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"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

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Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Monday, January 24, 2005

The Rise of Michael Chertoff

Failing Upwards

Michael Chertoff's record at the Justice Dept. has followed the same downward arc as a belly-flop. He's managed to botch every major case he's handled and elicit the well-deserved scorn of civil liberties groups. Only in the gravity-defying world of G.W. Bush, where reality is routinely run through a public relations shredder, would a bungler like Chertoff reach the top-spot at Homeland Security. Even so, his appointment should come as no surprise to the wary American public. It's just one more horse-nugget added to an already ample mound of political manure.

Chertoff is credited with authoring the Patriot Act, the 300-plus page blueprint for the modern National Security State; patterned to great extent on the successes of the KGB in the Soviet system. He's admired among his Bush cadres for making sure that government surveillance operates at maximum efficiency. Under his stewardship at the Dept of Justice, the 4th amendment has withered like summer grass. The long-held belief that citizens, have a right to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" has buckled under the demands of "Big Brother" and the new "intrusive" security paradigm.

Chertoff is a member in good standing in the Federalist Society; a cabal of radical lawyers devoted to the systematic dismantling of the Bill of Rights. Already, they've provided much of the legal rationale for the unlawful detention of aliens, the enhanced powers of the Executive, the indefinite incarceration of POW's and the cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners. They've also made strides in crushing what few regulations still exist to protect both consumers and environment.

Chertoff has been an effective conduit for the Federalist ideology. Following 9-11, he masterminded the round-up of 1100 Muslim suspects; dumping them in prison without bothering to file charges. None of the suspects were provided with attorneys or allowed to challenge the terms of their detention. Instead they were held in solitary confinement, abused, and either deported or released after secret tribunals. Chertoff effectively rescinded the Bill of Rights to pursue his blinkered witch-hunt. His actions made no one any safer, nor were they intended to. They were designed to show how easily legal protections are eviscerated during a national emergency. Don't think Chertoff and co. haven't monitored the affects of hysteria on public sensibilities. For the Bush team, demagoguery is the primary tenet of good governance.

Months after the illegal detentions, the Justice's Dept's Inspector General harshly criticized the draconian and unproductive steps that Chertoff authorized. The General dismissed the arrests as "indiscriminate and haphazard"; a clear violation of basic human rights and civil liberties. His reprimand was shrugged off by the impervious Chertoff, who later admitted to Congress that he would have done the same thing all over again.

In Chertoff's world, due process takes a backseat to the arbitrary assertion of state power. Even the hint of terrorism and the rule of law is breezily tossed overboard.

Did we mention that not one terror suspect was ever charged or convicted in this blundering, ham-fisted dragnet? Instead, Chertoff's recklessness galvanized the Muslim community against us and reinforced feelings that the war on terror is underscored by racist and sectarian hatred.

So far, both the media and Senate Democrats are enthralled with Bush's latest selection. A simple Google search rings-up about 200 stories with the same by-line: "Bush Picks Federal Judge for Homeland Security" or "Bush makes Safe Pick"; all of them equally flattering except for a few Muslim or civil liberties sites.

President Bush has also expressed his enthusiasm for his newly-minted Homeland Chief:
"Mike has shown a deep commitment to the cause of justice and an unwavering determination to protect the American people," Bush beamed. "He's also been a key leader in the war on terror."

Indeed, he has. Chertoff led the charge on a number of high-profile cases.

In the widely publicized Detroit "Terror-Cell" case Chertoff's team botched the case through "prosecutorial misconduct"; the INTENTIONAL WITHHOLDING OF INFORMATION THAT WOULD HAVE ACQUITTED THE ACCUSED.

Chertoff was attempting to put an innocent man behind bars just to chalk-up a victory in the war on terror. Fortunately, a DOJ insider blew the whistle and the case was dismissed, but not before it was plain that Chertoff was willing to break the rules to achieve his ends.

Does this sound like someone you,d want to put in charge of the nation's largest public welfare institution?

Another case fumbled by Chertoff was that of a Muslim college student in Idaho who was charged with running an "internet network that fostered Islamic extremists and helped recruit potential terrorists".

Whoa! Sounds like serious stuff?

As it turns out, the charges were entirely bogus and the student was AQUITTED BY THE UNANIMOUS DECISION OF A JURY after an exhaustive review of the evidence. Like all of the DOJ's cases, the story was catapulted to the front page when it broke, (irreparably scarring the student's reputation) and hastily banished to the back pages when the case fizzled. The media operates by the same standard as Chertoff; the "presumption of innocence" is never a serious concern.

There was an intriguing twist to this story, too. Three months after the student was acquitted, the DOJ put Immigration on the case and shipped the young man out of the country. In other words, the DOJ's targets are never safe even if they've been vindicated by a jury. It's a sobering lesson in the flagrant abuse of power.

Chertoff also mishandled the Zacarias Moussaoui case. Moussaoui was allegedly the "20th hijacker" whose case was considered by many to be a "slam dunk". This explains why Chertoff decided to allow it to go through the criminal justice system, to demonstrate the evenhandedness of the American judicial system. Unfortunately, the state made a hash of the proceedings and has been unable to convict a man who, (by his own admission) belonged to terror organizations in France, and who was clearly in the country to mount an attack against the US. Instead of compiling the evidence he needed for a conviction, Chertoff used the case to batter the 6th amendment. (The government refuses to allow captured Al Qaida members to testify in Moussaoui's defense, even though they can provide evidence that will clear him of all charges) The case has deteriorated into a 3 year long travesty; pitting a self-proclaimed terrorist against the ineffectual prosecution of the Justice Dept.

Chertoff's record of failure at Justice is second only to that of Ashcroft. His 4 year tenure hasn't produced even one identifiable success. (Check out his "obstruction of justice" in the John Walker Lindh case on Democracy Now) Instead, his personal ineptitude and his palpable contempt for the law have only showered more disgrace on the institution of American justice. That probably explains why he's being moved up the bureaucratic dog-pile to the top rung of Homeland Security. In Bush-world "failing upwards" is more commonplace than cowboy boots at a Crawford tent-show.

Chertoff's appointment puts the finishing touches on the 2005 Bush Politburo. He'll take his place among the demagogues, torturers and death-squad aficionados that fill out the ranks of the current administration. His slavish devotion to duty will guarantee his tenure at the right hand of the throne; nuzzled up to the ear of the beloved commander-in-chief. After all, Chertoff served his time in the trenches; leading the Republican Congress in their legal jihad against Bill Clinton. ( note: The Whitewater investigation that consumed $40 million of taxpayers money and miles of column space in the "free press" to prove absolutely nothing) And, he's made impressive contributions to the increasing volumes of repressive legislation emerging almost weekly from the Congress. In other words, he's earned his stripes and established himself as a valuable cog in the mighty wheel of state.

We can expect that Chertoff's assault on the Bill of Rights will only intensify in his new role at Homeland Security. Aside from trying to stomp out union activity, and privatize whatever parts of the agency can be farmed out to Bush's corporate buddies, Chertoff will be in charge of the "color-coded" terror-alert system; a program that is skillfully manipulated for purely political purposes. If the administration's charade starts to unravel, Bush will need a good man like Chertoff in place to go "Code Red" and announce the transition to martial law.

Until then, Chertoff will have to satisfy himself with the task of savaging the institutions that make democracy possible. He's already established his bone fides as an enemy of personal freedom and an opponent of an independent judiciary. He'll probably try to expand on those themes; winning greater applause from the feckless Congress.

The ACLU summarized Chertoff's checkered commitment to the rule of law when they issued a statement last week saying, "We are troubled that his public record suggests he sees the Bill of Rights as an obstacle to national security, rather than a guidebook for how to do security properly."

Regrettably, the ACLU is wrong in their assumption that Chertoff sees the Bill of Rights as an obstacle. Rather, he sees it as a minor inconvenience; like a wall that needs to be removed block by block.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state.

Walking Wounded

Old soldiers don’t fade away

The observant will have noticed that we hear little from the troops in Iraq and see almost nothing of the wounded. Why, one might wonder, does not CNN put an enlisted Marine before a camera and, for 15 minutes without editing, let him say what he thinks? Is he not an adult and a citizen? Is he not engaged in important events on our behalf?

Sound political reasons exist. Soldiers are a risk PR-wise, the wounded a liability. No one can tell what they might say, and conspicuous dismemberment is bad for recruiting. An enlisted man in front of a camera is dangerous. He could wreck the governmental spin apparatus in five minutes. It is better to keep soldiers discreetly out of sight.

