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
January 2007
Week One
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- January 1: Though thousands of Iraqi refugees are fleeing their wartorn country every day, and refugee advocates and US officials say more of these refugees need to be admitted into the US, the Bush administration has put strict levels on the number of Iraqi refugees that can be resettled in the US -- current levels are at 500 per year.
Iraq war and occupation
State Department officials say they are open to let more Iraqi refugees into the US, but they are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system. "We're not even meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who've been imperiled because they worked for the US government," says Kirk Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Fallujah in 2005. "We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it's shameful that we've nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour." Currently, 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the country, and the number is rising every day. - Critics say the Bush administration has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq. They say a major change in policy could happen only as part of a broader White House shift on Iraq. "I don't know of anyone inside the administration who sees this as a priority area," says Lavinia Limon, president of the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. "If you think you're winning, you think they're going to go back soon." Of some 40 nationalities seeking asylum in European countries in the first half of 2006, Iraqis ranked first with more than 8,100 applications, according to the United Nations. Remarkably few apply for refugee status in the United States, mainly because most Iraqis, even those who have worked for the United States government here, simply assume that getting American status is all but impossible. Iraqis cannot apply directly for refugee status in the American Embassy in Baghdad. "They said they have nothing for Iraqis," says Amar, an interpreter who, after working for Americans, has been targeted for murder by Iraqi insurgents. "We feel just like stupid trash." Officials at the United Nations refugee branch acknowledge that they have moved slowly in identifying refugees, largely because of procedural obstacles and lack of money. The agency's budget for Syria last year was $700,000, less than one dollar for each Iraqi refugee in that country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in October that its Iraq program was $9 million short and that some employees were going without salaries. The State Department spent $35 million on Iraqi refugees in Iraq and the region in 2006. The United States spends approximately $8 billion a month on the war.
- But there is no legal requirement for the United States to rely on the United Nations. It has run its own programs in the past, notably in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were ultimately resettled in the United States after the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. In that instance, a number of aid groups in neighboring countries divided the work of interviewing and assessing refugees, a system Limon and many other advocates for refugees are pushing for Iraqis today. The United States has even run similar programs in Iraq, helping to resettle about 40,000 Iraqi refugees in the United States and other countries after a failed uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991. In 1996, about 6,500 Iraqis who had links to an American-sponsored coup attempt against Hussein were granted asylum. The Bush administration suspended resettlement of Iraqi refugees after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it did not resume until April 2005, after the process had begun for other Arab countries. A total of 198 Iraqis were resettled in the United States as refugees in the fiscal year of 2005, and 202 in 2006, but most were in the pipeline before the 2003 invasion, and few of the cases address the increasingly dire situation for Iraqis today.
- The State Department has made it clear that it is deeply concerned about the fate of Iraq's religious minorities, including Christians. Officials at the department say that any refugee program must also be geared to those vulnerable groups. As many as 100,000 exiled Iraqi Christians have relatives in the United States and would want to resettle there if given the chance, says Joseph Kassab, the executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, an umbrella group that represents Iraqi Christians. State Department officials and some advocates for refugees agree that the United States is not likely to begin resettling large numbers of Iraqis anytime soon. New counterterrorism laws after 9/11 have slowed immigration, particularly from countries in the Middle East, and Iraqi applications would be bogged down by those security issues. A quicker way to help would be to increase financing to countries that are accepting Iraqis -- Jordan, Syria and Lebanon -- and press those governments to improve their treatment of Iraqis by allowing them to work and travel. That would be a real service for Iraqis in Jordan, who speak of rude and sometimes abusive treatment. Jordanians often do not allow Iraqis to bring in suitcases, travelers said, and have been known to turn away young men, forcing families to continue on without them. "Put yourself in my shoes," says an Iraqi working in an American Army base who spent eight hours in the January cold last year with his wife and infant at the Jordanian border. "You take your family to another country and they interview you like you are a terrorist." (New York Times)
- January 1: Conservative columnist Robert Novak says that at best, a dozen Republican senators support the idea of a troop escalation, or "surge," in Iraq, an idea pushed by Senator John McCain and endorsed by Bush.
