervening in foreign countries to avoid creating a dependency on American power. That approach, critics have charged, left the US unprepared to deal with the chaos that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld has frequently emphasized the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq and the need to turn over responsibility to Iraqi authorities as quickly as possible. But he has also been a forceful, even cantankerous, defender of his and Bush's policy, often insisting his critics were unduly pessimistic.
- One option is of limited troop withdrawals "so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country." Another option calls for redeploying American troops from "vulnerable positions" in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a "quick reaction force." That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Democratic representative John Murtha, whose ideas were rebuffed by the White House and who has been smeared a "coward" and a "traitor" by conservatives. Yet another option calls for consolidating the number of American bases in Iraq to 5 from 55 by July 2007, a considerable shrinking of the American footprint. However, Rumsfeld all but dismisses the idea of setting a firm date for removing forces from Iraq, listing it as one of the less palatable ideas. One of his more provocative options would punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by withdrawing economic assistance and security. "Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Falluja[h] when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior," the option reads. "No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence." Some military officers have said that the idea of denying assistance in some areas ignores the fact that many Iraqis are afraid to cooperate with the Americans for fear of retaliation by insurgents. Fallujah has been the focus of reconstruction efforts following an offensive by Americans that crippled city services and damaged scores of buildings, leaving the United States few options beyond rebuilding or evacuating the city. Now, it is considered by the Marines to be one of the few relatively stable areas in the dangerous Anbar Province. Many of the other towns in the region have become even more hostile because the economic assistance has been minimal, leaving the residents feeling neglected by the authorities in Baghdad. "There is an element of throwing in the towel and effectively giving up on at least some areas of the country," says James Dobbins, a former State Department official and director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND.
- Reflecting exasperation with much of the American government, another option in the memo raises the possibility of using military reservists to "beef up" the Iraqi government's ministries. "Give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it," he writes, referring to other United States government agencies. Like Hussein and many other Arab regimes, Rumsfeld finds some merit in the idea of paying Iraqi leaders. "Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did), to get them to help us get through this difficult period," one option reads. The list of favored options notably does not mention the "clear, hold and build" approach that the White House has touted as its strategy for waging counterinsurgency. That is a troop-intensive approach that calls for clearing contested areas with American and Iraqi troops, holding them with American and Iraqi forces and then carrying out reconstruction programs to win support. Nor does the list make the withdrawal of American forces explicitly contingent on improving conditions in Iraq.
- The final page of the memo is a brief list of six "less attractive" options, which Rumsfeld describes as "below the line." They include an "aggressive federalism plan," an international conference modeled on the Dayton accords that produced an agreement on Bosnia and an idea that is currently being seriously discussed by senior administration officials: temporarily sending 20,000 additional American forces or more to Baghdad to try to improve security there and regain momentum. Moving a large fraction of American forces to Baghdad to "attempt to control it," Rumsfeld writes without further elaboration, would be "below the line." (New York Times, New York Times [text of Rumsfeld memo])
- December 2: The Defense Department's top intelligence official, Stephen Cambone, will resign at the end of the year.
Partisan Bush appointees
Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, is the most senior Pentagon official to announce he is leaving since Donald Rumsfeld resigned on November 8. Cambone is one of the last members of the original team that came to the Pentagon with Rumsfeld in January 2001. He has been a key player in Rumsfeld's efforts to transform the military into a lighter, high-tech force, and in carving out a larger role for American military intelligence. The Defense Department expanded espionage and other covert intelligence gathering activities under Cambone, drawing criticism from some members of Congress that the department was intruding on turf traditionally dominated by the CIA. (AFP/New York Times)
- December 3: Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, writes in a Washington Post op-ed that he sees little choice but to rate Bush "the worst president in history."
