Cheney on why not to invade Iraq

Kudos to MoveOn for finding this clip of Dick Cheney, in a 1994 interview, explaining why invading Iraq would be a horrible idea. It's very similar to the argument former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft made in his August 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed "Don't Attack Saddam," except that Scowcroft never flip-flopped.

"Help End Dick Cheney's Quagmire in Iraq" [MoveOn.org]
"Cheney in 1994 on Iraq" [YouTube]

The New Yorker shines light on "The Black Sites"

A recent issue of the New Yorker has yet another must-read, in-depth look at the Bush administration's interrogation policies. Here's an excerpt, describing the legal quandary some CIA officers are finding themselves in:

Concern about the legality of the C.I.A.’s program reached a previously unreported breaking point last week when Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the intelligence committee, quietly put a “hold” on the confirmation of John Rizzo, who as acting general counsel was deeply involved in establishing the agency’s interrogation and detention policies. Wyden’s maneuver essentially stops the nomination from going forward. “I question if there’s been adequate legal oversight,” Wyden told me. He said that after studying a classified addendum to President Bush’s new executive order, which specifies permissible treatment of detainees, “I am not convinced that all of these techniques are either effective or legal. I don’t want to see well-intentioned C.I.A. officers breaking the law because of shaky legal guidance.”

A former C.I.A. officer, who supports the agency’s detention and interrogation policies, said he worried that, if the full story of the C.I.A. program ever surfaced, agency personnel could face criminal prosecution. Within the agency, he said, there is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution” for the interrogation program. If congressional hearings begin, he said, “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus.” He noted that a number of C.I.A. officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees.

"The Black Sites" [The New Yorker]

Rove resigns (on a bit of a high note, I hate to admit)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Karl Rove will be resigning at the end of August. I don't think history will judge him very kindly, but he is leaving on the heels of a major victory: the surprising passage of a bill expanding the executive branch's wiretapping powers just before the Congressional recess. As Rove points out in the (predictably friendly, but critical enough that it falls short of pandering) WSJ column about his resignation, wiretapping will continue to be a political hot potato for the Democrats.

Everyone's been trying to figure out why the Democrats compromised and passed the bill, and the New York Times article "Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law" provides the best explanation I have seen. First, the intelligence agencies came to Congress during mid-July warning that they were only intercepting about 25% of the foreign-based calls they had been getting a few months earlier. The primary reason, according to the intelligence officials, was a classified ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in early 2007. The Times article explains:

A ruling a month or two later — the judge who made it and its exact timing are not clear — restricted the government’s ability to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications passing through telecommunication "switches" on American soil.

The security agency was newly required to seek warrants to monitor at least some of those phone calls and e-mail messages. As a result, the ability to intercept foreign-based communications "kept getting ratcheted down," said a senior intelligence official who insisted on anonymity because the account involved classified material. "We were to a point where we were not effectively operating."

Mr. McConnell, lead negotiator for the administration in lobbying for the bill, said in an interview that the court’s restrictions had made his job much more difficult.

"It was crazy, because I’m sitting here signing out warrants on known Al Qaeda operatives that are killing Americans, doing foreign communications,” he said. "And the only reason I’m signing that warrant is because it touches the U.S. communications infrastructure. That’s what we fixed." [New York Times]

As they got more information about these problems, Democrats began to work on a narrower compromise bill, which would have allowed eavesdropping on communications from one foreign party to another which are routed through American telecommunications networks, but would have added court oversight. As the recess approached, leaders from the two parties made headway on a compromise, but then talks broke down on August 2. So the Republicans put their bill up for a vote, and got enough Democratic support in both houses to pass it.

Basically, the Democrats were caught between a rock and a hard place on this one, and forty-one Democratic House Reps and sixteen Democratic Senators joined the Republicans to pass the "Protect America Act" (by the way, did Rove help name this one?).

If the bill was narrowly tailored to address the situation involving calls from one foreign party to another through American telecoms, I would say it's probably a good idea. But what scares me is how this will affect eavesdropping on American citizens (see the previous post, "The NSA's other domestic surveillance program," for more on the stuff no one's talking about). I just don't trust the Bush administration to limit its surveillance to US citizens who are, as Bush likes to put it, "talking to terrorists" - and that has a lot to do with the legacy of Mr. Rove.