Iraq war and occupation
Virtually no Senate Democrats besides "Independent Democrat" Joe Lieberman support the idea. "It's Alice in Wonderland," says Republican senator Chuck Hagel. "I'm absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly." Novak says the division in the GOP over Iraq is indicative of a similar split in the Republican Party on more general, political grounds. Novak writes, "Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops." Of the escalation, Novak writes, "I checked with prominent Republicans around the country and found them confused and disturbed about the surge. They incorrectly assumed that the presence of Republican stalwart James Baker as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group meant it was Bush-inspired (when it really was a bipartisan creation of Congress). Why, they ask, is the president casting aside the commission's recommendations and calling for more troops? Even in Mississippi, the reddest of red states, where Bush's approval rating has just inched above 50 percent, Republicans see no public support for more troops. What is happening inside the president's party is reflected by defection from support for his war policy after November's election by two Republican senators who face an uphill race for reelection in 2008: Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota." - As for Democrats, not only do they not support the escalation, but their leaders, headed by incoming Foreign Relations chair Joseph Biden, intend to block the escalation. Novak writes, "Bush enters a new world of a Democratic majority where he must share the stage." Biden also intends to hold hearings next week on Iraq; committee Democrats Biden, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Christopher Dodd will harshly criticize the Iraq debacle, but Hagel and other Republicans are expected to be just as critical. (Washington Post)
- January 1: A graphic aired during CNN's Situation Room news and commentary show conflates Osama bin Laden with Democratic senator Barack Obama.
Conservative media slant
The incorrect graphic, termed a mistake by CNN, comes on the heels of multiple incidents of Obama's name being intentionally aligned with that of bin Laden, who is called America's "number one enemy" while the Obama graphic is being shown to viewers. CNN has apologized for the error. During the broadcast, a pre-commercial preview of the show's next segment includes a story on the hunt for al-Qaeda's leadership. Over a photo of Osama Bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri, host Wolf Blitzer states, "Plus, a new year, but the same mission. Will 2007 bring any new changes in the hunt for Osama bin Laden?" But instead of asking "Where's Osama?" the graphic over the two Islamists reads "Where's Obama?" Shortly thereafter, Blitzer hosts a segment discussing Obama's presidential aspirations. The story and graphic are aired just after Blitzer's segment on Saddam Hussein, another with whom Obama's name has been deliberately conflated. (See the December 11 item for more information about the media's attempts to link Obama with bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) - Blitzer apologizes during the next morning's coverage of the Gerald Ford funeral. "I just want to make a correction, an apology...for what we did yesterday. In the Situation Room, we had a bad graphic," Blitzer says to co-host Soledad O'Brian, who herself apologized for the error earlier in the morning. "We were doing a piece on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in this new year 2007. Unfortunately, instead of saying 'where is Osama,' it said 'where is Obama.' I'm going to be calling Senator Barack Obama to make a personal apology."
- Bloggers are quick to highlight and complain about the faulty graphic, and many speculate on whether the graphic's inclusion is or is not deliberate. Daily Kos blogger "Inclusiveheart," a former TV producer, notes that it is difficult to see how such a calculatedly gross error could be made by such a large organization as CNN: "[T]here are countless checks on the graphics department that should catch this sort of thing way before it gets to air. There are graphics created by an artist; the artist's work is then checked by their superior and then an associate producer or someone of that ilk whose job is to do nothing but read this stuff and then there are several other people including the show producer and director who should be looking at these graphics to make sure they say what they are intended to say. Rolling a 'Where's Obama?' graphic over a picture of Middle Eastern dudes is pretty much not gonna happen by accident in the long sequence of stop gaps that they have in place. Please take a moment and think about how many times you have seen grossly inaccurate graphics over picture. It doesn't happen often and yet it happened repeatedly with Foley and I will just guess that it will happen a lot more with Obama in the future unless people really go after them hard." Daily Kos bloggers note that mistakes such as these, which are regularly highlighted on satirical segments of late-night talk shows, are usually the work of local newspapers with small, overworked staffs: "If it was a mistake it was in incredibly dumb mistake that they should be ridiculed relentlessly for making. ...There are a lot of safety measures put in place to keep this sort of thing from happening and in the old days people got fired over this sort of stuff if not severely disciplined. There used to be a standard of perfection. It is possible that the director called for the wrong graphic, but the thing is that it should have been switched immediately if not also apologized for immediately by the host. If it is in a pre-packaged story, then I take an even dimmer view of their behavior. It shouldn't have been run." Others note that it is hard to see how the two names could be typographically conflated, considering the position of the B and T keys on the keyboard.
- Obama's press secretary, Tommy Vietor, says he thinks there is "no malicious intent" behind the graphic. "Wolf Blitzer is a good person and journalist," Vietor says. "Someone made a mistake in a graphic, and that's as far as it goes." He adds, "We really appreciate the people in the blogosphere who brought this to our attention, and act as our eyes and ears." (CNN/Raw Story, Daily Kos, CNN/Crooks and Liars [link to video])
- January 2: Bush intends to announce a "new strategy on Iraq" within days,
Iraq war and occupation
focusing on escalating the US troop presence in Iraq by up to 30,000 soldiers and reducing the emphasis on training Iraqi security forces. The central theme of the new plan: "sacrifice." - January 2: The FBI has documented over two dozen incidents of abuse and mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay's detention facility, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Koran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.
