Think Progress

Podesta Calls On McConnell To Apologize For Denigrating FBI Interrogation Of Abdulmuttalab

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) besmirched the reputation of FBI agents who interrogated terrorist Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab after he was arrested. “He was given a 50 minute interrogation, probably Larry King has interrogated people longer and better than that,” McConnell said on Fox News.

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Center for American Progress Action Fund President and CEO John Podesta noted that intelligence agents have skillfully secured the cooperation of Abdulmuttalab’s family. Because his family was assured that Abdulmuttalab was not being tortured, they worked with the FBI to convince the terrorist to talk. Abdulmuttalab then provided intelligence, some of which was apparently used to capture terrorists in Malaysia.

“I think you can huff and puff as former Governor Palin likes to do, but the proof’s in the pudding — he’s talking, they’ve gotten actionable intelligence, they’re acting on it,” Podesta said. When conservative pundit Peggy Noonan complained that the administration shouldn’t have told the public that Abdulmuttalab was cooperating, Podesta suggested disclosure may not have been necessary if political leaders like McConnell weren’t criticizing intelligence agents:

PODESTA: Maybe if all those politicians stopped attacking the FBI – Mitch McConnell likened the FBI to a Larry King interview – maybe if they stopped with the politics –

RUTH MARCUS: Now that’s cruel.

PODESTA: Well, no, I think he owes the FBI an apology. But if they’d stop with the politics, maybe they wouldn’t have to respond.

Watch it:

Later, Podesta defended the FBI: “I tend to listen to the professionals, and other people tend to listen to Governor Palin.”

He also referenced Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) “blanket hold” on Obama’s 70 executive nominees — two of whom include the head of the State Department intelligence official and the Homeland Security intelligence official. “What gives here?” Podesta asked. “Are these people serious or are they just playing politics?

Fox News Military Analyst Endorses DADT Repeal, Criticizes McCain For Flip-Flopping

This morning, Fox & Friends Weekend hosted Col. David Hunt, a Fox News military analyst, to discuss whether to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

According to his bio on the Fox News website, Hunt is a retired colonel with “over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in special operations, counter terrorism and intelligence operations.” Hunt generally adheres to the conservative line on national security matters. For instance, he was an advocate for attacking Iraq. And instead of encouraging dialogue with Iran and Syria, Hunt said in 2006, “I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them.”

This morning, however, Hunt sided with progressives who are advocating repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Hunt called the discriminatory law “an abject failure” because “we’ve lost somewhere between 11 and 14,000 soldiers.” He continued:

Being brave in the battlefield has nothing to do with how you go to the bathroom or how you have sex. … If you volunteer to serve this great country, we should welcome you, not push you away because of some arcane attitude about sex.

Even Fox host Clayton Morris agreed. “Yeah, it’s like a civil rights issue. I find it absolutely absurd,” Morris said. Then Morris and Hunt took a swipe at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who claims to heed the views of military leaders (except those with whom he disagrees):

MORRIS: On the campaign trail, then-Sen. John McCain said, look, when I hear from the military brass that they want to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I’ll get right in line with them. That’s what happened — we heard from Admiral Mullen, we heard from Defense Secretary Gates. … Why is John McCain flip-flopping here?

HUNT: It’s just too damn convenient for McCain to be doing this. … He’s just wrong on this. We’re in a war. We’ve got guys deployed for 8 years in Afghanistan, almost 7 years in Iraq. And somebody says, I want to serve this country. And McCain wants to say, if you’re homosexual, you can’t serve. It’s wrong. We need these kind of people. We need all of them.

Hunt said that the repeal of DADT won’t be “easily accepted” by the military because “it’s a conservative organization,” but it’s still the right thing to do in the long-run. Watch it:

Over the past few days, Fox has given ample airtime to those who defend DADT. Bill Kristol called it a “success.” Ollie North derided repeal as a harmful “social experiment.” Bill O’Reilly opposed repeal because “it’s a morale issue.”

A review of Fox News shows over the past month indicates that Hunt – generally, a regular contributor on Fox News – had not been called upon prior to this morning to offer his views on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Will Hunt be invited on other Fox News shows to discuss his views?

Sen. Shelby Holding Up All Obama Nominees — Including Top Security Officials — To Secure Pork For Alabama

Yesterday, CongressDaily (sub. req.) reported that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) had “placed a blanket hold on all executive nominations on the Senate calendar in an effort to win concessions from the Obama administration and Pentagon.” In a move that is “a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal,” Shelby is holding up more than 70 nominees.

Some of the nominees Shelby is blocking include “the top Intelligence officers at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the number three civilian at the Pentagon.” Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) objected on behalf of Shelby when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) attempted to bring some of the national security nominees up for a vote:

We learned why Thursday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked again to have votes on the nominees and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell objected, he said, on behalf of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Al.

