“Whenever the courts push back against the administration’s unsupportable constitutional ideas…the Bush response is to repeat the same chorus louder: Every detainee is the worst of the worst; every action taken is legal, necessary, and secret. No mistakes, no apologies. No nuance, no regrets. This legal and intellectual intractability can create the illusion that we are standing on the same constitutional ground we stood upon in 2001, even as that ground is sliding away under our feet.” Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick surveys the top ten most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.
Category: The Dubya Era
The Carcetti Dilemma.
“‘When the president talks about staying the course, he never mentions cost as a factor,’ Spratt said. ‘But it is a factor, particularly when you get costs over $100 billion a year.'” Facing very little room to work with, the Dems attempt to sort out the fiscal fiasco Dubya has created over the past six years and counting.
Interior Designs.
“These poor contracting practices have left DOD vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse and DOI vulnerable to sanctions and the loss of the public trust.” In related news, new audits disclose that a procurement collaboration between Dubya’s departments of Defense and Interior has resulted in millions of dollars in waste and mark-ups. “More than half of the contracts examined were awarded without competition or without checks to determine that the prices were reasonable, according to the audits by the inspectors general for Defense (DOD) and Interior (DOI). Ninety-two percent of the work reviewed was awarded without verifying that the contractors’ cost estimates were accurate; 96 percent was inadequately monitored.“
A Moment of Clarity.
“‘We’re not winning, we’re not losing,’ Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, ‘Absolutely, we’re winning.'” While calling for an expansion of the army and marines, Dubya comes close to finally declaring the obvious in Iraq.
You People are Crazy!
“It’s something that’s been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties.” Staunch conservative, defender of civil liberties, and Borat cameo Bob Barr leaves the Republican Party (for the Libertarians.) Now if only Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe would follow his example…
Give ’em Hell Dubya?
The buck stops here? Not hardly. Grasping for historical validation wherever he can find it, Dubya has apparently begun to fancy himself a modern-day Truman. “James G. Hershberg, a Cold War historian at George Washington University, said he doubts that history will judge Bush as kindly as it has Truman, saying Truman’s roles in fostering European recovery and building the NATO alliance were seen as solid accomplishments at the time. ‘Bush, by contrast, lacks any successes of comparable magnitude to compensate for his mismanagement of the Iraq war and will be hard-pressed to produce any in his last two years’.”
Kofi’s Parting Shot.
“As [Harry] Truman said, ‘We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that right has might.’ That’s why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideas and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.” As Kofi Annan bids farewell to his post at the UN, he offers some words of wisdom to America — and to Dubya — on our nation’s role in the world.
Where do we go now?
Apparently none too pleased with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, the Dubya administration tries to conjure up alternative policies for Iraq: “The major alternatives include a short-term surge of 15,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces. Another strategy would redirect the U.S. military away from the internal strife to focus mainly on hunting terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda. And the third would concentrate political attention on supporting the majority Shiites and abandon U.S. efforts to reach out to Sunni insurgents.“
Seeing the Real (War) at Last.
“From now on I’ll be busy, Ain’t goin’ nowhere fast…” In what will hopefully amount to both a transformation in the debate over the war and a much-needed moment of clarity for the Dubya administration (alas, not likely), the Baker-Hamilton Commission officially releases its Iraq report (Exec Sum/Assessments). While perhaps vague on the details, it calls the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating” and argues that a “slide toward chaos” is a very real possibility (if, in fact, it hasn’t already happened.) “Despite a list of 79 recommendations meant to encourage regional diplomacy and lead to a reduction of U.S. forces over the next year, the panel acknowledges that stability in Iraq may be impossible to achieve any time soon.“
Gates of Fire.
“‘What we heard this morning was a welcome breath of honest, candid realism about the situation in Iraq,’ Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said during a midday break.” The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved Robert Gates, who helped his case considerably by admitting the obvious fact that Iraq’s looking ugly, as Rumsfeld’s replacement at the Pentagon yesterday. Among those impressed with Gates was Slate‘s Fred Kaplan: “I’ve been watching defense secretaries in confirmation hearings for 30 years, off and on, but I don’t think I’ve seen any perform more forthrightly than Gates did this morning.” Update: Gates goes through, 95-2.