US torture allegations
The documents detailing these incidents and the harsh, potentially illegal interrogations practices used by military officials and private contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants are released today. Prisoners complained that a female guard molested them by handling their genitals and wiping her menstrual blood on their faces. Another interrogator bragged to an FBI agent about dressing as a Catholic priest and "baptizing" a prisoner, a heinous offense to a practicing Muslim. Some military officials and contractors told FBI agents that the interrogation techniques had been approved by the Defense Department, including directly by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld and others are being sued by the ACLU on behalf of former military detainees who charge they were abused. Many of the incidents in the FBI documents have already been reported and are summarized in the ACLU's lawsuit. Bush signed legislation in October that authorized aggressive interrogation tactics but did not define them. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer says the documents show that stricter congressional oversight is needed: "If you just authorize in a vague way, there's no end to the abusive methods the interrogators will come up with." The records were gathered as part of an internal FBI survey in 2004 and are not part of a criminal investigation. - "I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive but personally very upsetting," one agent wrote, describing seeing a man left in a 100-degree room with no ventilation overnight. "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently literally been pulling his own hair out throughout the night." Another agent said he heard several "thunderclaps" then saw a detainee lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Interrogators gave the agent the unlikely explanation that the prisoner was upset and had thrown himself to the floor. Another agent describes seeing a detainee draped in an Israeli flag in a room with loud music and strobe lights. A note on the report said the Israeli flag "may be over the top but not abusive." The words "may be" were then crossed out and replaced with "is." Defense Department spokesman Lieutenant Commander Joe Carpenter defends the abuse by saying the Guantanamo detainees "include some of the world's most vicious terrorist operatives," then reverses course and claims, "We treat detainees humanely. The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for enemy combatants who are providing valuable information in the war on terror." The FBI reports do not say whether any laws were broken. They said nothing employees observed rose to the level of abuse seen at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A federal judge is considering whether to allow the ACLU's lawsuit against Rumsfeld to go forward. Government officials are normally shielded from personal lawsuits related to their jobs. (AP/My Way News, BBC)
- January 2: Although the incoming Democratic Congressional leadership does not intend to treat the minority Republicans with the same contempt and disrespect that the former GOP leaders gave them, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will use House procedural rules to block Republicans from attempting to delay or alter the legislation to be acted in the first 100 hours.
Congressional Democrats
Democrats plan on quickly passing a number of bills, including a raise in the federal minimum wage, stricter ethics guidelines for Congressional members, loosening of restrictions on stem cell research, and cutting interest rates on student loans for college. Republicans, who insist on being able to participate more broadly in the debates and decision-making over the legislation, have already announced their intentions to do what they can to either block or fundamentally alter the Democrats' early legislative initiatives. Pelosi, Hoyer, and other Democrats run the risk of having to use some of the same hardball tactics routinely used by House Republican leaders over the past 12 years to shut Democrats out of the legislative process, if they want to carry out the wishes of the voters by energizing Congress and taking the legislative body in a different direction that is more responsive to the will of the people. Democratic leaders say they are torn between giving Republicans a say in legislation and shutting them out to prevent them from derailing Democratic bills. "There is a going to be a tension there," says Chris Van Hollen, the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "My sense is there's going to be a testing period to gauge to what extent the Republicans want to join us in a constructive effort or whether they intend to be disruptive. It's going to be a work in progress." For their part, House Republicans are already complaining that the Democrats are backing away from their pledge to work in cooperation with the GOP membership. Meanwhile, GOP House members are already planning on how to derail the Democratic initiatives, mostly by trying to woo away some more conservative Democrats. - Democratic House leaders say that for these early bills, there is little reason to let the Republicans attempt to endlessly debate and dispute the bills, because they have already been so heavily debated. For example, the proposal to raise the minimum wage passed the House Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress. "We've talked about these things for more than a year," says Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi. "The members and the public know what we're voting on. So in the first 100 hours, we're going to pass these bills." Daly says Democrats are still committed to sharing power with the minority down the line. "The test is not the first 100 hours," he says. "The test is the first six months or the first year. We will do what we promised to do." But Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, says, "It's in the nature of the House of Representatives for the majority party to be dominant and control the agenda and limit as much as possible the influence of the minority. It's almost counter to the essence of the place for the majority and minority to share responsibility for legislation. ...The temptations to rule the roost with an iron hand are very, very strong. It would take a majority party of uncommon sensitivity and a firm sense of its own agenda to open up the process in any significant degree to minority. But hope springs eternal." The Senate will be far more bipartisan, partly because the Democrats wield a razor-thin 51-49 margin, and partly because individual senators have considerable power of their own. Senate Democrats will allow Republicans to make amendments to all their initiatives, starting with the first measure, ethics and lobbying reform.