The reason? Shelby is concerned his state might lose some (very) lucrative defense contracts.

In other words – pork. Shelby calls them “unaddressed national security concerns.” McConnell called it “an issue with which I’m not terribly familiar.”

“He is not able to be here at the moment to state his position,” said McConnell of Shelby. McConnell implied that that he’d rather go ahead with the votes. “Maybe we can in discussions with him make some progress on these sooner rather than later. but for the moment I’m constrained to object on his behalf,” said McConnell.

In particular, Shelby has laid down the nearly unprecedented blanket hold in order to gain leverage for his home state interests on two federal contracts:

– A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

– An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, expressed his “frustration” and “dismay” over “the road blocks which have been placed in the way of Senate nominations for key positions at the Department of Defense” on the Senate floor yesterday. “Nobody has informed me of any concern about the qualifications of anyone of these five nominees and yet there’s an objection here on the floor of the Senate,” said Levin. Watch it:

“We’ve got a huge backlog of folks who are unanimously viewed as well qualified — nobody has a specific objection to them — but end up having a hold on them because of some completely unrelated piece of business,” said President Obama on Wednesday. “That’s an example…of the kind of stuff that Americans just don’t understand.”

McConnell Claims Larry King Is ‘Better’ Than U.S. Interrogators At Questioning Terrorists

Ever since Nigerian Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, Republicans and conservatives have been attacking and politicizing the Obama administration’s response. Many have been whining that Abdulmutallab had not been properly interrogated and that valuable information has been lost. In an attempt to bash the Obama administration, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) today denigrated U.S. counterterrorism officials:

MCCONNELL: This was a person who was trying to blow a plane out of the air from Nigeria. It’s clearly a case for the military and for our intelligence people, not for the U.S. court system. What happened? He was given a 50 minute interrogation, probably Larry King has interrogated people longer and better than that. After which he was assigned a lawyer who told him to shut up. That is not the way to deal with someone in the war on terror.

Watch it:

It seems McConnell would rather try to score political points by undermining the work American counterterror officials are doing in the field, particularly in Abdulmutallab’s case, where key information has actually been gleaned. In fact, reports surfaced this week that Abdulmutallab “has been cooperating for days” with the FBI. But this isn’t the first time a Republican has tried to attack the administration by insulting U.S. agents. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that getting information from Abdulmutallab was “blind luck.”

According to the Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, former FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan, who has interrogated al Qaeda members, said “What would you expect from Mitch McConnell? … They just don’t know what they’re talking about. They really don’t“:

“People keep talking about Mirandizing as if it’s a preventive measure, getting someone to shut up, but most critics have never been in position [to] have to Mirandize one,” Cloonan said. “It’s to keep pristine information you’ve already gotten and to have a prosecutable case. It’s not the end of an interview. … They’re gonna get all kinds of information from this guy.”

In fact, Abdulmutallab’s family members convinced him to provide information to U.S. authorities, an outcome that resulted from U.S. counterterror agents working in Africa “to gain an understanding of the subject.” “The intelligence gained has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community,” a senior administration official said. “The best way to get him to talk was working with his family.”

Thanks To Obama’s Rejection Of Torture, Abdulmuttalab Has Been Providing Intel On Al Qaeda

President Obama’s counter-terrorism approach — especially his decision to publicly reject torture — received a huge vindication yesterday with the news that the FBI has been working with the family of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, and that “Abdulmuttalab has been cooperating with authorities and sharing intelligence since last Thursday”:

The agents and key family members arrived in back in the US on January 17th. The family members met with officials from the Justice Department and the FBI to plan a way forward.

“One of the principal reasons why his family came back is because they had complete trust in the US system of justice and believed that Umar Farouq would be treated fairly and appropriately,” the senior official said. “And that they would be as well.”

The FBI and Abdulmuttalab’s family approached the subject and “gained his cooperation. He has been cooperating for days,” the official said.

A key point here is that there is very little chance that Abdulmuttalab’s family would have agreed to cooperate with the U.S. government in getting Abdulmuttalab to talk if they suspected that he was in any danger of being tortured. This is a clear example of how President Obama’s bringing U.S. counter-terrorism practices back within the rule of law is making Americans safer.

A federal official told the New York Times that “the intelligence gained has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community,” and “the best way to get him to talk was working with his family.”

ABC also reported that “Abdulmuttalab was talking to FBI agents on Saturday, at the same time Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, issued the Republican response to the president’s weekly address, decrying Abdulmuttalab’s presence in the criminal justice system.”

