Secrecy

Dear Friends,

I have been traveling the last few days and unable to post.  I miss it even if the world gets along fine without it. 

In the New York Times today there were two articles (safely in back pages) one on page A12 and the other on page A20 which left me with the feeling that the Obama Administration is following the lead of the Bush Administration in terms of secrecy.

The first article is entitled "Losing Legal Fight, Britain Reveals Detainee's Treatment by the U.S." by John F. Burns.  (here)  British courts have forced the release of a summary of secret information about the American treatment of Binyam Mohamed by the United States. The article says:

In themselves, the revelations in the Foreign Office document contained little that was not already known from previous disclosures by the Central Intelligence Agency about the so-called stress techniques used by American interrogators while questioning terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
What was starkly new, however, was the Foreign Office’s conclusion that the treatment Mr. Mohamed endured, had it been carried out under the authority of British officials, would have breached international treaties banning torture. It was the first time that Britain has been so blunt about its disapproval of the interrogation techniques approved by former President George W. Bush and curtailed last year by President Obama.
“Although it is not necessary for us to categorize the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities,” the document posted on the Foreign Office Web site said.

There was nothing new in the disclosures, and we all knew that the United States had tortured.   So what is the big deal.  The Obama Administration was putting lots of pressure on the British government to keep the report secret.  The article states:

Under intense American pressure, Foreign Office lawyers had sought for more than a year to prevent publication of the information. Citing warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others, they argued that the summary’s publication could cause irrevocable damage to intelligence-sharing between the United States and Britain — a relationship that British officials said was essential to Britain’s security, in particular to its counterterrorist operations.

When will we see the openness promised by candidate Obama.  When will the Obama Administration hold the Bush Administration responsible for violating the law and the Constitution.

The second article is entitled "Two Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the U.S. for Years" by Mark Mazzetti. (here) I was not the least bit surprise to hear that Blackwater may have been defrauding the government.  What surprised me was the following:

The documents detailing the Davises’ accusations were unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join in the case against Blackwater, which last year changed its name to Xe Services. A Xe spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about the case.

The Obama Administration needs to stop covering up the past and hold people accountable. 

We need to hold the Obama Administration accountable on candidate Obama's campaign promises and to shine a bright light on how things work in Washington, otherwise there will never be change.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Democracy

Dear Friends,

How are we doing today?

The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.  I am not a pro sports fan, but we did TIVO the game today.  It is great to watch the game after it was over on very fast forward.  All I had to do was watch the top part of the screen to see the score.  I have to admit, I cheered every time New Orleans scored.  I am a sucker for an underdog victory.  In this case I was even more sentimentally in favor of New Orleans not because they beat the Vikings which I think they did to get to the Super Bowl but New Orleans deserves a few breaks.

Anyway, today would have been great except that we also TIVOed "Meet the Press".

In order for a democracy to work well you need to have a relatively well educated electorate, and you need to have an independent and free press so that the electorate can get the facts.  Our democracy is not doing well.

Our public education system has been starved so that it can not possibly provide a reasonable education to the American public.  There are many reasons for this failure, but I do not have the time today to enumerate them.  I should just point out that our capitalist system for some reason does not value in monetary terms the extremely important job of teaching our children.

On the other hand, we do have a press that could be free and independent, but they have become lazy journalists.  See a much more elaborate description of the laziness at ich bin ein oberliner. Journalists simply repeat what politicians and other say.  Their idea of fair and balanced is to report what someone on the right said and what someone on the left said regardless of the truth of what was said.  Many journalists simple regurgitate the talking points of the political parties.  The kind of journalism that we need is when the journalist does the research to find the facts and doesn't let the politicians say things that are blatantly false.

Andrea Mitchell came close to doing her job when she interviewed Senator Collins who had given the Republican talking points about how terrible it was to give the underpants bomber the rights he was entitled to under the Constitution (even under President Bush's interpretation of the Constitution).  Here is the clip of their interview:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

David Gregory, on "Meet the Press" today was so engrossed in the Republican talking point that only United States citizens are entitled to the protections afforded by the Constitution that he assumed them in his question.  Fortunately, his guest, John Brennan, President Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, set him straight.  Here is the exchange:


MR. GREGORY:  A lot of that criticism is about the handling of the Christmas Day bomber, Abdulmutallab, Abdulmutallab--sorry, it's hard to get that name right.  Why was he treated as an ordinary citizen (emphasis added) for even the period of time that he was, providing some information, then getting a lawyer after he was given his Miranda rights?

MR. BRENNAN:  He wasn't treated as an ordinary citizen, he was treated as a terrorist.  He was immediately taken into custody, he was questioned under the public safety exception as far as Mirandizing an individual.  FBI agents were there on the ground, as well as with customs and border patrol agents.  We reacted very well to that situation.  He was then put into a process that has been the same process that we have used for every other terrorist who has been captured on our soil, whether they be U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens--Richard Reid, Ahmed Ressam, Amari and others.  They were brought into custody by law enforcement officials and then treated accordingly.  So there was no distinction.  And, in fact, the FBI's guidelines that they use, the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, was the implementation of the attorney general guidelines that were finalized by Attorney General Casey in the last administration in December of 2008.  That is when those guidelines were put in place.  So the procedures and the protocols were exactly consistent with what we've done before.  Now, after this incident, the president asked us to take a new look and see whether or not those processes are ones that we are comfortable with and whether or not we can enhance and strengthen them.  And that's what we're looking at right now.  But those FBI agents and others acted appropriately.  And, quite frankly, I'm tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football.  They are going out there, they're, they're unknowing of the facts, and they're making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality.

I do not know how David Gregory gets away with calling himself a journalist.  We need a lot more work like that of Andrea Mitchell.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal