Archives for July 2007

Iraq:

The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time today when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government.

The Bush administration sent a warning to Saudi Arabia, until this year one of its closest allies, to stop undermining the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, are scheduled to visit Jeddah next week. A diplomat in Washington said of the two governments: “There is a lot of bad blood between the two.”

Saudi Arabia:

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve arms sales totaling $20 billions over the next decade for Saudi Arabia and its neighbours, The New York Times reported in Saturday editions.

Coming as some U.S. officials contend that the Saudi government is not helping the situation in Iraq, the proposal for advanced weapons for Saudi Arabia has stoked concern in Israel and among its U.S. backers, the Times said. The package of advanced weaponry includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades for its fighters and new naval vessels.

Israel:

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Gheit said Saturday that Arab countries were waiting for a clear indication from Israel that it was interested in discussing peace with its neighbors.

Speaking to Al-Ahram newspaper, Abul Gheit said an Arab peace-for-land initiative that offers Israel normalization with the Arab world in return for a full withdrawal from land occupied during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war was aimed at establishing a Palestinian state through negotiations.

Abul Gheit said opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu told him during talks in Jerusalem earlier this week that he was not opposed to the initiative. Netanyahu was said to be opposed to the Arab peace plan because he redeemed it dangerous to Israel’s security.

I know what you’re saying right now. Wait a second, Lee, that last item doesn’t sound so bad. It’s not. Here’s some more details from occasional neocon supporter Amir Taheri:

The plan is the brainchild of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah who unveiled its basic principles almost five years ago. At the time, Israel dismissed the plan as nothing but a public relations exercise by the Saudis who wished to divert attention from the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Five years later, Israel’s President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admit that the plan is a serious diplomatic proposal, and should be treated with something other than disdain.

The lesson to be learned here is that the people who have been saying all along that the Arab world can’t be trusted in the peace process have never really understood the real motivations of the leaders in that part of the world. September 11 didn’t just change how we perceive terrorism. It changed how the leaders in the Arab world saw it as well. It was no longer a local problem for them, it became a much more serious liability. And the Saudis, despite their many faults, understood that they were entering a time where they might not be able to use their longstanding trump card, antagonism of Israel, as much as they use to, if at all.

In 2002, when the Saudis first unveiled this proposal, Dick Cheney visited the Middle East with his own mission, to convince the Saudis and others to be on our side in the invasion of Iraq. At the time, two of the most prominent neocons, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, slammed Cheney’s efforts:

Nor is it entirely clear what message Cheney delivered to his Arab friends, even in private. We had hoped Cheney would approach the Saudi royal family with the same tough choice the administration presented Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf a few months ago: You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists. You decide.

Instead, Cheney seems to have avoided putting the Arabs on the spot. He told Arab leaders both publicly and privately that the United States had made no decisions regarding Iraq. This relieved the Arab leaders of the need to make a choice, at least for now. We have no doubt that Cheney made clear America’s grave concerns about Iraqi weapons programs, and he described the kind of inspections regime the United States wants in Iraq. But this was hardly news to Arab leaders. Probably the most surprising aspect of Cheney’s message, to those leaders, was that the United States still didn’t know what it wanted to do. As the vice president himself put it at a press conference with President Bush this past Thursday, “I went out there to consult with them, to seek their advice and counsel to be able to report back to the president on how we might best proceed to deal with that mutual problem.” Funny, that’s just what Warren Christopher said on his failed trip to Europe.

The Arab leaders, meanwhile, had their own game plan for the Cheney trip, and they stuck to it with impressive unity and determination. On the eve of Cheney’s arrival, Arab officials outlined their strategy to the Washington Post: “They intend to press the United States hard . . . to shelve any plan for a military strike against Iraq and to concentrate instead on [the Saudi peace plan] and on easing the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.” The goal was not to listen to American plans, but to change them, to force the United States to “re-examine” its policies in the Middle East. As one Saudi official told the Post, “The U.S. is concerned with an old issue, Iraq. They are making it a priority when it should not be. . . . Iraq can afford to be delayed. The other issue cannot.” In the tiny United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan told Cheney he was against a strike on Iraq and demanded that the Bush administration “stop the grave and continued Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.” Just about every other Arab leader told Cheney much the same thing.