It’s ironic that that Abdulmuttalab was providing information at the very moment conservatives were hyperventilating about the administration’s terrorism approach. The case also indicates that Obama’s decision to try the terrorist in criminal court has not served to cut off any information the U.S. could glean from Abdulmuttalab, as many critics have claimed. As CAP’s Ken Gude recently wrote, “The facts are clear: Criminal courts are a far tougher and more reliable forum for prosecuting terrorists than military commissions”:

The record of recent terrorism investigations demonstrates that interviews with terrorists who have attorneys have produced “an intelligence goldmine.”

False assumptions are driving the debate about the tools available to fight terrorism. President Obama needs to cut through the noise and use the tough and proven criminal justice system as a vital weapon in the fight against Al Qaeda.

Fortunately, it seems the president is doing just that.

Obama: Gitmo Has ‘Been Subject To A Lot Of…Pretty Rank Politics’

Today in an interview broadcast live exclusively on YouTube, Americans asked President Obama questions via email or video submissions. One questioner asked the President why it is taking so long to close Guantanamo Bay. Obama noted the various complicating factors in closing the facility, including what to do with the detainees, where they can be tried, and where they will be held. He also noted that one key problem has been “rank politics”:

OBAMA: One of the things that we’ve had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we’ve tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they’ve never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it’s been one of those things that’s been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.

Of course, Obama is right — Republicans and conservatives have launched attack after attack with baseless fear-mongering since the President announced his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and in particular, for proposals to move some of the detainees to maximum security prisons in the U.S.:

– Rep. Steve King (R-IA): “What happens then if another judge grants him asylum in the United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on a path to citizenship.”

– Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL): “If your Administration brings Al Qaeda terrorists to Illinois, our state and the Chicago Metropolitan Area will become ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization.”

– Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL): “[U.S. prisons housing terrorists] could be a target for future terrorist activity.”

– Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC): “Transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to U.S. soil will endanger American lives.”

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH): “I think the administration wasn’t around for 9/11.”

– Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL): “They wouldn’t be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn’t have the tropical breezes blowing through.”

Fox News hosts have joined in on the act, too. Fox & Friends even showed photos of Muslim men and asked, “Would you want a guy like this living in your backyard?” One local conservative even suggested that the al Qaeda suspects would indoctrinate the other American inmates. “You intermix them with the prison population, and there’s the very real possibility they would influence those individuals in prison,” she said.

Many terrorists have already been convicted in U.S. courts and currently reside in federal maximum security prisons, where they remain to this day without incident, whether indoctrinating inmates or escaping into locals’ “backyards.” In fact, many local residents have welcomed the idea of bringing the detainees to their prisons. Even Gen. David Petraeus — the right wing’s go-to man on national security issues — has said the U.S. needs to close Gitmo. “Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us,” he said.

Krauthammer On Abdulmutallab: ‘The Guy Is Nigerian,’ So You ‘Have To Assume’ He Wasn’t ‘Acting Alone’ »

Today’s Fox News Sunday panel looked at Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold terrorist trials in federal courts rather than military commissions. The discussion quickly shifted to Holder himself, and whether he should be fired. NPR’s Juan Williams argued that Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer were lobbing “unjustified” attacks on Holder since the Bush administration repeatedly tried terrorists in civilian courts.

Krauthammer then cited the case of the failed Christmas Day bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, saying that the Obama administration should have assumed that he “has people who are working with him” because he’s Nigerian:

KRAUTHAMMER: You arrest a guy who’s got a bomb in his underpants. You know, it’s likely he didn’t do it at home in his kitchen. … The guy is Nigerian. You’ve got to assume — you have to assume that he has people who are working with him.

WILLIAMS: Because he’s a Nigerian?

KRAUTHAMMER: Why do you assume otherwise? It makes no sense at all. You capture a terrorist and in almost all of our plots there are groups of terrorists. [...]

WILLIAMS: We have made such progress in terms of breaking down al Qaeda and getting them in terms of the structure to malfunction that there are now more lone wolves now and it’s tougher to capture and know the extent of knowledge they have at any one moment. There was no evidence, on the face of it on that day, had come from an al Qaeda training camp.

When Williams asked whether Holder should be held “accountable for all intelligence failures, including intelligence failures by the British and everybody else who didn’t understand what Abdulmutallab was up to,” Kristol smirked and shrugged his shoulders. Watch it:

On Jan. 5, President Obama admitted that there were “human and systemic failures that almost cost nearly 300 lives” on Christmas Day. He added that it “was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.” Unlike what Kristol was trying to argue, it was not solely the fault of “incompetence” by Holder.