George W. Bush
Naturally, Foner's contention stirs up a great deal of controversy, but he gives strong support to his claim. He begins by noting that as time goes on and views of history shift, a president's status among historians can change radically, as with Andrew Johnson, who at the time of the first "official" rankings, 1948, was labeled "near-great," but in recent years has been downgraded to an abject failure. Usually, though, the rankings "display a remarkable year-to-year uniformity." Presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and FDR always achieve "great" status. The bottom rung is always inhabited by presidents such as Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard Nixon. Most presidents are rated somewhere in the "average" range. Foner writes that George W. Bush is not only vying for the bottom rung, but the dubious prestige of being the worst even of that bunch. - According to Foner (and virtually every other historian), "Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush's presidency certainly brings theirs to mind." Harding and Coolidge were two of the most openly corrupt presidents in history, with a penchant for channeling money and favors to their cronies in big business. They slashed corporate taxes and income taxes, primarily for the wealthy, and supported employers' attempts to crush labor unions. Members of their administrations received kickbacks and bribes from lobbyists and businessmen. "Never before, here or anywhere else," declared the Wall Street Journal at the time, "has a government been so completely fused with business." But if anything, the cronyism, corruption, and pro-business bias of the Bush adminstration is worse than even that of his most corrupt predecessors.
- As for Nixon, Foner acknowledges his "notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy," but what Nixon is most remembered for is his contempt for the Constitution and his overt, systematic abuse of presidential power. Foner writes, "Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on US citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law. Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law."
- The last comparison Foner makes is with James K. Polk, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. Polk is best remembered for launching the unprovoked attacks against Mexico that allowed him to seize a third of its territory for the United States. Abraham Lincoln, then a member of the House of Representatives, condemned Polk for lying to Congress and the public about the cause of the war -- an alleged Mexican incursion into the US. Accepting the president's right to attack another country "whenever he shall deem it necessary," said the future president, would make it impossible to "fix any limit" to his power to make war. The comparisons to Bush's unprovoked, unjustified invasion of Iraq, and to Bush's unconstitutional assertions of unlimited executive power to declare and prosecute a war, are easily drawn.
- Foner concludes, "Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in US history." (Washington Post)
- December 3: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says the Supreme Court must promote the political rights of minorities and look beyond the Constitution's text when necessary to ensure that "no one gets too powerful."
Minority rights
Breyer, a Clinton appointee, is a moderate who has brokered a number of the Court's 5-4 rulings. As the Court has shifted ever farther right, he has found himself a key member of the Court's shrinking left wing. In an interview on Fox News the day before he and his colleagues begin hearing arguments on a key case concerning race in schools, he says judges must consider the practical impact of a decision to ensure democratic participation. "We're the boundary patrol," Breyer said, reiterating themes in his 2005 book that argue in favor of race preferences in university admissions because they would lead to diverse workplaces and leadership. "It's a Constitution that protects a democratic system, basic liberties, a rule of law, a degree of equality, a division of powers, state, federal, so that no one gets too powerful," he says. On December 4, the court will hear arguments in a pair of cases involving integration plans in K-12 schools. The legal challenge, which is backed by the Bush administration, could be among the most significant school cases since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 banned racial segregation. In 2003, the court upheld race-conscious admissions in higher education in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Since then, O'Connor has been replaced by conservative justice Samuel Alito. Justice Antonin Scalia, a harsh opponent of using race in school admissions, is expected to lead the charge against such admissions. Breyer argues that in some cases it wouldn't make sense to strictly follow the Constitution because phrases such as "freedom of speech" are vague. Judges must look at the real-world context -- not focus solely on framers' intent, as Scalia has argued -- because society is constantly evolving, he said. "Those words, 'the freedom of speech,' 'Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech' -- neither they, the founders, nor those words tell you how to apply it to the Internet," Breyer says in one example. - He adds that, with the issue of campaign finance, the court was right in 2003 to uphold on a 5-4 vote the McCain-Feingold law that banned unlimited donations to political parties. Acknowledging that critics had a point in saying the law violates free speech, Breyer says the limits were constitutional because it would make the electoral process more fair and democratic to the little guy who isn't tied to special interests. "You don't want one person's speech, that $20 million giver, to drown out everybody else's. So if we want to give a chance to the people who have only $1 and not $20 million, maybe we have to do something to make that playing field a little more level in terms of money," he says. (AP/Yahoo! News)
- December 3: National security advisor Stephen Hadley makes the rounds of the Sunday morning political talk shows, insisting that the Bush administration is committed to "major change" in its Iraq policies but going on to say that the administration has long been "flexible [and] adaptive" in its policies, and that the US has not failed in Iraq: "We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we're in a position to help the Iraqis succeed."