So while we’re now stuck in Iraq, spending billions of dollars to arm the country that’s trying to overthrow a government that we’re spending billions of dollars to prop up, the rest of the Arab world is still trying to continue moving forward on an Israeli peace proposal that all the very serious people mistakenly thought was just a ruse. And it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that if we’d just listened to the leaders in the region in 2002 and focused on solving the problem that they wanted to solve, rather than assuming that they had ulterior motives, we’d be in a much better state of affairs today.

It took a Democratic Congress to finally implement most of the remaining 9/11 Commission proposals.

Congress gave final approval Friday to legislation that requires tighter screening of air and sea cargo, and shifts more federal anti-terrorism grants to high-risk areas such as New York and Washington, delivering on a pledge by Democrats to implement additional recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

Voting 371-40, the House followed the Senate, which voted 85-8 Thursday night, to send the measure to the White House…

But…

… after dropping a controversial provision that would have extended union protection to 45,000 federal airport screeners. That language had prompted a veto threat from President Bush.

That’s right. President Bush would have vetoed a vital Homeland Security bill if it extended union rights to airport screeners. Because nothing threatens our national security more than organized labor.

Rep. Jim McDermott speaks…and offers silence:

(Also: The Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza is up.)

Don Ward:

Odds are the Sound Transit/RTID proposal is going to be shot down this November under the weight of its own hubris. In 2008 (or sooner) Republican candidates need to all get together in one big ceremony, focusing on one big issue, relieving traffic congestion, with one big list of transportation priorities they will pass when elected. And pound it over and over again.

It needs to be a list of specific projects that people see and understand. The 405/167 interchange, 520 floating bridge, adding lanes to I-5 in Everett. (Others can chime in here) Just as long as there is some funding for multimodal transportation options – increased bus service, ride-share, carpool, etc. – it should be a winner.

Don hasn’t read the Sound Transit/RTID package. How do I know?

Because all that stuff is in it. Whether it’s 520, 167, 405, more buses, more carpool lanes, more ridesharing, it’s already in the package. Don hasn’t read the package, but you can.

If you want to know what’s in the Sound Transit/RTID package, you can look here, here, or here.

Don wants to wait until 2008 to address these critical roads projects. If the 2007 ST/RTID package fails at the polls, don’t expect to see another ballot measure for four more years. I seriously doubt a single lawmaker will want to go to voters on a “roads only” package in a presidential/gubernatorial election year.

Besides, Don doesn’t know his history. Referendum 51 failed miserably at the polls because lefty environmental groups and anti-tax activists opposed it. The whole reason Sound Transit and RTID were joined was to make sure the asphalt guys and the transit guys had to support it! That’s why Reagan Dunn and Shawn Bunney, both conservatives, are supporting the package. Meanwhile, light rail is planned to go north to Lynnwood, south to Tacoma, and east to Redmond (or at least Overlake, depending on how much money has to be spent in Bellevue).

Instead of supporting a package that does the things he wants done, Don would rather scrap it for a plan that’ll never happen. The GOP base will never acquiesce to more taxes to fix roads and build transit infrastructure. They don’t have to.

Because the voters will.

Vice President Dick Cheney will have his pacemaker battery replaced on Saturday. To replace the battery, the entire pacemaker must be removed, requiring minor surgery.

Under the terms of the 25th Amendment, President George Bush will temporarily assume command while Cheney is under anesthesia.

I was out of the house for most of the day, and came home the next morning to find my cat at the back door, wheezing, gagging, foaming at the mouth, and clearly in a great deal of physical distress. He had been perfectly healthy the day before, so my first thought was that he had suffered some sort of catastrophic injury or poisoning in my absence.

I tried to examine him as best I could, despite his protestations, and noticed a small piece of grass sticking out of his nose. Several claw wounds later I grabbed the grass and yanked, ending up with a seven-inch blade between my fingers, and a suddenly symptom-free cat in my bloodied arms. I’m guessing my cat must have been eating grass when he somehow sneezed or coughed up the blade, lodging it in his nose and throat.