"The Mark of Rove" [Wall Street Journal]
"Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law" [New York Times]

Rampell on the next generation

Catherine Rampell, a writer for the Washington Post, has an interesting column in the today's op-ed section titled "Raising a Political Bigot":

Right now, Generation Y has the chance to escape the curse of staunch political labeling. Surveys have shown young people today disproportionately self-identify as political "independents"; an April poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics, for example, found a plurality of Americans ages 18 to 24 consider themselves "independent." This may be because we don't fit neatly into traditional party thinking. We treat our politics the way we treat our music and our clothes (and often our religion): as good consumer-citizens, we mix and match. It's a political supermarket. As a New York Times-CBS-MTV survey demonstrated in June, we lean left on many issues, such as gay rights and health-care coverage. But most of us also support many traditionally Republican positions, such as limiting or banning abortion and staying relatively optimistic about the Iraq war. Our political beliefs, like our music, aren't bundled the way our elders' are. You older types buy into albums and political platforms; we prefer hit singles.

It's not necessarily that we're centrist. We're just eclectic. [Washington Post]

I think Rampell's op-ed makes some very important points (though I would argue that the poll question about Iraq, which found that 51% of 18-to-29-year-old's believe that the US is "very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq" compared to 45% of all adults, should be taken with a grain of salt, given the vagueness of the term "success").

During the last couple of years, I've come to view the two-party system itself as the real culprit behind many of our problems (including the war in Iraq and the re-election of Bush). The fact that there are only two real choices creates, and continuously feeds, the absurd binary political climate we live in - where candidates and voters are seen as being either "for" or "against" any number of complicated issues. This is especially true with the hot-button "culture war" issues, like abortion, gay marriage, guns, and immigration . . . which are all nuanced issues with complicated legal backgrounds.

For example, I'm pretty open-minded about gay people and gay rights - but I've shocked and infuriated close friends before by arguing that gay rights activists are making a legal and strategic mistake when they argue that their movement is closely analogous to the civil rights movement of the 60's. Does that mean I hate gay people, or think that a gay person is any less of an American citizen than anyone else? No, it just means that my point of view does not jibe with the liberal orthodoxy - and in a less binary political climate, that wouldn't be misinterpreted as some kind of evidence that I am completely "against" gay rights or gay marriage, or hostile to gay people. (Note that I'm not the only sympathetic person who thinks it is a bad idea to make that analogy; just the other day, Obama responded to a similar question by saying "I’m always very cautious about getting into comparisons of victimology," and noting that the issues are different.)

No matter how much one disagrees with someone else on one of these issues, any realistic person should at least be able to understand where the other side is coming from. And at this point, we don't have an excuse for not understanding where both sides are coming from, because, as Rampell suggests, we can thank the current political establishment for relentlessly exposing us to the orthodox stances on each side.

Finally, I love Rampell's comment that "[i]t's not necessarily that we're centrist. We're just eclectic." This is similar to my usage of the word "moderate" in the name of this website. I've never claimed to be the guy sitting at the exact 50-yard line of the American political universe on every issue - I mostly mean that I'm pragmatic, willing to listen to a variety of viewpoints, interested in understanding why people think the way they do, and sick of a climate where ideological and political lines hold us back from making progress.

"Raising a Political Bigot" [Washington Post]

Senate joins House in passing ethics bill

Last night, the Senate voted 83-14 in favor of passing the Democrats' ethics reform bill, which the House passed by a 411-8 vote the night before. Based on everything I've read, the bill seems like a huge step in the right direction. Among other things, it requires greater disclosure of gifts from lobbyists, including "bundling" (where a lobbyist collects donations totaling $15,000 in support of an officeholder), requires that Senators wait two years (and House members wait one year) before lobbying Congress in person, and requires that Senators disclose "earmarks" two days before a vote takes place. [AP]

It will be interesting to see whether President Bush signs the bill into law, especially considering the fact that it has the support of a majority of Republicans in both chambers.

"Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act of 2007" [Senate.gov]
"Ethics Bill Summary" [AP]