Iraq war and occupation
Hadley also plays down the recently released "Rumsfeld memo" of November 6 as nothing more than a "laundry list" of ideas that may or may not be given serious consideration by administration officials. Spinning like mad, Hadley says that Bush has never said anything differently in private than he has in public, and that he was not portraying a different sense of the war to the public just before the midterm elections than Rumsfeld was giving him in private. "[Bush] has said publicly what Rumsfeld said, that things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough in Iraq." Democrats disagree with Hadley's bland revamping of reality. "The Rumsfeld memo makes it quite clear that one of the greatest concerns is the political fallout from changing course here in the United States," says Senator Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The bottom line is there is no one, including the former secretary, who thought the policy the president continues to pursue makes any sense." (AP/Yahoo! News) - December 3: Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez wins a new term in the country's presidential elections, far outpacing his closest opponent, Manuel Rosales.
Latin America
Chavez garners 61% of the popular vote. Chavez describes his victory as demonstrating Venezuelans' support for his somewhat socialistic policies and calls it "another defeat for the devil who wants to dominate the world," likely a reference to George W. Bush. Chavez also salutes Cuba's Fidel Castro, another outspoken opponent of the United States. In December 1998, Chavez won the presidency with 56% of the votes after campaigning for a broad reform, constitutional changes and a crackdown on corruption. In 1999, he won Venezuelans' approval in a plebiscite of a new constitution that expands executive powers. He was re-elected to a six-year term under the new constitution with close to 60% of the votes in 2000. On April 11, 2002, he was ousted in a brief coup by business leaders and dissident military officers sponsored and planned by the US. On April 14, military troops loyal to Chavez returned him to power. Chavez vows to push ahead with social programs that have won him wide support among the poor Venezuelans who had played a key role in giving him a landslide electoral victory in 1998 and 2000. (Xinhua) - December 3: While the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, plans on building his campaign for president in 2008 partially around his support for halting illegal immigration, including building a fence along the US-Mexican border, he doesn't seem to be very concerned about the illegal immigrants working in his yard.
Republican corruption
According to the Boston Globe, three of the four employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the small firm that provides upkeep of Romney's property acknowledged in recent interviews that they are in the United States illegally. The employees told the Globe that company owner Ricardo Saenz never asked them to provide documents showing their immigration status and knew they were illegal immigrants. "He never asked for papers," said one worker, who said he had paid smugglers about $5,000 to take him across the US-Mexican border. The workers said they were paid in cash at $9 to $10 an hour and sometimes worked 11-hour days. Romney never inquired about their status, they said. In addition to maintaining the governor's property, they also tended to the lawn at the house owned by Romney's son, Taggart, less than a mile away on the same winding street. When asked by a reporter on December 3 about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, "Aw, geez," and walked away. (Boston Globe/Democratic Underground) - December 3: Bob Maxwell was a little-known oil company auditor for the Department of the Interior, who during his 22-year career, earned promotions, accolades, and awards for his exemplary service.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
He and his team -- eventually a staff of 120 people -- found hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties that the oil companies had shorted the US government. Former secretary of the Interior Gale Norton wrote of him in a 2003 citation, "Mr. Maxwell's career has been characterized by exceptional performance and significant contributions," and praised his "perseverance and leadership" while cataloguing his "many outstanding achievements." So how was Maxwell rewarded for his outstanding performance? He was fired in 2005 after his job fell victim to what the DOI called "reorganization," exactly one week after a federal judge in Denver unsealed a lawsuit in which Maxwell contended that a major oil company had spent years cheating on royalty payments. "When I got this citation, they told me this would be very good for my career," Maxwell says. "Next thing I knew, they fired me." Currently Maxwell lives on a small pension outside of Honolulu. - However, Maxwell has not gone away quietly. Instead, he is at the center of an escalating battle with both the oil industry and the Bush administration over how the federal government oversees about $60 billion worth of oil and gas produced every year on federal property, and has become one of the most feared whistle-blowers Big Oil has ever encountered. Invoking a law that rewards private citizens who expose fraud against the government, Maxwell has filed a suit in federal court in Denver against the Kerr-McGee Corporation. The suit accuses the company, which was recently acquired by Anadarko Petroleum, of bilking the government out of royalty payments. It also contends that the Interior Department ignored audits indicating that Kerr-McGee was cheating. Three other federal auditors, who once worked for Maxwell and still work at the Interior Department, have since filed similar suits of their own against other energy companies. Several of the nation's biggest oil producers, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips, failed in an effort to block Maxwell's suit, arguing before an appellate judge that his case would "open the floodgates" to suits by other federal auditors. The court rejected their pleas, and a trial is set to start in January 2007. If the lawsuit is successful, Kerr-McGee could be forced to pay up to $50 million in unpaid royalties and fines, and, according to the law, Maxwell and his lawyers could be entitled to keep up to 30% of whatever funds the government recovers. Anadarko insists that it did nothing wrong, but is trying to negotiate a settlement to keep the case from going to trial.
- The lawsuits by Maxwell and other auditors coincide with broader investigations by Congress and the Interior Department's own inspector general into whether Interior attempts to properly collect the money owed it from oil companies' use of public lands. Investigators say they have found evidence of a raft of problems at the department: cronyism and cover-ups of management blunders; capitulation to oil companies in disputes about payments; plunging morale among auditors; and unreliable data-gathering that often makes it impossible to determine how much money companies actually owe. In February, the Interior Department admitted that energy companies might escape more than $7 billion in royalty payments over the next five years because of errors in leases signed in the 1990s that officials are now attempting to renegotiate. The "errors" were discovered in 2000, but were ignored for the next six years and have yet to be fixed. And according to the inspector general's testimony before a House subcommittee in September 2006, Interior's senior officials have made a pattern of glossing over ethical lapses and bungling. The inspector general, Earl Devaney, told the House panel, "Short of crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior."
- Interior's response to Maxwell is predictable: its officials call him a renegade, disgruntled former employee motivated by greed, and assert that Interior's record is clean. But even Republican leaders on the House Government Reform Committee, which has been reviewing the flawed leases, recently accused Interior officials of perpetuating a "culture of irresponsibility and lack of accountability" at the agency. The committee ordered the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to begin a broad examination of issues ranging from the agency's rules and enforcement practices to the accuracy of its most rudimentary data. The Interior Department "clearly doesn't view their responsibility as maximizing revenue to the American people for resources that belong to the American people," said Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who oversaw hearings on the flawed leases. "We don't have a system that accurately tells us how much oil is being taken out of the ground." Maxwell describes himself as a lifelong conservative and fan of the energy industries. "I like the oil and gas industry," he says. "We are neither for nor against the profits they make. Our job is to make sure the American public gets a fair return on its assets." Maxwell has made a career out of doggedly pursuing even tenuous leads that lead to the uncovering of major malfeasance. In 1988, he found that a coal mine in Montana, deemed by his supervisors too small to make any scrutiny worthwhile, had underpaid over $100 million in royalties. In 1993, he defied Clinton officials to force ARCO to pay over $20 million in royalties. He spent years poring over records on behalf of the desperately poor Jicarilla Apache tribe in New Mexico, eventually proving that both oil companies and the government had failed to pay the tribe over $20 million in royalties. "Anyone knowledgeable about the way Interior processes payments knows there are all sorts of ways for companies to underpay," said Alan Taradash, a lawyer representing the Jicarilla. "Bobby was one of the few who stood up with us and demanded that the auditing be done properly."
- Maxwell began having serious doubts about the willingness of Interior Department officials to pursue cheating oil companies in 1998, when the DOI reluctantly began investigating accusations of systematic cheating on royalties for oil. Several of the nation's biggest oil companies eventually settled that investigation by paying nearly $440 million between 1998 and 2002. The investigation occurred only after outside whistle-blowers argued for years that the government was losing billions. Maxwell and others realized, after much investigation and testimony by oil traders who became witnesses, that the biggest losers of royalty payments was the federal government -- but no one in the government was interested in pursing the case. Maxwell says that although he encounted resistance from Clinton-era officials, the problem became far worse when the new Bush officials and employees took over. Suddenly, Interior began working hand in glove with the oil and gas companies that it was supposed to oversee, offering the companies big incentives to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and pushing to drill in the Alaskan wilderness (ANWR). Interior slashed funding for enforcement and cut back on auditors. Norton's deputy, J. Steven Griles, was an oil industry lobbyist who had worked on behalf of Chevron and Shell in the royalty investigation cases. Maxwell and others were ordered to cut back on real audits and allow a computerized monitoring system called "compliance review" to do the bulk of the work. Auditors complained that the computerized system was superficial and riddled with technical problems. "We were getting shut down on all kinds of cases," he recalls.
