Bush’s nominee for attorney-general denounced the “Bybee Memo” on torture, analogizes the values it embeds to those of Nazi Germany, and disavows a special commander-in-chief-override rule that lets the president break the law:
Good for him.
Mukasey: ‘I Would Not Advise’ Granting Habeas Rights ‘Beyond Those That Detainees Already Have’
One year ago today, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 suspended habeas corpus for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo and other offshore prisons. “At the urging of the Bush administration, the Republican-controlled Congress last year voted to sharply limit detainee access to the courts.”
In the confirmation hearing of Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — who previously threatened to filibuster the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act — asked Mukasey whether he would restore habeas corpus to “unlawful enemy combatants” held in U.S. detention centers.
Mukasey said he would not support granting habeas corpus rights to detained prisoners at Gitmo:
GRAHAM: Would you advise the President of the United States to allow unlawful enemy combatants to have habeas rights, to grant them habeas corpus rights at Guantanamo Bay?
MUKASEY: I would not advise the President to grant rights beyond those that they already have.
Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/10/mukaseyhabeas2.320.240.flv]
Graham asked if Mukasey “associates” himself with former Attorney General Robert Jackson’s statement that expanding legal rights to detainees would cause a “conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States.” “Yes I do,” affirmed Mukasey.
Earlier in today’s hearings, Mukasey refused to say whether he would recommend to Bush that Guantanamo be shut down. Unfortunately, it appears that many of Alberto Gonzales’ punitive detainee policies will continue under Mukasey’s Justice Department.
UPDATE: Today, Amnesty International took out a full-page ad in USA Today commemorating the Military Commissions Act’s one-year anniversary. View the ad HERE.
What Chris Bowers Said
This stuff makes me sad and angry all at the same time.
Operation Ivy
Okay, did some research and reporting into Bush’s statement that Iran must be denied not nuclear weapons, but the “knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” This isn’t an entirely new position from the White House, but it had kind of gone missing from administration rhetoric, so it’s return to prominence is potentially significant. Specifically, I’m told that the crux of the matter is that there’s no evidence of an active Iranian nuclear weapons program. There is, however, a uranium enrichment program that could at some point be used as part of a weapons program.
But basically were you to want to use military force against the Iranian nuclear weapons program tomorrow, you’d run into the problem that there’s nothing there. If you define the threshold down to some kind of war on knowledge, however, you put yourself in a position where maybe you can define the centrifuges Iran already has as constituting the knowledge they must be denied or at least a program to obtain the knowledge. Thus you have, on the level of rhetoric though not international law or sound diplomacy, the justification for military action.
On the other hand, perhaps Bush just screwed up and doesn’t know what he’s talking about and there’s nothing to worry about. Alternatively, maybe he knows exactly what he’s talking about and we ought to worry. Or maybe we ought to worry that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. At a minimum, I’m kind of worried.
Days After Claiming U.S. Less Safe Due To Iraq War, Counterterrorism Chief Suddenly Resigns
Retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told NBC News this weekend that the U.S. is not “tactically” safer as a result of the Iraq war. That message defied the official line from White House counterterrorism adviser Fran Townsend, who said the “threat level would have been worse” had we not attacked Iraq.
Redd also acknowledged that, over the short term, the Iraq war has created a “giant recruiting tool” for terrorists. Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/10/scottredd.320.240.flv]
Today, Redd announced his sudden resignation from the NTC. The AP reports:
Retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd said he is stepping down next month to have a long-delayed surgery and spend more time with his five grandchildren and the rest of his family. His spokesman, Carl Kropf, said Redd needs to have both knees replaced. The surgery will require follow-up rehabilitation and would have meant a prolonged absence from the center.
In a note to employees, Redd “provided an upbeat assessment of the administration’s fight against terrorism,” which appeared to contradict his statements made to NBC just a few days earlier. “I believe that as a country we are better prepared today than at any time in our history to wage this war,” he said in his note, neglecting to mention his view that America is actually less safe today because of the Iraq war.
Defining World Wars Down
Our President: “So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Two points. One: This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war.
Two: Note where Bush has placed the goalposts here. Not preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure what the significance of that switch is, but it seems significant.
For Love of War
Eric Martin and Robert Farley comment on Ethiopia’s troubled counterinsurgency campaign in Somalia as we approach the first anniversary of their US-backed invasion and conquest of that country. Here’s Farley:
It’s remarkable that so many conservative commentators identified deeply not just with the Ethiopian operation, but with the Ethiopian methods, while simultaneously embracing the counter-insurgency manual of General Petraeus. That the manual lays out a campaign plan directly antithetical to the Ethiopian methods seemed to escape them…
It is remarkable, but it’s not surprising. They nominally embraced COIN doctrine because that’s what one had to do to continue to be an enthusiastic armchair backer of the Iraq War. And they embrace contrary methods in Ethiopia because that’s what one has to do to be a supporter of war there. They like war, especially war against Muslims, and are happy to embrace whatever sort of theories can maintain war fever in as many parts of the world as possible.
Realism and the Armenian Genocide
The people arguing that passing a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide right at this moment doesn’t seem like a particularly sound method of advancing the national interest are, of course, correct. At the same time, though, one ought to recognize that on a realist account these gloom-and-doom predictions of US-Turkish relations in the wake of the resolution are false. Turkey is going to formulate its policy vis-à-vis the United States of America in light of Turkey’s interests and not actually radically restructure things in the wake of a symbolic resolution. Things like the strategic partnership with Israel and membership in NATO (and the base-hosting it entails) stand or fall on their own merits and Turkish-US partnership in Iraq is going to be determined by the ability of Turkish and American officials to forge a compromise position on the Kurds that both sides prefer to no compromise at all.
Dog Bites Man
Conservative bloggers get in a tizzy about Libya getting a rotating seat on the UN Security Council, conservative bloggers don’t understand what they’re talking about. No surprise there.