- Senate Democrats have scheduled a closed-door meeting of the entire Senate to discuss ways that the members of the two parties can work together. House Democrat Louise Slaughter, the new chair of the Rules Committee, says that the days of that committee passing draconian procedures in the middle of the night are over. The first meeting of the new Rules Committee will take place at 10 AM, with reporters present. "It's going to be open," Slaughter says of the process. "Everybody will have an opportunity to participate." Democrats don't want to appear as heavy-handed, arrogant, and divisive as their Republican predecessors. "We're going to make an impression one way or the other," says one Democratic leadership aide. "If it's not positive, we'll be out in two years."
- While complaining of House Democrats' divisiveness, House Republicans plan to offer alternative bills intended to split off conservative Democrats, collectively known as "Blue Dog" Democrats, with an eye toward fracturing the Democratic coalition. They hope to force some tough votes for Democrats from conservative districts who will soon begin campaigning for 2008 reelection and will have to defend their records. "We'll capitalize on every opportunity we have," says one GOP leadership aide, who adds that Republicans intend to combat the Democrats' plans to raise the minimum wage, reduce the interest on student loans, and reduce the profits of big oil and energy companies. But some of the Blue Dogs say the Republicans will not succeed in their efforts. "If they've got ideas that will make our legislation better, we ought to consider that," says Allen Boyd, leader of the Blue Dogs. "But if their idea is to try to split a group off to gain power, that's what they've been doing for the past six years, and it's all wrong." Pelosi has taken pains to distribute positions of power across the ideological spectrum, trying to make sure that no group within the Democratic Party feels alienated. Blue Dogs picked up some plum committee assignments, with Jim Matheson landing a spot on Energy and Commerce and Ben Chandler getting an Appropriations seat. At the same time, members of black and Hispanic caucuses obtained spots on these panels, as Ciro Rodriguez was given a seat on Appropriations and Artur Davis took the place of Democrat William Jefferson on Ways and Means. (Washington Post)
- January 2: The children of the late president Gerald Ford, while spending almost every hour of public viewing during the funeral ceremony held for their father in the US Capital greeating tens of thousands of Americans who come to pay their respects, refuse to meet with Bush when Bush appears.
George W. Bush
Bush is the only person to have the Rotunda cleared for his visit, bringing an abrupt halt to the public's visit to the casket. Other former Presidents and political VIP's go to the front of the line when they appear, but still greet fellow mourners while paying their condolences. Bush officials previously ordered the Rotunda cleared for his visit. Bush spends a grand total of seven seconds at the casket and promptly leaves the building. During his New Year's message to America, Bush said comparatively very little about Ford's passing and instead spent most of his time defending his failed Iraq policies, saying, "Defeating terrorists and extremists is the challenge of our time, and we will answer history's call with confidence and fight for liberty without wavering." Blogger Lane Hudson speculates, "Perhaps that he is so politically tone deaf is the reason the Ford children decided not to welcome the President during his visit to the casket. I don't blame them one bit." (News for the Left) - January 2: Justin Frank, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who recently wrote the book Bush on the Couch, says that he believes George W. Bush is a classic sociopath whose policy decisions are based on defiance of authority: "I think what he does is he turns everybody who disagrees with him into his father," Frank says in an interview with Buzzflash's Mark Karlin.
George W. Bush
"It doesn't matter whether it's actually the concrete representation of his father, like [ISG head James] Baker [a close friend and colleague of the elder Bush], or the voters who vote against staying in Iraq. We have become his father. We are the people he is now defying. He will turn everybody, any authority, anybody who disagrees with him, into a father figure who he'd have to defy." Karlin explains, "A sociopath is someone (to grossly generalize) who exhibits external and surface empathy and amiability, but internally cannot actually empathize with the pain and suffering of others. In fact, a sociopath may take hidden pleasure in being able to cause emotional distress, suffering, and even death to others, while -- on a day to day basis -- appearing as Mr. Affability. That, you might say, fits Bush to a 'T.' And that, you might say, is why he is willing to have everyone sacrifice for his own sociopathological 'goals' (as unarticulated as they may be to even Bush) except for himself, his family, and friends." - Frank acknowledges the difficulties involved in psychoanalyzing a person at a distance, whether it be a celebrity, a political figure, a historical figure, or even a character from fiction. He says that his analysis comes from what he calls "applied psychoanalysis....the intense study of a historical figure or even of a fictional character in a novel, but an intense study of everything you can find when you can't have that person in your consulting room, and then applying psychoanalytic principles to an understanding of their life history. One looks for patterns of behavior. One looks for congruencies in their life story that you can begin to see from different sources. And with the case of Bush, or in studying any historical figure, one looks at their own writings and their own behavior that's available to the public at large.