God knows how many hours my cat suffered from this painful and debilitating, yet easily remedied mishap? And it got me thinking. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans were suffering at that very moment from some easily treated illness or injury, simply because they lacked the money to pay for medical care? How much debilitating pain was shooting through their brains? How many moans and cries were ignored? How many tears were shed?

If our debate over universal healthcare was informed as much by empathy as it is by economics, I wonder how quickly it would inevitably devolve into the usual ideological battle over the relative efficiencies of the market?

Tuesday’s Drinking Liberally with Mayor Greg Nickels was a hoot. If you missed it, I’m sorry. This is the first time Nickels has graced our presence at the Montlake Ale House, and it was worth the wait.

I asked Hizzoner, “how do you keep a straight face on your Seattle Channel call-in show? I mean, the questions people ask, they’re nuts sometimes. Somebody called in about moving sidewalks or something.”

Nickels said, “You have to respect what folks have to say.”

I don’t know if politicians get enough credit for putting up with the Richard Lee’s of the world. I can tell you that if I was heckled by morons on a public TV show, I’d drop the f-bomb and resign my office.

************

Also, it turns out the mayor knows my grandfather. Just like Phil Talmadge, Nickels is a longtime West Seattle Democrat. My grampa was a PCO for years and years in White Center.

Me: “This may seem like a weird quesiton, Mr. Mayor, but I was wondering if you knew my grandfather. His name is Bill Kamp.”

Hizzoner: “Bill, yeah I remember Bill. His wife was…”

Me: I’m about to say “Mildred”, but Nickels beats me to it.

Hizzoner: “Yes, I knew them.”

I turn to Nick and say, “it’s a good day, a good day indeed.”

************

My grampa and grandma had six kids, and none of them have the interest in politics that I share with my late grampa (he passed away in 1998; my grandmother in 2003). I was only 17 when my grandfather died, so I didn’t have a chance to learn from his experience when I started in Democratic politics. I’m convinced there is a generation of politicians and old-time Democrats who knew my grandfather well. Only now am I learning that my grandfather knew Greg Nickels before he was mayor (and perhaps even before he was elected to the King County Council).

Not only did my grampa know Greg Nickels and Phil Talmadge, but (according to my family) also Mike Lowry, who was active in King County politics for a long time, and was in Congress from the 7th district for a few terms. My grandfather also knew Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Since Scoop and my grandfather have passed on, I’m out of luck in gaining a little insight in Washington’s more controversial figures.

************

As I get more involved in Democratic politics, I can look forward to discovering more about my grandfather’s involvement. I’m sure there are old timers out there with stories about my grandfather, the kind of things you don’t always learn form family. Which side was he on when the Democratic Party went through serious turmoil during the 1970’s? How did my grandfather, a Catholic with traditional cultural views, not bolt the party like so many others during the the 70’s and 80’s?

My grandfather, Bill Kamp, passed away during the summer of ’98, but he lives on in the memories of the Democrats who knew him.

From the one story, two headlines department:

Seattle Times: “Seven charged in vote-fraud scheme”
Seattle PI: “Voter-registration workers charged with submitting bogus registrations”

Of course, the Seattle PI headline is more accurate. It was voter-registration fraud, not vote fraud. There was never any attempt or intent to actually cast a fraudulent ballot, and to suggest otherwise is simply hyperbole.

That said, I’m glad the perpetrators are being prosecuted. But rather than celebrate the permanent disenfranchisement of seven more US citizens, I thought I’d just use this story as a springboard to talk about one of my personal pet peeves: paid initiative signature gathering.

But the scheme had nothing to do with an attempt to manipulate elections and everything to do with the workers’ efforts to keep their $8-an-hour jobs, prosecutors said.

[…] “The defendants … cheated their employers to get paid for work they did not actually perform,” Satterberg said. “The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets.”

And if you think this sort of cheating never occurs in the $2-$5 per-signature world of the highly profitable initiative industry, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you. In WA state it is not uncommon for 20-percent of initiative signatures to be rejected on closer review, and in some states the rejection rate has exceeded 50-percent. There is no evidence we even come close to catching all the fraudulent signatures, and we have no mechanism for tracing them back to individual, paid signature gatherers.