- Auditing and compliance review had generated an average of about $176 million annually in the 1990s, with an extraordinary peak of $331 million in 2000, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Interior Department. But from 2001 through 2005, a period when energy prices soared to new highs, enforcement revenue averaged about $46 million a year. In 2004, the Interior Department's inspector general issued a blistering report about the auditing system, saying that many auditors were unqualified, that essential documents were being lost and that the internal review process was "ineffective."
- As for Maxwell, he was disgusted. He and a team of auditors had worked for months to dissect a complicated marketing deal by Kerr-McGee that they believed was cheating the government. He concluded that Kerr-McGee was selling all its oil at below-market prices to another company that compensated Kerr-McGee by assuming many of its marketing and administrative costs. In essence, Kerr-McGee seemed to be getting paid in both cash and services, but it was calculating its royalties only on the cash it received. Maxwell calculated that the company had underpaid the government by as much as $12 million between 1997 and 2002. State auditors in Louisiana had been investigating exactly the same issue in 2001, and ordered Kerr-McGee to pay an extra $2 million in royalties on oil from state lands. But when Maxwell presented his findings to his superiors, he was told to drop the case. When he pursued it, he was warned that the director of the Minerals Management Service, Johnnie Burton, would be "very upset" if he continued. "The word came down from the top, not to issue this order," Maxwell recalls. "There have always been people who don't want to pursue things. But now it's grown into a major illness. It's dysfunctional." Maxwell used the False Claims Act to file a lawsuit against Kerr-McGee on January 20, 2005, a similar methodology used to squeeze the oil companies in the 1998-2002 matter. A week later, Maxwell lost his job. Interior insists that Maxwell was not fired, but that "the position disappeared," according to Burton. But even after being let go, Maxwell continued to press his lawsuit against Kerr-McGee.
- The company fought back, arguing that a federal auditor should not be able to take information from his job and use it to file such a lawsuit; eight major oil companies, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, have joined with Kerr-McGee. The appellate court rejected the argument. James Moorman, president of the watchdog organization Taxpayers Against Fraud, says plainly enough, "You're talking about a situation where there seems to be complete breakdown in the system. If they've got evidence of fraud, why shouldn't a court hear it?" His daughter Angela is even more plainspoken. "He's thought about all the options, and none of them seem life-threatening to him," she says. "What can they do him? They've already fired him." (New York Times)
- December 3: The national commander of the American Legion is found to have misrepresented about his military service.
Republican corruption
He describes himself as a "Vietnam veteran," but did not serve in Vietnam. Paul Morin, a Republican who lives in Massachusetts, served from 1972 through 1974 in the Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and never left the country to face combat. Morin's description is accurate in a legal sense, as neither the federal government nor the Legion makes any formal distinction between veterans who served in Vietnam and those known as "Vietnam-era" veterans. But it seems clear that Morin is trying to give the impression that he actually served in Vietnam. A Legion spokesman, Joe March, backed Morin's position, saying that any current service member stationed in the United States at present could claim to be an Iraq war veteran. But former senator Max Cleland of Georgia said Morin's claim may undercut the credibility of veterans groups that fight for Congressional funding of veterans' programs. "For the national commander of the American Legion, who never even served in the Vietnam theater, to call himself a Vietnam veteran is a lie," says Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm during combat in Vietnam, and who has been a Legion member since 1969. Thomas Kelley, the Massachusetts secretary of veterans affairs and also a Vietnam veteran, said Morin is misleading people. "When someone says he is a Vietnam veteran, it means he served in the theater of the war," Kelley says. Before his national campaign for the Legion's commander, Morin was a ranking member of the Legion's state office and was described on its Web site as a Vietnam-era veteran who was stationed in New Jersey. (Boston Globe/Editor and Publisher)