- "The other thing that makes it very useful to be able to study someone like Bush is the tremendous number of press conferences and public appearances that he's made. There's a lot of chance to observe him in public arenas. The limitations, however, of doing it without knowing the person personally is that I don't get to use a firsthand relationship with the patient, which is really essential to a good psychoanalysis. Also, I don't get to use my own counter-transference directly, meaning my feelings towards the patient that get evoked throughout the time of the sessions. I was concerned that I had built in antipathy towards President Bush that I worried would make it much harder for me to do a balanced psychoanalytic approach to him. So I was worried about being a prisoner of my counter-transference, if you will. That proved to be a very interesting experience intellectually and psychologically for me. As I got to know him better, and as I saw different pictures of him -- including a movie of his 2000 campaign made by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter -- he became much more alive to me as an affable, charming person who really was good at making people feel happy, good, and well-cared-for. I learned a lot by watching him and getting to know him. ...[T]here's a long tradition of doing this in my field. Freud did it. In more recent years, the CIA has done psychoanalytic studies or psychological profiling of every foreign leader, with an attempt to help them understand how to negotiate with them and how to predict their responses."
- Karlin says, "[I]t seems that since the 2006 election, we've crossed into something which is a deeply psychological journey going on with Bush in his motivation with the PR language of 'the surge,' and his rejection of the Baker-Hamilton Report. He's once more deliberating on a new course in Iraq, and this idea of victory, when he can't define it. No one knows what it is, except it's not being perceived as losing. What we're kind of watching now is no longer a political or military conflict unfold, although that's happening. But in the White House, we're watching someone's psychological profile in action. Is there any grounds to follow that theory?"
- Frank agrees, saying "I think he has had a bunker mentality all of his life, and that he has covered it over and compensated for it with a tremendous amount of affability and charm. That may be partly because he had trouble reading, so he couldn't like retreat and become isolated the way some people perhaps do, by hiding in books, or drugs, or whatever. He hid from various things, you know, with alcohol and things. But, mainly, he used his affability and his charm to be able to brush away anybody who might get to the core pain and terror that existed inside of him. I think that that's what's happening now. I think somebody -- the voters, the public, the Baker Commission, various people --have tried to turn the light on. And he is very terrified of any kind of truth that will intrude into his need to cling to preconceptions, because they make him feel safe, and they allow him to stay in his bunker. ...[I]t's like being told that he has to do something he doesn't want to do. He developed an attitude from very early on of converting being neglected into a virtue. His having been neglected as a child was turned into a virtue, which is that he's not going to ever be told what to do by anyone, and he's going to be stubbornly defiant, no matter what, because anybody who pays attention to him is obviously not doing it out of love, but out of authority and trying to control him."
- Frank continues, "This is one of the things that has happened during his presidency -- the way he's conducted himself as president, for instance, with Katrina, with not preparing the troops, with various examples of failure of empathy and of failure of concern, and a failure to act and take care of people. It has to do with a replay of his own childhood that he is imposing on the rest of us, and we are all paying for that. I think the power of his psychology is such that he really has flipped his own failure or pushed his own failures or his own conflicts onto the rest of us. He's gotten all of us to sort of live as potential Katrina victims. That's how he is, because he was a Katrina victim in his own psyche when he was a child."
- Karlin notes that Bush is stubborn to the point of obduracy on changing anything with his Iraq policies: "In fact, he seems to be going quite the opposite direction at this point -- I mean, digging in his heels and making exacerbating the situation. ...[H]e was quoted as saying, even if everyone is against him except Laura and his dog, he would continue. It struck me that almost everything he does seems to be distilled to this statement -- which is: I can't be wrong." Frank again agrees, saying, "He is being consistent. He is essentially saying that he can't be wrong and he is not ever going to be proven wrong. What seems like dithering or failure to react to the Baker Commission, is much more of a direct reaction, which is a way of ignoring it completely. He is very honest when he says I'm not going to change. He said that to Tim Russert in 2004. He also said that a couple of months ago, that if everybody in the world disagreed with him, he would sort of stay with Laura and his dog, and that that would be that. He is not going to change. In his Wednesday press conference, he started talking about bipartisan behavior, but he tried to reshape what seemed to me to be a voter mandate about getting out of Iraq, or changing course, into a message supporting his own needs, and he's always done that. It comes down to his psychic survival. It's the fear of being wrong. It's the fear of shame and humiliation at needing other people. It's a fear of dependency.... He is determined to never be wrong, and to never make a mistake, because shame is a terrible thing for him. ...[T]here is a grandiose and somewhat paranoid aspect to him. The word I use in the book was megalomanic, which is that he has a corner on what is right and what is wrong. And he feels that so strongly that nobody is going to be able to shake him. It is a form of a delusion, where a person feels that nothing that can affect them, and nothing can change their point of view. When you're stuck to a delusion, that's that.
- Frank does not question Bush's sincerity of his Christian faith, but he says of Bush's loudly proclaimed belief, "...I do think, from all the evidence, that is the case -- that he does feel bolstered by his attachment to God. He is both able to use God to defeat his father, because he really can't stand his father, and at the same time, use God to bolster his world view. He has this amazing sense of connection. Whether he hears voices or talks to God, I have no idea. But very few things about this person would surprise me in this way."