We have created strong economic incentives for cheating, and the result is a nationwide initiative industry that is rife with fraud and corruption. But for some reason the “clean elections” hawks on the right, who would gladly wipe 100,000 legitimate voters from the rolls in hope of eliminating a couple felons, consider it anti-democratic to suggest any reform that might better protect the integrity of initiative petitions.

Go figure.

Max Blumenthal hangs out with the craziest people on earth (thanks to FishinCurt for the link).

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted, and reigning champion N in Seattle is out of town, so you all have a chance.

What kind of craziness do you get when you combine a Reagan-appointed former commandant of the Marine Corps with a former lawyer in the Reagan White House and give them space in the Washington Post to commenting on George W. Bush’s recent Executive Order on detainee treatment?

Let’s begin with the title: War Crimes and the White House.

What the…?

And the subtitle: The Dishonor in a Tortured New ‘Interpretation’ of the Geneva Conventions.

Ouch!

It gets worse for Bush from there:

But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come.
[…]

Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to “interpret” Common Article 3 [of the 1949 Geneva Conventions] with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program “fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3,” provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency.”

In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not “done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual” — even if that is an inevitable consequence — the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.”

It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in “good faith” in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America’s clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.

Clearly, the Bush administration is finding itself sitting off in its own isolated corner of Neoconlandia.

Bush’s Executive Order is worthless under two circumstances. First, it is meaningless in the Hague and 192 other countries. War crimes are war crimes, regardless of any “Executive Order” whether from George Bush or Adolph Hitler (about which, more later).

Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are “war crimes” for which everyone involved — potentially up to and including the president of the United States — may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.

Secondly, the Executive Order is meaningless if a U.S. court declares it unconstitutional. Torturers torture at their own risk. After all, there will eventually (most likely sooner rather than later) be a new administration that isn’t driving under the influence of Cheney. And some of us expect—and will demand—that war criminals be prosecuted whether at home or abroad.

But why must we even be debating the limits of torture in America? Why do we have a President who dishonors all Americans—who injures our national sense of honor, who trashes our moral standing with the rest of the world—by parsing the Geneva Conventions in order to justify inhumane treatment of prisoners?

We’ve seen this kind of thing before–dismissal of international law in the name of national security. On 6 June 1941, Adolph Hitler signed an “Executive Order” called Instructions on the Treatment of Political Commissars (my emphasis):

In the struggle against Bolshevism, we must not assume that the enemy’s conduct will be based on principles of humanity or of international law. In particular, hate-inspired, cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners can be expected on the part of all grades of political commissars, who are the real leaders of resistance…To show consideration to these elements during this struggle, or to act in accordance with international rules of war, is wrong and endangers both our own security and the rapid pacification of conquered territory…Political commissars have initiated barbaric, Asiatic methods of warfare. Consequently, they will be dealt with immediately and with maximum severity. As a matter of principle, they will be shot at once, whether captured during operations or otherwise showing resistance.

So, replace Bolshevism with “Islamofascism,” replace political commissars with “enemy combatants,” replace Asiatic methods of warfare with “terrorism,” and you pretty much have a Bush stump speech. Of course, sometimes we ship ’em to detention centers and torture them instead of immediately shooting them, but the parallels are stunning.

I find it disgusting that my President of my America is justifying the torture of prisoners using the same rationale that Hitler used to ignore international law.

Given today’s Washington Post commentary, it looks like there are some Righties with significant concerns, too.

ThinkProgress explains. This is an open thread.

When blogging, I can be a little harsh without realizing it. I’m not actually as big an SOB as I sometimes seem. So in this post I want to take note of folks I may have been too harsh on.

1. BUS DRIVERS

If you read this Seattle Weekly article, you’ll see what they have to put up with. While I knock Metro and their fleet of stinky, smelly, slow buses, I’m not knocking the drivers. Most of them are decent folks who put up with a lot.

2. JOEL CONNELLY

Everyone I know disagrees with Joel on something. I think this is what makes him a good columnist. He gets taken to task by lefties and righties. Joel sticks up for Old Seattle, and does it better than others. Also, he showed up to Drinking Liberally before it was cool popular.

3. PHIL TALMADGE

I bashed Phil for his goofball anti-light rail opinions. As it turns out, Phil was close to my grandfather, who was a long time PCO from the 34th legislative district. Phil even showed up at my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary back in the late 80’s. Very classy.