Transcript: More »« Less

Axelrod Struggles To Explain Why Obama’s Spending Freeze Doesn’t Include Defense Funding

Yesterday, ThinkProgress joined a handful of journalists for a wide-ranging discussion with David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to President Obama. In his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, Obama announced a discretionary spending freeze that excluded the massive budgets of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

“Can you tell the American people that there aren’t any savings to be found in the Defense and Homeland Security budgets?” ThinkProgress asked Axelrod. The President’s Senior Adviser acknowledged, no, “I can’t tell you that” there aren’t savings which can be found there.

Axelrod highlighted prior efforts by the administration to rein in defense spending and insisted that further cuts could still be made. Yet the Pentagon budget — which is expected to exceed $700 billion when Obama unveils his budget on Feb. 1st — remains inexplicably exempt from the spending freeze.

“We live in a dangerous world,” Axelrod said in trying to justify the special exclusion for the defense budget. “What we can’t do at a time when we’re in two wars and we have a very determined enemy in Al Qaeda, we can’t stand down,” he added in an interview with Fox News. Yet, rather than carve out an exclusion to fund troops in the field, the administration opted for a more expansive exclusion. And while cuts might indeed be made to certain programs, the overall Pentagon budget will be allowed to increase without having to face the difficult tradeoffs that other departments will.

Asked whether politics played any part in the decision to carve out a special exclusion for national security-related budgets, Axelrod denied that it did. “There weren’t any meetings that I was in where that was talked about,” he told us.

As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters yesterday that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.

Joint Chiefs Stand And Applaud Obama’s Nuclear Comments, Sit Silently During Call To Repeal DADT

Although President Obama spent a significant amount of his State of the Union speech last night talking about domestic issues, he also addressed several national security issues. The Joint Chiefs sat quietly when Obama talked about a timeline to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and committed to working with the military to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

And in the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008. And in Afghanistan, we’re increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. [...]

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.

However, as Joe. My. God. points out, the Joint Chiefs didn’t sit passively during the entire speech, as the Supreme Court justices are supposed to do, although they traditionally applaud “rarely.” The Joint Chiefs stood and applauded when the President talked about supporting veterans or pledging to secure nuclear materials:

And at April’s Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring 44 nations together here in Washington, D.C. behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Watch a compilation:

A new study by UCLA’s Williams Institute estimates that there are an “estimated 66,000 lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are serving in the US military, accounting for approximately 2.2% of military personnel.” Additionally, repealing DADT “could attract an estimated 36,700 men and women to active duty service and 12,000 more individuals to the guard and reserve.” The Pentagon has reportedly been “stepping up internal discussions on how gay men and lesbians might be able to serve openly in the armed services,” in anticipation that Congress and the President will move forward on repeal.

Notably, Defense Secretary Robert Gates did stand and clap for Obama’s call to repeal DADT. (HT: AMERICAblog)

Spending Freeze Must Include Defense

Our guest blogger is Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress

If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon. In announcing a three-year spending freeze, he exempted all security-related funding. This exemption applies to the budgets of the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, foreign aid and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because the budgets of these agencies, particularly that of the Pentagon, are responsible for a large and increasing share of the discretionary portion of the federal budget, the president’s spending freeze will have a marginal effect.

Rather than exclude these accounts from the freeze for fear of appearing weak on defense, the president should mandate that the baseline defense budget also be frozen.

Indeed, freezing the base defense budget at its current level of about $532 billion would not hinder the Pentagon’s ability to conduct the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because they will be funded separately through a $160 billion supplemental. Moreover, freezing defense spending would force the Pentagon to make the hard choices it has avoided over the past decade. In the last ten years, the baseline defense budget nearly doubled from $290 billion in FY2000 to $532 billion, an increase of $242 billion or 83 percent, or more than 8 percent a year. Even if one controls for inflation, the real growth amounts to nearly 50 percent, about 5 percent a year in real terms. By way of contrast, non-defense discretionary spending, which the administration proposes to freeze, has averaged only 5 percent annual growth, or 2 percent real growth during that same period.

Additionally, spending on future weapons systems has outpaced spending on our troops. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has pointed out (pdf) that the operations and support portion of the base defense budget – which includes costs for recruitment, training, military and civilian personnel pay, and operating and maintaining equipment – has increased. Yet it has risen less in real terms than the investment portion of the budget, which includes procurement, research and development, and construction. The operations and support part has increased by 3.5 percent a year in real terms over the past decade, while the growth in investment has exceeded 5 percent.

To keep the baseline budget level at $532 billion, the Pentagon could reduce the FY2011 projected budget level for weapons development and purchases from about $190 billion to $170 billion. This could be done through a number of reductions in baseline defense spending. In particular, the U.S. government could acquire $20 billion in savings by taking some of the following measures, which I recommended in my recent report, Paying for the Troop Escalation in Afghanistan (pdf):

-Cut missile defense, while maintaining funding for its continued research and development. Saves about $6 billion.
-Keep the Virginia-class attack submarine production steady at one per year instead of ramping up to two per year in FY 2011. Saves about $2 billion
-Cancel the Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 at two ships. Saves about $1 billion
-Cancel the MV-22 Osprey and substitute cheaper helicopters while continuing production of the CV-22. Saves about $2 billion
-Cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program. Saves about $294 million
-Cut the FY 2011 F-35 purchase to twenty, slow down production of the aircraft, cancel the alternate engine program, and replace the cut planes with drones. Saves about $4 billion
-Cut FY 2011 funding for the Army’s Future Combat Systems by one third. Saves about $763 million
-Continue offensive space-based weapons development at a low rate. Saves about $100 million
-Reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 600 deployed warheads and 400 in reserve. Saves about $13 billion

This would still leave the FY 2011 baseline defense budget $15 billion higher in real terms than it was at the height of the Reagan buildup. And by using a unified approach to national security budgeting—which brings together national security spending from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development—additional funds could be transferred from DOD to the Department of Homeland Security so that its budget is not cut.

Will Obama Recess-Appoint Former TSA Nominee Erroll Southers?

On Wednesday, Transportation Security Administration head nominee Erroll Southers withdrew himself from the nomination. Southers withdrew due to fierce opposition from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who placed a hold on Southers over the nominee’s support for unionization rights.

Last night, Southers appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to explain why he decided to withdraw. He explained that he “felt like he was on his heels constantly” during his confirmation battle and didn’t feel like he would be able to convince DeMint to lift his hold. Maddow asked him if he would consider re-submitting himself for the nomination if President Obama decided to appoint him with a recess appointment, which would allow Obama to get around congressional obstructionism. Southers responded that he would:

MADDOW: There are a lot of people in the country who look at the politics of your nomination and want this administration to have fought for you, to have made an example of Jim DeMint for dismissing national security in favor of this no-win dog-and- pony show about unions, to have recess-appointed you if need be, to have made a fist-pounding speech about it to ward off any other obstructionist shenanigans like that. that. If the administration hypothetically had second thoughts and decided to renominate you and handle it like that, would you do it? Would you try it again? [...]

SOUTHERS: Yes, I would do it. I’m committed to the mission. I tried to convince Senator DeMint it was about the mission.

Watch it:

Reflecting on his confirmation fight, Southers told Maddow, “We need to address the threat that’s facing this country. The politics need to be aside. And as you mentioned earlier, I am apolitical. This is about terrorism and not about politics.”

Former Bush Speechwriter Attacks Reporter For Pointing Out Bush Techniques Were Used By Khmer Rouge

One of the most tragic legacies of the Bush administration was its authorization of brutal and ineffective harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects that were tantamount to torture. One technique that President Bush admitted that he personally authorized was waterboarding, which involves the simulated drowning of a suspect.

Yesterday, former Bush speechwriter and conservative author Marc Thiessen appeared on CNN’s Amanpour and defended the previous administration’s interrogation policies. During one point during their exchange, Thiessen attacked host Christiane Amanpour for a segment she did in 2008 noting the parallels between Bush’s use of waterboarding and waterboarding techniques used during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and during the Spanish Inquisition:

THIESSEN: There have been so many misstatements told about the enhanced interrogation techniques, comparing them to the Spanish Inquisition, to the Khmer Rouge. And I have to tell you, Christiane, you’re one of the people who have spread these mistruths.

AMANPOUR: Excuse me?

THIESSEN: I’m sorry. You went to S-21, the Khmer Rouge prison [...]

AMANPOUR: Yes, and we saw the waterboarding there that they used as a torture technique. That’s called spreading the truth! [...]

THIESSEN: We did not submerge people in a box full of water. [...]

AMANPOUR: That is called waterboarding, you can say in whichever way you want! [...] You’re trying to obfuscate the debate here. [...]

THIESSEN: It’s nothing like what the CIA used.

Watch it:

As David Corn notes, there wasn’t “much difference between the Bush administration’s interrogation policy and the techniques used by the Khmer Rouge.” In 2006, a journalist e-mailed Corn a photograph of a painting done by a former Khmer Rouge prisoner depicting the torture he was subjected to, which shows interrogators pouring water on the suspect’s face — exactly what was authorized by President Bush:

Chavez Attacks U.S. Efforts In Haiti: ‘They Are Occupying Haiti Undercover’

Yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez issued a condemnatory broadside against the Obama administration’s efforts to help Haiti recover from the recent devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake:

I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that’s what the United States should send,” Chavez said on his weekly television show. “They are occupying Haiti undercover.”

“On top of that, you don’t see them in the streets. Are they picking up bodies? … Are they looking for the injured? You don’t see them. I haven’t seen them. Where are they?”

Chavez’s claims are wholly uninformed. While there are nearly 6,000 U.S. military personnel assisting in Haiti (with another 7,500 on the way), they are enabling the recovery effort to proceed. Thanks to efforts by the U.S. military to secure the airport, the pace of the air traffic into Port-au-Prince carrying food and supplies for victims “has increased from 60 flights to about a 100 a day.” U.S. forces are providing security at the request of the Haitian government.

Moreover, more than 250 personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services “are in the process of deploying to Haiti and over 12,000 personnel could possibly assist in the coming days.” Additionally, “2 planeloads of medicine, medical equipment and supplies from HHS have arrived in Haiti with a third” on the way. The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort “has left its home port of Baltimore to support relief efforts in Haiti.”

Lastly, there are 26 international search and rescue teams in Haiti, including teams from Fairfax County Virginia, Los Angeles, Virginia Beach, two from Miami, and one from New York. U.S. teams have rescued at least 26 individuals already.

As for the U.S.’s intentions in Haiti, we are not there to occupy but rather “to save lives.” As President Obama said last week, “this is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share. With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are neighbors of the Americas and here at home.  So we have to be there for them in their hour of need.” Denis McDonough, chief of staff for the National Security Council, added, “The one thing I don’t think any of us will apologize for is the hard work in support of relieving the suffering of the Haitian people.”

Flashback: Bush Also Threatened To Withhold Loan Guarantees From Israel

This past Wednesday, U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell — who successfully brokered peace in Northern Ireland — suggested to a PBS host that the United States could “withhold support on loan guarantees to Israel” as one tool to pressure the Israelis to seriously engage in peace efforts.

Mitchell’s remarks have sparked an “uproar” among the Israeli right, which has been intransigent on the issues of settlement expansion and the economic blockade of Gaza. Israel’s Maariv newspaper called Mitchell’s suggestion a “bombshell,” and Israeli finance minister Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz snapped, “We don’t need to use these guarantees. We are doing just fine.” Additionally, “senior members of Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party…[said] in a statement that they would not be ‘threatened’ by the US.”

Meanwhile, a group of legislators — Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), John Barrasso (R-WY), and John Thune (R-SD) — appeared at a press conference in Jerusalem and slammed Mitchell’s openness to using all available tools to forge a Middle East peace:

Lieberman, after saying that an administration official had already disavowed Mitchell’s statement, said that in his opinion “any attempt to pressure Israel, to force Israel to the negotiating table by denying Israel support, will not pass the Congress of the United States. In fact, the Congress will stop any attempt to do that. I don’t think we will come to that point.”

McCain was equally unequivocal, saying that this type of pressure would not be helpful “and I don’t agree with it.” McCain added that he was sure that the administration would make it clear in the future that this was not its policy.

What right-wing critics of Mitchell’s suggestion do not acknowledge is that threatening to freeze loan guarantees is hardly unique to the Obama administration. In fact, the last time such a threat was made was under President George W. Bush. In 2003, Bush made the explicit threat to withhold loan guarantees from the Israelis due to the expansion of their “security fence” deep into Palestinian territory. Bush’s father went even further. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush briefly cut off loan guarantees to the Israeli government over their settlement policies, successfully forcing “Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir…to attend the Madrid Peace Conference.”

As Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now writes, Mitchell’s “determination deserves support” in his effort to use every option in our diplomatic toolbox to successfully bring about peace in the Middle East. The former senator made peace “in Northern Ireland and he is determined to do it in Israel-Palestine as well.”

Liz Cheney Airs Hypocritical Attack Ad On Obama For Waiting ‘100 Hours’ To Respond To Terror Plot

In their eagerness to place blame on President Obama for the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack, Republicans have argued that the president waited too long to talk publicly about the matter. Karl Rove began the assault by complaining that Obama waited “72 hours before” addressing the American public. RNC Chairman Michael Steele and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani have piled on with a similar criticism.

Liz Cheney’s neoconservative political attack organization, Keep America Safe, is out with a new ad titled “100 hours.” Replete with images of Obama golfing, the ad — which imitates the TV show 24 — ends with the question, “How long did it take you to realize the system failed?”:

Of course, while Obama wasn’t speaking publicly about the terrorist incident, he was directing an immediate federal response.

Moreover, as Huffington Post’s Sam Stein documented, President Bush didn’t utter a single word about shoe bomber Richard Reid’s terrorist attack for six days, whereupon he simply said that he was “grateful for the flight attendant’s response, as I’m sure the passengers on that airplane.”