- Frank says of Bush's rejection of democracy, "[O]n December 12, 2000, he was appointed to serve as President, not elected. So, in that sense, democracy was never clearly an issue in this country, ever since that fateful day, December 12th, when the Supreme Court handed down their decision. But I think the only way to deal with somebody who is this embattled and this delusional is to invoke the 25th Amendment. It's so ironic that it was only used once, and that was when Gerald Ford became President and Nixon was forced out because he resigned. ...I'd rather have Cheney than Bush." Karlin is surprised, and asks, "Why is that? Many people would disagree with you." Frank responds, "A lot of people would disagree with me. I really think that Bush is not competent to be president. He is unconsciously destructive. He is out of touch with his cruelty. He is unable to think clearly when presented with new information. He cannot do it. He cannot read. He cannot pay attention to the Baker-Hamilton Report. He never looked at that report. He looked at the opening title, about a new way forward or something, and that's what he's been using as his slogan now. He is not able to process information. I think Cheney, as much as he is malevolent and destructive and greedy and self-interested as an oil executive and wants absolute power, he's out front about it. I think that he would have to negotiate in a way that's different because he can't not think, whereas Bush doesn't think."
- For Frank, the key to much of Bush's fractured and dysfunctional psyche is his relationship with his father. Karlin observes, "[M]any people in the conventional mainstream press did comment on the fact that the Baker-Hamilton Report was Daddy Bush's way of intervening. James Baker is sort of the Bush family consigliere, or whatever, who it was thought could force Junior into a course of action that was more conventional, more acceptable, and some would say an honorable way of withdrawing. The report's a bit more complicated than that, because it still saved the oil concession for the American companies. But, in essence, it was an effort to kind of rein him in a little bit. And Junior's rejecting that was rejecting his father intervening, rejecting his father trying to tell him what to do." Frank says that it is simplistic to say that Bush dismissed the ISG report because Bush saw it as an intervention by his father. "I think what he does is he turns everybody who disagrees with him into his father. It doesn't matter whether it's actually the concrete representation of his father, like Baker, or the voters who vote against staying in Iraq. We have become his father. We are the people he is now defying. He will turn everybody, any authority, anybody who disagrees with him, into a father figure who he'd have to defy. ...[H]is father was, as Bush was growing up, a superhero. He was an all-American baseball star. George W. Bush was 'a jockstrap carrier,' or a cheerleader. His father was a war hero, and George W. Bush was a coward who avoided everything that involved responsibility. His father was a family man devoted to his family, and George W. Bush was a hard-drinking kid who was afraid of being responsible. His father was all the things that Bush was not. He was a big, powerful man in Bush's eyes -- that's the first thing. When Bush arrived at Andover, for instance, the prep school that he went to, his father's pictures were all over the wall as having been a hero there twenty-five years earlier. The pictures are still up. So it was very hard to live up to him. The best way to deal with that is to either carve your own path, or to constantly undermine your father.
- Frank continues, "The other thing with his father is that he was also not around. His father never was there to protect him against a very tough-minded, critical, harsh mother. One of the advantages of having two parents is that when one parent gets off track, the other parent can help protect a child. So you can end up having parents balance each other. So, in that sense, his father was, on the one hand, a hero, but on the other hand, a huge disappointment, because he was never available emotionally. I think that what Bush now is doing is that he is essentially attacking his father yet again." This relationships impacts Bush's relationship with Cheney: "I think it's more a good cop, bad cop situation. I think that, unconsciously, Cheney is the father that he can control and have work for him. It's not just a father he can rely on; it's a father who has to do what he -- Bush -- says. I think that it has much more to do with control and domination. Bush is taking people who worked with his father -- and converting them to his way of working, which is far more radical, far more defiant, far more domineering as a President than his father ever was. I think that it has to do with controlling people who were his father's henchmen, which is why it was so easy for him to dismiss Baker. He's going to dismiss anything from his father. And if he can't dismiss them, he'll control them and take them in. The difference is that having Cheney around -- he's a great hatchet man. He's really smart. He can help Bush see how to do things, and how to get things done, and at the same time he can be controlled, because he is Bush's right arm. I think that he functions that way. I don't think that Cheney is as dominating a driver of policy as many people think he is. Bush has an idea of what he wants to do, and then other people figure out how to get it done."
- Karlin says, "Let me bring up the word 'sociopath,' because, as you mentioned, it seems Bush has this affability. Until recently, he came off very well on television. Despite his gaffs, somehow he's got that Q-quotient as they call it, on television, that overcomes his malapropisms and dysfunctional language, and particularly when he's in the settings that Rove puts together. I've known people who have met him who say, you know, it was hard not to like the guy. ...Yet he seems to have very little empathy for the situation of sending more GIs off to die. He has empathy that's scripted, but he doesn't really seem to have any personal empathy."