4. THE GOP

Ha! Not!

Yesterday, Congress voted on the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment. The Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment would have prevented the Federal Government from spending taxpayer dollars to arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients in the states where it’s already been made legal (Washington is one of them, of course, passing a law via voter initiative in 1998). Now I expect the Republican Congressmen of this state to vote against it. We already know that Reichert, McMorris-Rogers, and Hastings don’t give a rats ass about the voters of this state. But three two Democratic Congressmen also voted against this bill. And one of them, Norm Dicks and Adam Smith, changed their vote from last year. Can we have an explanation from their offices for why they’ve decided in the past twelve months that the people of Washington State need to be protected from their own decisions? Can someone from either Norm Dicks’ or Adam Smith’s office explain why it’s so important for them him to have the federal government come here to overturn our laws? The second question also goes for Rick Larsen, who has consistently voted against this bill.

We are long past the point of where the old notions of “we need to protect the children” hold any water. In states where medical marijuana has been legalized, the numbers of underage marijuana users has actually decreased more than in other states. I think we deserve an explanation from our Representatives on this. There is absolutely no rational justification for voting against this bill, and they know it. The old days where votes like this aren’t noticed are over. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or not. When you vote against the sick and dying to advance the special interests of those who benefit from having more people flowing through our criminal justice system, we should know why.

UPDATE (–Goldy):
I just received an email from Derrick Crowe, Communications Director for Rep. Adam Smith:

We noticed the vote this morning and have a submitted a statement for the record to correct the error. Adam should have been a Yes on Rollcall vote 733, the Hinchey Amendment to HR 3093, the Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008. Adam has consistently voted Yes on the Hinchey Amendment in years past.

So in fact, Rep. Smith voted for Hinchey-Rohrabacher. Not sure exactly how common it is for the House Clerk to get these things wrong, but apparently this time around he did. Apparently, Smith misheard the reading of the bill, and has since corrected his vote. Not sure how common that is either.

UPDATE 2: Dominic Holden has more, but still no word from Congressman Dicks…

The General has found a way to rid the nation of the homosexual scourge, and he’s asking our help to pass the following resolution in state legislatures nationwide. (Too bad Luke Esser is no longer in the state senate; this is exactly the type of resolution he would have sponsored.)

Whereas homosexuality is an abomination before God;

whereas Senator Tom Coburn has identified toilets as being critical habitat for homosexuals;

whereas it is common knowledge that homosexuals fear robots;

whereas Jim Naugle, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, is using this knowledge to exclude homosexuals from the city’s beaches by installing robot toilets;

whereas the rest of our heterosexual nation would benefit if a similar approach were applied universally;

whereas Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution empowers Congress to coin money and pay debts;

whereas official memos written by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Fred Fielding transfer all of the legislative powers found in Article I Section 8 to the President of the United States;

whereas the Vice President of the United State, using the blood of his hunting companions as ink, affixed his initials and a smiley face upon each of these official memos;

we, the citizens of the various states, beseech the President to order the demolition of all analog toilets, both public and private, and thereby destroy the homosexuals’ critical habitat;

furthermore, we, the citizens of the various states, respectably ask the President to command the Secretary of the Treasury to fund the construction of replacement pay toilets by a contractor of the Vice President’s choosing at a cost that shall not exceed 1.8 million dollars per unit.

Emory Bundy writes at the ‘cut:

[W]hat about the environmental costs and benefits of rail transit? Surprisingly, rail’s environmental costs are quite adverse.

The anti-light rail guys have been flogging this thing for so long that their arguments are changing. Only recently have they been employing certain Al Gore-like rhetoric to try to put the kibosh on rail. It’s funny, really.

Emory Bundy, Kemper Freeman Jr., and other anti-rail guys like to say they’re pro-transit. The like buses, they say. Or bike lines and van pools. Just anything but a train!

You can sometimes judge an argument by who flocks to it’s banner. You see, it’s no wonder why the lunatic right wing hate site Free Republic loves Bundy and his anti-rail screed. So don’t fall for the “we like transit” routine from the anti-rail folks.