The Political Junkies

Former Bush Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, provides the first critical peek behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz world of the Bush administration. McClellan’s revelations confirm the intentional, deceitful smoke and mirrors manipulation of foreign intelligence and the public relations campaign to sell the war to the American public. McClellan is the first within the President’s inner circle to step forward; there will be others in the coming years.

While McClellan’s revelations expose the corrupt intent of the Bush administration, he also portrays the capitulation of the American media in the fact of that corruption. McClellan’s assessment is damning:

"In the fall of 2002, Bush and his White house were engaging in a carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval to our advantage. We'd done much the same on other issues--tax cuts and education--to great success. But war with Iraq was different. Beyond the irreversible human costs and substantial financial price, the decision to go to war and the way we went about selling it would ultimately lead to increased polarization and intensified partisan warfare. Our lack of candor and honesty in making the case for war would later provoke a partisan response from our opponents that, in its own way, further distorted and obscured a more nuanced reality. Another cycle of deception would cloud the public's ability to see larger, underlying important truths that are critical to understand in order to avoid the same problems in the future.

"And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it… the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth--about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict--would get largely left behind…"

McClellan’s assessment is confirmed by Jessica Yellin, a CNN Congressional Correspondent:

JESSICA YELLIN: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

I think, over time...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

But Democrats are not blameless in the Republican exercise of deception and manipulation that led to the war and occupation of Iraq. The Democratic Party must hold a mirror to itself to examine its failures to act as a united opposition Party at this most critical period of American history. Democrats must ask if our elected representatives failed not because we were duped by a corrupt Republican led government with no allegiance to the truth or whether Democratic leaders disengaged from their duty fearing the potential political consequences of opposing a popular President.

The answers from that self-examination will reveal the Party we are; and more importantly, set the aspirations for a Party that Americans can entrust the power to govern. Between the two may lay the fate of constitutional democracy in the United States.

American society is fashioned on a number of contracts between one generation and the next. The concept of free and appropriate public education, social security retirement benefits, preservation of the environment are a few examples. The concept is relatively simple; one generation is the steward to ensure the place of the next generation.

Bush’s concept of an ownership society threatens those generational contracts that have propelled America to the strongest power in the world. The most recent example of Bush’s ownership society is found in national healthcare.

The number of uninsured U.S. young adults, who already represent a major chunk of the American population without health coverage, rose again in 2006, according to a study released on Friday.

Based on census data, 13.7 million people aged 19 to 29 had no health insurance, either public or private, in 2006, up from 13.3 million in 2005, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that researches health policy.

Men and women in this age group accounted for 17 percent of the under-65 U.S. population, but made up almost 30 percent of the uninsured, according to the report. At age 65, people enter the federal Medicare insurance program.

"There has been a steady upward climb in the number of young adults without health insurance coverage," Sara Collins, an author of the report, said in a telephone interview.

Reducing the number of Americans who lack health insurance has emerged as an issue in this year's U.S. presidential campaign. The government estimates that 47 million people have no health coverage in a country of about 300 million.

"If you ask young adults, as we do in our survey, if you've ever had problems accessing health care because of cost -- not filling a prescription, not seeing a specialist -- two thirds of uninsured young adults say yes," Collins said. . . .

Those aged 19 to 29 represent one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population lacking health insurance, the report said.

Money: More than 40% of uninsured young adults live in households with incomes below the poverty level.

Age: A 19th birthday can be an unhappy occasion when it comes to insurance. It often means young adults lose coverage under their parents’ employer-sponsored plans or even government programs such as Medicaid, which have tougher requirements for enrollment once you’re not a kid any more. College graduation is another shaky time when it comes to coverage. . . .

Employment status: Many young adults have temporary or part-time jobs or work for small employers. Often that means no health benefits. Young workers also tend to job hop and go without insurance during gaps in employment.

The simple fact remains that employer based health insurance is faltering. With Republican “ownership society” philosophy, younger citizens will simply have to do without health insurance. As Marie Cocco notes, Sen. McCain, adhering to Republican economic philosophy:

seeks to placate a right wing for whom any hint of government intervention is apostasy, would effectively dismantle the current employer-based system by eliminating the tax deduction that businesses now get when they pay the health premiums for their employees. Most experts say this would quicken the pace at which employers are dropping coverage.

McCain would provide tax credits for individuals to purchase insurance, but he relies on the unproved theory that if full costs and responsibility for insurance were shifted back to individuals and families, prices would drop. "This is a 'back to the future' plan, returning us all to the period before the creation of employer-based group insurance in the 1930s, when individuals and families were 'on their own' to find ways of paying for their health care," concludes an issue brief by Rekindling Reform, a New York-based group of religious, academic, social welfare agencies, unions and public health organizations.

Does McCain represent the right kind of change for America? Or, is a McCain presidency, instead of preparing America for its next generation of citizens simply adhering to a policy that is failing and will continue to fail?

In April, TPJ covered (“Modern Inquisition”) the resignation of Morris D. Davis who served as chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He resigned his Commission last year in protest of the lack of justice being administered under the direction of the Bush administration.

I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly. . . .

The convening authority decides which charges filed by the prosecution go to trial and which are dismissed, chooses who serves on the jury, decides whether to approve requests for experts and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences, among other things.

Earlier this year, Susan Crawford was appointed by the secretary of Defense to replace Maj. Gen. John Altenburg as the convening authority. Altenburg's staff had kept its distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality. Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution's pretrial preparation of cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things.

How can you direct someone to do something -- use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance -- and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused.

The second reason I resigned is that I believe even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed with skepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors. Telling the world, "Trust me, you would have been impressed if only you could have seen what we did in the courtroom" will not bolster our standing as defenders of justice. Getting evidence through the classification review process to allow its use in open hearings is time-consuming, but it is time well spent.

Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.

I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes' place in my chain of command.

Davis’ complete explanation is must reading. He describes a prosecutorial system that is unjust by rational standards of jurisprudence.

The bastardization of fundamental jurisprudence at Guantanamo continues. Most recently, a Military Judge who made rulings contrary to the US Government was removed from a case:

The chief judge at Guantánamo replaced the military judge in one of the most closely watched war crimes cases on Thursday, creating a new controversy in the military commission system and the potential for new delays.

The decision to replace the judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III, came without explanation from the chief military judge, Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann. Judge Brownback has been presiding over pretrial proceedings in the prosecution of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a 21-year-old Canadian charged with the killing of an American serviceman in Afghanistan.

Pentagon spokesmen said Judge Brownback, a retired Army judge who was recalled to hear Guantánamo cases in 2004, would return to retirement as a result of “a mutual decision” between the judge and the Army.

But defense lawyers and critics of Guantánamo said there had been no warning of the change and suggested that he had been removed because of a recent ruling that was a rebuke to prosecutors.

During a proceeding on May 8, Judge Brownback expressed irritation that military prosecutors had failed to turn over records of Mr. Khadr’s incarceration to defense lawyers. He threatened to stop pretrial proceedings if the records were not supplied by May 22. They met that deadline.

At the time, Judge Brownback said he had been “badgered and beaten and bruised” by the chief military prosecutor in the case, Maj. Jeffrey D. Groharing, to move the case toward a trial quickly.

Mr. Khadr’s military defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, on Friday called the replacement of the judge “very odd.”

“The judge who was frustrating the government’s forward progress in the Khadr case,” Commander Kuebler said, “is suddenly gone.”

It appears that the Bush administration is simply manipulating the Guantanamo trials to secure convictions. Removal of judges without explanation or justification has no place in any system of jurisprudence that is designed to be fair and impartial.

Tumble Weed (Bush) Watch