- Frank replies, "He is very consistent with being a sociopath. I think you're not just throwing around a term. A sociopath is just what you said -- a person who can be very charming, but psychologically is so massively defended against experiencing guilt that he cannot feel empathy. If you don't feel guilt, you can't empathize, because you never can feel concern about having hurt somebody else, or anybody else suffering. Guilt reins in destructive behavior. But if you don't have any guilt, you don't have to feel any anxiety or anything that will hold you back in terms of being destructive or being hurtful. And that leads you to being unable to feel empathy, because empathy actually threatens your safety. If you feel somebody else is in trouble, then you may feel you are obligated to do something about it. That's something that is anathema to a psychopath, and it's certainly anathema to Bush. So he is really incapable of feeling empathy. What he has figured out, with the help of his advisors, is to run as a 'compassionate conservative' so he looks like a person who's empathic. And his affability is what fooled a lot of people into making them feel that he really was connected to them, because he's so charming. That is classic psychopathy. ...Psychopath is the old word for sociopath. It's the same term. But even sociopaths have an unconscious. They have to do something with guilt and with conflict. They've wiped it out overtly, so what we are left with is a sociopath. Unconsciously, there is a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear, and fear of shame, and fear of humiliation, and a desperate need to maintain psychic integrity above all else. That's why he also has no empathy -- because he is desperately devoted, which I wrote at the end of my book and concluded with, to protecting himself more than anything else. That's ultimately what a sociopath is." (Buzzflash)
- January 2: Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson says that God told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007. "I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," Robertson says during his news-and-talk television show The 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Religious conservatives
"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." Robertson says he spoke with God on the subject during a recent prayer retreat. Robertson says that the attack will take place sometime after September 2007. - This is not the first time Robertson claims to have spoken with God about major events. In May 2006, Robertson said God told him that powerful storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America's coastline that summer. In January 2006, Robertson said that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians. Robertson said that God told him Bush would easily win re-election in 2004 (Bush won by 51% of the popular vote), and in 2005 claimed that God told him Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts. "I have a relatively good track record," Robertson says. "Sometimes I miss." He doesn't explain how he could miss if he is getting his explanation directly from the Almighty. (CNN)
Democrats take control of Congress, pass ethics legislation
- January 3: Nancy Pelosi is officially sworn in as the Speaker of the House, Harry Reid takes the position of Senate Majority Leader, and Democrats move into committee chairmanships and leadership positions throughout both chambers of Congress.
Congressional Democrats
Within hours, the House passes an ethics reform package designed to sever the cozy connections between lobbyists and lawmakers. The changes would prohibit House members or employees from knowingly accepting gifts or travel from a registered lobbyist, foreign agent or lobbyist's client. Lawmakers could no longer fly on corporate jets. In addition, congressional travel financed by outside groups would have to be approved in advance by the House ethics committee and immediately disclosed to the public. The measures were approved 430 to 1, with only Republican Dan Burton voting against it. Interestingly, House Republicans could barely summon the votes to pass a far weaker measure in May, and ultimately did not enact any measure because they could not reach agreement with the Senate. But voters in November identified corruption as one of their primary concerns, and the House responded. "It's amazing what an election will do," says Democrat Jim McGovern. Over the next two weeks, Democrats in the House plan to enact new homeland security measures, increase the minimum wage, allow federally funded stem cell research, permit the federal government to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries, cut student-loan interest rates and fund alternative-energy research by rolling back tax breaks for oil companies. - After the so-called "100 hours" legislation moves through Congress, Democrats intend to take up the thornier issues of Iraq, illegal domestic eavesdropping, and military tribunals for terrorism suspects. Representatives Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Jeff Flake, a Republican, reintroduce legislation to mandate that NSA surveillance once again involve a warrant from the secret FISA federal court. "There's a long list where Congress has been abdicating their responsibility, and I suspect the leadership and the chairs will have to quickly get to work," says Schiff.
- Democrat John Murtha, the strongest voice for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in the House, writes for the Huffington Post that he intends to recommend extensive hearings starting January 17 "that will address accountability, military readiness, intelligence oversight and the activities of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will be demanding substantive answers to questions that have gone unanswered for far too long. The war in Iraq and its effect on our military and our nation's future remains the most crucial issue facing the new Congress. I will be recommending an aggressive pursuit of action that will allow us to reduce our military presence in Iraq at the soonest practicable date." (Washington Post, Huffington Post)
- January 3: The planned escalation, or "surge," of troops being sent to Iraq may be smaller than previously announced.