On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos confronted Cheney about her hypocritical attack. “As many Democrats and others have pointed out, President Bush waited I think six days before doing much about Richard Reid, the shoe bomber,” he noted. Cheney evaded the question entirely, pretending not to hear it. “The point of that ad,” she said, “was this notion that you cannot win a war if you’re treating it as sort of an inconvenient sidelight.” Watch it:

Rahm Emanuel Reportedly ‘Fed Up’ With Israelis And Palestinians Over Peace Process

Upon entering office, President Obama made resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority for his administration, saying the issue is “interrelated” with “what’s happening” throughout the region. Part of the administration’s strategy has been to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government to endorse a two-state solution and a full settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

After many months of balking and intransigence, Netanyahu finally announced that he would accept a Palestinian state (although a highly “circumscribed” one at best). And last November, the Israeli government announced a settlement freeze in the West Bank. Yet the move would only be temporary, exclude so-called “natural growth” construction already started and exclude East Jerusalem, where just yesterday, Israel’s Jerusalem municipality approved construction of new apartments for Jewish settlers.

In a recent meeting with Yaki Dayan, Israel’s Consul in Los Angeles, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly expressed his frustration with the situation, saying the U.S. is “fed up” with the Israelis who “adopt the right ideas too late“:

Emanuel’s complaint was made with regard to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “belated recognition” of the principle of “two states for two peoples,” as well as the Jewish construction freeze in the communities of Judea and Samaria, which was only announced “many months” after the United States asked, or instructed, Israel to carry it out.

Emanuel also lashed out at the Palestinians, who he said “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” for peace. According to Dayan, Emanuel said “if there is no progress in the diplomatic process, we will reduce our involvement and effort in the conflict, because we have other matters to deal with.”

By contrast, in an interview with Middle East Progress just last month, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace former Sen. George Mitchell said the administration is “determined” to get a deal, but that it will take time:

With time, with patience, and with courageous leadership, however, such compromises can be reached for one overriding reason: It is in the best interest of the region’s people — Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs. The next generation should not have to live through what the present leadership has endured, and we are determined that peace can be achieved.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “have been clear about our commitment both to Israel’s security and to the two-state solution based on the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state with contiguous territory,” Mitchell said. “This commitment is unwavering and in the national security interests of the United States.”

Steele Hypocritically Criticizes Obama For Having Yet To Close Guantanamo Bay

During an interview with RNC chairman Michael Steele this morning on NBC’s Today Show, host Meredith Vieira noted that Republicans have been politicizing 23-year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt at blowing up a U.S. airliner. After pointing out that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) has even been trying to raise money off the incident, she asked Steele if “it is fair game for the Republicans to say that Democrats are less concerned with Americans’ safety than Republicans are.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of saying…who is more concerned,” Steele said, before launching into a rather incoherent attack on President Obama’s “approach to foreign policy”:

STEELE: What it is is looking at the approach this administration has taken from its very first moments coming in talking about closing down Gitmo with no strategy or plan to do that and here we are a year later and Gitmo is still part of the mix. Now with this recent incident given everything in between, there is this image at least that’s been created, this presence of the presidency and so forth that is not consistent in their approach to foreign policy and there are a lot of questions out there.

Watch it:

Steele must have had a change of heart about Gitmo. He has previously criticized Obama for wanting to close the prison facility. “It’s astonishing that the day after we learned one in seven terrorists who have been freed returned to terrorism, President Obama gave a speech in which he is still promising to close down Gitmo,” Steele said last May.

And when the administration announced its intention to send Guantanamo detainees to a federal prison in Illinois (i.e the very “strategy or plan” Steele is demanding) to close the facility, Steele whined. “President Obama has left little doubt that he is more concerned with America’s world popularity than the will and the safety of the very people who elected him president,” he complained.

The RNC website contains numerous statements and blog posts attacking Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay.

Chertoff: More Ethnic ‘Profiling’ Could Be ‘Misleading And Arguably Dangerous’

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, the right-wing has used the failed terrorist attack by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to renew calls for greater ethnic profiling of Muslims. “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed,” said conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher on Fox News last week.

But when David Gregory asked former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden on Meet The Press today if we are “effectively ethnically profiling” potential terrorism suspects, Hayden pushed back against the idea of ethnic profiling as a solution:

HAYDEN: I’m not quite sure the context in which you’re asking the question David about ethnically profiling, but with regard to intelligence…

GREGORY: Isn’t there a profile of who we think the terrorists are?

HAYDEN: Of course there is, but it’s based more on behavior. I mean, for example, the individual in question here, Abdulmutallab, I mean he would not have automatically fit a profile if you were standing next to him in the visa line at Dulles, for example. So it’s the behavior that we’re attempting to profile. And it’s the behavior, these little bits and pieces of information that were in the databases that we didn’t quite stitch together at this point in time. But it wasn’t a question of ethnicity or religion. Those are contributing factors, but it’s what people do that we should be paying attention to.