So we do not see much of the casualties, ours or theirs. Yet they are there, somewhere, with missing legs, blind, becoming accustomed to groping at things in their new darkness, learning to use the wheelchairs that will be theirs for 50 years. Some face worse fates than others. Quadriplegics will be warehoused in VA hospitals where nurses will turn them at intervals, like hamburgers, to prevent bedsores. Friends and relatives will soon forget them. Suicide will be a frequent thought. The less damaged will get around.

For a brief moment perhaps the casualties will believe, then try desperately to keep believing, that they did something brave and worthy and terribly important for that abstraction, country. Some will expect thanks. But there will be no thanks, or few, and those quickly forgotten. It will be worse. People will ask how they lost the leg. In Iraq, they will say, hoping for sympathy, or respect, or understanding. The response, often unvoiced but unmistakable, will be, “What did you do that for?” The wounded will realize that they are not only crippled, but freaks.

The years will go by. Iraq will fade into the mist. Wars always do. A generation will rise for whom it will be just history. The dismembered veterans will find first that almost nobody appreciates what they did, then that few even remember it. If—when, many would say—the United States is driven out of Iraq, the soldiers will look back and realize that the whole affair was a fraud. Wars are just wars. They seem important at the time. At any rate, we are told that they are important.

Yet the wounds will remain. Arms do not grow back. For the paralyzed there will never be girlfriends, dancing, rolling in the grass with children. The blind will adapt as best they can. Those with merely a missing leg will count themselves lucky. They will hobble about, managing to lead semi-normal lives, and people will say, “How well he handles it.” An admirable freak. For others it will be less good. A colostomy bag is a sorry companion on a wedding night.

These men will come to hate. It will not be the Iraqis they hate. This we do not talk about.

It is hard to admit that one has been used. Some of the crippled will forever insist that the war was needed, that they were protecting their sisters from an Islamic invasion, or Vietnamese, or Chinese. Others will keep quiet and drink too much. Still others will read, grow older and wiser—and bitter. They will remember that their vice president, a man named Cheney, said that during his war, the one in Asia, he “had other priorities.” The veterans will remember this when everyone else has long since forgotten Cheney.

I once watched the first meeting between a young Marine from the South, blind, much of his face shot away, and his high-school sweetheart, who had come from Tennessee to Bethesda Naval Hospital to see him.

Hatred comes easily. There are wounds and there are wounds. A friend of mine spent two tours in Asia in that war now little remembered. He killed many people, not all of them soldiers. It is what happens in wars. The memory haunts him. Jack is a hard man from a tough neighborhood, quick with his fists, intelligent but uneducated—not a liberal flower vain over his sensitivity. He lives in Mexican bars few would enter and has no politics beyond an anger toward government. He was not a joyous killer. He remembers what he did, knows now that he was had. It gnaws at him. One is wise to stay away from him when he is drinking.

People say that this war isn’t like Vietnam. They are correct. Washington fights its war in Iraq with no better understanding of Iraq than it had of Vietnam, but with much better understanding of the United States. The Pentagon learned from Asia. This time around it has controlled the press well. Here is the great lesson of Southeast Asia: the press is dangerous, not because it is inaccurate, which it often is, but because it often isn’t. So we don’t much see the caskets —for reasons of privacy, you understand.

The war in Iraq is fought by volunteers, which means people that no one in power cares about. No one in the mysteriously named “elite” gives a damn about some kid from a town in Tennessee that has one gas station and a beer hall with a stuffed buck’s head. Such a kid is a redneck at best, pretty much from another planet, and certainly not someone you would let your daughter date. If conscription came back, and college students with rich parents learned to live in fear of The Envelope, riots would blossom as before. Now Yale can rest easy. Thank God for throwaway people.

The nearly perfect separation between the military and the rest of the country, or at least the influential in the country, is wonderful for the war effort. It prevents concern. How many people with a college degree even know a soldier? Yes, some, and I will get e-mail from them, but they are a minority. How many Americans have been on a military base? Or, to be truly absurd, how many men in combat arms went to, say, Harvard? Ah, but they have other priorities.

In 15 years in Washington, I knew many, many reporters and intellectuals and educated people. Almost none had worn boots. So it is. Those who count do not have to go, and do not know anyone who has gone, and don’t interest themselves. There is a price for this, though not one Washington cares about. Across America, in places where you might not expect it—in Legion halls and VFW posts, among those who carry membership cards from the Disabled American Veterans—there are men who hate. They don’t hate America. They hate those who sent them. Talk to the wounded from Iraq in five years.