Iraq war and occupation
Bush is considering sending three or four US combat brigades -- 15,000 to 20,000 troops -- instead of the larger numbers previously under consideration. Typically, a combat brigade comprises about 3,500 combat troops and more than 1,000 support personnel. "Instead of a surge, it is a bump," says a State Department official. Some experts doubt that the smaller deployment would be sufficient to halt Iraq's escalating civil war between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims. The escalation of troops is still under consideration and not yet finalized. Congressional Democrats widely oppose any increase in the roughly 140,000 US troops now in Iraq. Many want Bush to present a plan for withdrawing those troops. To marshal even 15,000 to 20,000 additional troops, Bush would have to accelerate the return of some units to the battlefield, cutting their time to train between deployments. - The official Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms has no entry whatsoever for the term "surge," but defines "escalation" as "A deliberate or unpremeditated increase in scope or violence of a conflict." The usage of the term "surge" by the White House, and as adopted by most mainstream media outlets, is a deliberate attempt to mislead Americans about the nature of the escalation. When "surge" was first adopted by the mainstream media in November 2006, the term was specifically defined as a "temporary," "short-term" increase in USforces. The most prominent advocates of escalation all reject a short-term increase in US forces, and the Bush administration refuses to specify the length of the current policy.
- By March 2007, this entire claim will be proven to be false. Bush has always intended to send more than 20,000 troops to Iraq in his escalation, but will do so piecemeal to avoid media controversy and Democratic objections. (McClatchy News, Department of Defense/Think Progress)
- January 3: The White House refuses to criticize the manner in which Saddam Hussein was executed, though the State Department and US military have raised questions about the taunting and the "lynch mob" mentality surrounding Hussein's hanging.
Iraq war and occupation
"The most important thing to keep in mind, this is a guy who killed hundreds of thousands of people and received justice," says White House press secretary Tony Snow. "He got justice." "The president is focused on the new way forward in Iraq so these issues are best addressed out of Iraq, out of Baghdad," says deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel, dodging the entire issue. "Prime Minister Maliki's staff have already expressed their disappointment in the filmings, so I guess we'll leave it at that." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says that US officials questioned conducting the execution on a Muslim festival day and as well as some procedures, such as who would be signing certain documents. He adds that Iraqis had raised questions about "comments made by people in the room" during the final minutes before the execution and are conducting an investigation into tape made on a cell phone that got out. "Clearly they didn't approve of that," he says, and adds, "Nothing that was done in any way should detract from the fact this was a very solid criminal procedure." Iraqi Sunnis are outraged by the undignified, mob-like behavior of Hussein's executioners, and have responded with additional violence. Arabs around the world are equally outraged by the spectacle, which is readily available on many Arab television stations and on the Internet. The Vatican says that the execution is a violation of human rights. - US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell says the execution would have gone differently if US officials, not Iraqis, had orchestrated it. "Would we have done things differently? Yes we would have. But that's not our decision. That's the government of Iraq's decision," he says. "We were not involved in any searches of any people, we had nobody present. We did not dictate any requirements that had to be followed. This was a government of Iraq decision on how that whole process went down."
- Days later, Bush says of the execution, "My personal reaction is that Saddam Hussein was given a trial that he was unwilling to give the thousands of people he killed. I wish, obviously, that the proceedings had gone on in a more dignified way." (Washington Post, AP/Guardian)
- January 3: The Union of Concerned Scientists reports that ExxonMobil has adopted tactics similar to those propaganda and disinformation tactics used by the tobacco companies, in ExxonMobil's case to attempt to debunk and deny global warming.
Global warming and the environment
According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," says Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy and Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years." ExxonMobil-funded organizations consist of an overlapping collection of individuals serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors that publish and re-publish the works of a small group of global warming deniers. The George C. Marshall Institute, for instance, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil, recently touted a book edited by Patrick Michaels, a long-time global warming denier who is affiliated with at least 11 organizations funded by ExxonMobil. Similarly, ExxonMobil funds a number of lesser-known groups such as the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Both groups promote the work of several "climate change contrarians," using the UCS's term, including Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist who is affiliated with at least nine ExxonMobil-funded groups. Baliunas is best known for a 2003 paper alleging the climate had not changed significantly in the past millennia that was rebutted by 13 scientists who stated she had misrepresented their work in her paper. This renunciation did not stop ExxonMobil-funded groups from continuing to promote the paper. Through methods such as these, ExxonMobil has been able to amplify and prop up work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists. (Union of Concerned Scientists) - January 3: House member Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to Congress and facing the expected attacks from conservatives, has chosen to use a Koran which once belonged to Thomas Jefferson during his swearing-in ceremony.
Congressional Democrats
The symbolism of Ellison using a holy text once belonging to the author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the founders of American democracy is powerful and almost guaranteed to undercut critics like Republican colleague Virgil Goode, who calls Ellison's use of a Koran a threat to American values. "He wanted to use a Koran that was special," says Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by Ellison early in December. Jefferson's copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson's collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn't the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies -- the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions. Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself," says Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert. Goode, who represents Jefferson's birthplace of Albemarle County, so far has no comment on the use of Jefferson's Koran. (Washington Post)