Unsatisfied, Gregory pressed his point to former Bush Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, saying that counterterrorism officials have told him that religion and ethnicity are more than “contributing factors” because “90 percent” of “these terrorists” are “Islamic males between the ages of 20 and 30.”

But Chertoff pushed back, arguing that “relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and arguably dangerous.” Chertoff noted that al Qaeda has intentionally recruited people “who don’t fit the stereotype.” Watch it:

Earlier this week, Chertoff told NPR that Abdulmutallab’s case “illustrates the danger and the foolishness of profiling because people’s conception of what a potential terrorist looks like often doesn’t match reality.” “I think it’s not only problematic from civil rights’ standpoint, but frankly,” Chertoff said, “I think it winds up not being terribly effective.”

Official Army History: Bush Administration Neglected Afghan War, Diverted Resources to Iraq

During President Obama’s December speech announcing a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he noted that the effort was finally getting the resources it needed. During the previous administration, Obama said, “commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” “In early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war, in Iraq,” Obama said, and “for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention.”

Former Bush administration officials fired back, claiming the Iraq war did not deprive resources from Afghanistan. Former White House adviser Karl Rove said “the United States had, at the time what the military felt was an appropriate level of resources.” Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Obama’s comments a “bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense.” Later, Rumsfeld spokesperson Keith Urbahn turned up the heat, accusing Obama distorting the facts.

Unfortunately for Rumsfeld, Rove and their neo-con allies, the Army’s official history of the first four years of the war completely contradicts their claims. The New York Times reported this week that according to the official history, as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to officials at Centcom and [the Department of Defense] that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for a proper counterinsurgency campaign. Paraphrasing the history, the Times notes that American forces were “hamstrung by inadequate resources” and thus “missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war.”

“A Different Kind of War,” the title of the account, to be published this Spring, is written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth and covers the period from October 2001 until September 2005. Rumsfeld was secretary of defense during this entire time. The Army writes such reports after major military engagements in order to train future commanders.

Contradicting Rove and Rumsfeld, the historians blame the Iraq war for the lack of resources in Afghanistan, as well as top Bush officials and the president himself:

The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.

First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall. [...]

Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.

The historians also note that, as was the case in Iraq, Bush officials had neglected to properly plan for what to do after the government fell. “[T]here was no major planning initiated to create long-term political, social and economic stability in Afghanistan,” the historians write. “In fact, the message from senior D.O.D officials in Washington was for the U.S. military to avoid such efforts.”

Despite Rove and Rumsfeld’s attempts to salvage their legacies, it’s widely accepted that the Bush administration neglected the Afghan war. But as the Times notes, these new findings are “notable for carrying the imprimatur of the Army itself.”

DeMint Uses Failed Terrorist Bombing To Attack Unions

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) used the recent failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an airliner at the Detroit airport as an opportunity to attack the Obama administration for “appeasement,” as well as to attack unions and collective bargaining.

Asked by host Chris Wallace whether he was concerned that “the Obama administration has not done as good a job as it should have in connecting the dots,” DeMint replied “Chris, I am concerned, because it’s related to another issue that we’re dealing with now in the Senate. The administration is intent on unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses’ collective bargaining”:

DEMINT: And this is at a time, as Senator Lieberman said, that we’ve got to use our imaginations, we’ve got to be constantly flexible, we have to out-think the terrorists. And when we formed the airport security system, we realized we could not use collective bargaining because of that need to be flexible. Yet that appears now to be the top priority of the administration. And this whole thing should remind us, Chris, that the soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not gonna appease the terrorists. They’re gonna keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.

Watch it:

Actually, “politics as usual” is what we’ve got with Sen. DeMint’s blatant attempt to exploit a failed terrorist attack to go after two conservative bugaboos, “appeasement” and unions. But neither engagement nor closing Gitmo represent anything like “appeasement.” Obama’s engagement with Iran, while it hasn’t yet produced an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, has done a lot to forge the international unity that will be necessary if and when the administration chooses to go the sanctions route.

On Guantanamo, General David Petraeus, among others, has recognized that closing the detention center is a wise and necessary step in the ideological battle against extremism, one that “sends an important message to the world” regarding “the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.” DeMint’s deriding these measures as “soft talk” shows that he still subscribes to the failed Bush-Cheney policies that Americans rejected in 2008.

It’s unclear what, if anything, “union bosses’ collective bargaining” has to do with the failed airliner attack, other than that DeMint doesn’t like unions, and will use any excuse to attack them.