Compromise...Sort of

Today 14 senators agreed to postpone the "nuclear option" (Trent Lott's term) and allow votes on three right-wing judges with questionable credentials. Indeed, Alberto Gonzales called Priscilla Owens an "activist judge" while they were both on the Texas Supreme Court. This agreement does not really accomplish much. It allows the Administration to claim credit for their corporate donors who supported the judges that will be voted upon, while allowing future elimination of the fillibuster if any Republican senator believes that the fillibuster was used in a case in which that was not an "extraordinary circumstance". This agreement is a failure for the possibility of true protections of minority party rights in the Senate.

The War on the Press

The recent controversy about the Newsweek blurb that was said to have set off the riots across the Muslim world and the response of the Administration demonstrates the hostility that the Administration shows towards the press. In a defense department press conference, a spokesman for the DoD said, ''People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?''. In addition, Rumsfeld stated about the response to the story, ''People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do.'' This clearly suggests a further turn towards more censorship, whether forced externally by the government or more subtle pressure, of the type that has been occuring since 9/11 for 'self-censorship'. Given the lack of coverage of the war in Iraq and the lies that were used to start it, this pressure appears to have been quite effective. It has stifled open dissent by equating dissent with a lack of patriotism. Where this will lead is unclear, but given the docile state of the American public, it wouldn't surprise me if some forms of coercive censorship of the press were the result. The most unreported fact that is highly important is that the subject of the protest, the desecration of the Koran, is not something that the Newsweek piece broke first. Many stories have documented the same kinds of abuses that Newsweek reported. The point that makes the coverage so strong is that the Administration now has essentially the opportunity to pin charges of murder upon the reporters. It is quite hypocritical because so much death has been hidden or glossed over by the Administration as a direct outcome of their policies. It is the Administration's policies that are to blame, much more so than any blurbs in Newsweek, for the deadly riots.

The Downing Street Memo, or How I Learned that Bush Lied

In the lead-up to war, the main emphasis was placed on Saddam's gathering threat because he was developing (or had) weapons of mass destruction) or because he was linked to terrorism. Neither of those were credible then, and since the leaking of the minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and his advisors in July 2002, it appears that major policy makers in both the U.K. and the U.S. knew that there was little in the way of firm information on which to base these claims. The memo, which was leaked during the recent British elections, also confirm that the British Attorney-General was worried that the basis for war on which the U.S. and U.K. were relying, particularly those discussed behind closed doors, was illegal by the standard of international law. The minutes state, "The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult" (p. 2). The memo also states that the Bush Administration indicated that "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" (p. 1). Because of these new revelations, it seems prudent that at least a commission be appointed to investigate whether the policy of war was decided first and the facts were then molded to support that policy. If that is the case, a large segment of the Bush Administration should be removed from office. However, with a lock-step Republican party in control of Congress & the White House, it is highly unlikely that anything will ever come of these revelations. Most likely, they will be buried by the Administration by some new "victory" or terror alert.