January 31, 2005 issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative

Fred Reed’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harper’s, and National Review, among other places.

Wolfowitz Story Falsified

UNRAVELLING: A woman lied about being tortured during Saddam Hussein's reign and a US newspaper is having to backtrack on a story it wrote about her

Testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2003 about the rebuilding of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the story of Jumana Michael Hanna, an Iraqi woman who had recently come to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad with a tale of her horrific torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Hanna's tale -- more than two years of imprisonment that included being subjected to electric shocks, repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted -- was unusual in that she was willing to name the Iraqi police officials who participated in her torture, "information that is helping us to root out Baathist policemen who routinely tortured and killed prisoners," Wolfowitz said.

But Hanna's story, which 10 days before Wolfowitz's testimony had been the subject of a front-page article in the Washington Post, appears to have unraveled. Esquire magazine, in this month's issue, published a lengthy article, by a writer who was hired to help Hanna produce a memoir, saying that her account had all but fallen apart.

And on Thursday, the Post itself published a follow-up article saying that Hanna, who was granted refugee status by US officials on the basis of her claims of imprisonment, torture and sexual abuse, "appears to have made false claims about her past, according to a fresh examination of her statements."

The articles in Esquire and the Post concluded that none of Hanna's allegations about torture could be verified. Sara Solovitch, the author of the Esquire article, wrote that the law under which Hanna was supposedly imprisoned in Iraq never existed.

And the Post article, by Peter Finn, the correspondent who wrote the original article in 2003, quoted several of Hanna's in-laws as saying that Hanna's husband, who she previously said had been executed in the same prison where she was tortured, was still alive.

David Hoffman, the foreign editor of the Post, said in an interview on Thursday that the newspaper would likely continue its reporting on the story, including trying to determine how Hanna got refugee status and gained entry into the US.

"Clearly this is not the bottom of it," Hoffman said. "We did feel that it was time to publish what we found."

The apparent debunking of Hanna's story raises questions about her embrace by officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority, who in the summer of 2003 were eager to find Iraqis who would testify to some of the atrocities that the US had used as a reason to attack Iraq. People involved in the investigation of her story for the authority told Solovitch that the case was given high priority by top US officials.

Calls to Hanna on Thursday were not returned. She is currently living in Chicago, where she moved this month from Northern California. It was there that she spent several weeks talking to Solovitch, who had been recruited by a literary agent to help Hanna put together a book proposal about her life.

Beginning in August of last year, as Solovitch began to try to verify details about Hanna's experiences, inconsistencies began to appear. An Iraqi doctor who examined her at the request of US authorities discounted her story of rape and abuse, Solovitch reported. A National Guardsman who was assigned to investigate Hanna's claims of a mass grave in the yard of the police academy in Baghdad turned up some cow bones but nothing else. All nine of the men who had been arrested on Hanna's word had been released for lack of evidence, the Esquire article reported, with some of them being compensated for wrongful imprisonment.

Officials at the state department, the successor agency to the Coalition Authority in Baghdad, and the defense department did not return phone calls seeking comment on Thursday, which was Inauguration Day in Washington.

The Post article on Thursday said that Finn met Hannah in July 2003 at the Human Rights Society of Iraq in Baghdad and later accompanied her on a tour of the police academy that had served as a prison under Saddam. He interviewed her three times before the publication of the initial article, "in the company of an Iraqi interpreter and a Post correspondent who spoke fluent Arabic," the Post said.

While Hanna was apparently imprisoned for some period, the charge is unclear. The Post quoted a cousin of Hanna's husband as saying "he believed she was jailed for cheating people out of money on the promise of getting them visas."

The Esquire article quoted Hanna as saying that her mother had arranged her arrest -- in order to try to put a stop to a marriage that the mother opposed -- on charges of prostitution, theft, spying and plotting to overthrow the government.

Hoffman, the Post editor, said that the newspaper was not aware of the potential problems in her story until the Esquire article appeared, but that the newspaper's original interviews "were quite extensive, and we did do some due diligence with her family."

In retrospect, he said, it was an error not to include a disclaimer in the original story noting that the Post was unable to independently verify her allegations of abuse.

"I would point out that she said one set of things to us and then she said another set of things to the author" of the Esquire article, Hoffman said. "If you look at those two sets of things, they didn't overlap much."


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