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Shin Bet Secretly Detains Reporter for Leaking Top-Secret IDF Memos

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Shin bet logo

NOTE: On March 14th, I was the first blogger or journalist to report this story outside Israel. Subsequently, an Israeli peace activist informed me that Anat Kam’s attorney and friends have asked others not to publicize her case. In honor of that, I decided to take down this post as I did not wish to harm her defense. I wrote to Kam’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, and asked him to confirm that he did not wish any public discussion of her case. He has not replied. For that reason, I have decided to repost this story with some amplifications and editing to reflect new information I’ve learned.

* * *

We’re going to be getting into deep territory tonight regarding Israeli military intelligence, the Shin Bet, and their ability to make a mockery of alleged Israeli democracy and freedom of the press.

Anat Kam: 'Disappeared' Israeli journalist

An Israeli friend brought me word that Anat Kam, an entertainment writer for the popular Israeli internet portal, Walla, was secretly arrested and imprisoned, after which she was placed under house arrest by Israeli authorities. Needless to say, this is a highly unusual development. In fact, I can’t remember the last time this happened to an Israel journalist. I apologize that most of the material I’ll be linking to is still in Hebrew and not yet translated. If that situation changes I’ll be adding English language links or sources.

Though Kam denies this, Israeli sources maintain she has been fingered by the Shin Bet as the source of a highly damaging 2008 Haaretz report that noted that a number of Palestinian militants who, the IDF claimed in separate media reports, were killed during firefights were actually assassinated in cold blood. This of course wouldn’t be news since it has happened many times before. What was news was that in 2006 the Supreme Court laid down specific and limited procedures under which targeted assassinations may be pursued. Haaretz revealed that the IDF was ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling and essentially killing militants in cold-blood and covering up the fact. It approved killings even if civilians were also likely to be killed. It approved killing suspects who were not “ticking-bombs,” another contravention of the Supreme Court. In fact, as recently as 2009 the IDF killed Palestinians under suspicious circumstances which Palestinians have labelled murder in cold blood, leading one to believe that targeted assassinations continue.

The Haaretz report, which presumably and inexplicably passed military censorship, displayed two IDF top-secret documents drawn up by the military senior command, which laid out the provisions for the killings and proved that they were ignoring the Supreme Court ruling.

A former intelligence agent, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, working as a researcher for Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, examined the documents in detail attempting to trace the source. While he didn’t specifically identify Kam, he did make clear that he believed the “Deep Throat” served in a position in military intelligence which allowed access to such documents.

Dahoah Halevi fed the story to ShalomLife, a Canadian Israeli news portal which published this rather sloppy right-wing slant on the Kam case. Dahoah Halevi was the editor of Shalom Toronto, listed as a sponsor of ShalomLife. The publisher of ShalomLife, Yossi Arbel, is also the publisher of Shalom Toronto. Some speculate that it may be an attempt by the Jerusalem Center to smoke out an Israeli journalist who will break the gag order by reporting on a story previously reported outside Israel.

On a rather humorous personal note, the author of the ShalomLife article confuses this blog with an “internet forum belonging to the Israeli left” by misattributing a quotation from this post to such an entity:

Internet forums belonging to the Israeli left have expressed support for the leak by Anat Kam, and have called it “a moral act” and “a civil duty”. One of the messages stated: “We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do it herself, and even if the Israeli press cannot or does not want to do it itself.”

There is one especially salient, disturbing passage in the ShalomLife story, which speculates on Kam’s motives in leaking the documents:

It is safe to say that the leaker wished to advance a political agenda and arouse wider public criticism in Israel and the world towards the IDF’s focused and deliberate policies against agents of terror.

First, it is convenient for an Israeli rightist to focus on Kam’s alleged political agenda and neglect that she undoubtedly had a moral and democratic agenda as well. Second, since the author of the Jerusalem Affairs analysis was himself a former intelligence officer and because Gold is a Likud loyalist, we can safely assume that this reflects the Shin Bet’s own views in the matter. Which is all the more reason to fight this detention tooth and nail. The far-right can natter all they wish about opposition to its policies being political, but the truth is that opposing targeted assassination and leaking material that documents violations of the law is a MORAL act and a the democratic duty of a citizen. We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do so herself. And even if the Israeli press cannot or will not do so itself. On that note, Haaretz, who used Kam’s materials for its scoop, has so far written nothing about her predicament. That seems to me an unfortunate editorial decision.

The Israeli sources who have written about this note that there is a military gag under preventing reporting not only about the alleged leak, but that Kam was arrested at all. I call this censorship of infinite regress. Which may explain why Haaretz has been silent. One hopes the Israeli press will find their voice and do their duty as journalists regardless of the strictures of the national security state.

Those who believe in Israeli democracy should explain how a citizen can disappear without a trace. Is this China, where the government denies it even is detaining a troublesome dissident who has disappeared? Is this the face Israel wants the world to see? Does the security apparatus have the right to run roughshod over whatever civil liberties citizens retain? I should add that this isn’t quite as bad as China. Some people now know what happened to Anat Kam. She is safe although under detention. But other than that, there are a lot of what Don Rumsfeld was fond of calling, in that inimitable way he had with the English language, “known unknowns.”

Apparently, it took over a year, but they have finally closed in on Kam as the culprit. They have really put the fear of God into her. As Israeli bloggers and activists have become aware of this incident and written about it publicly, associates of Kam have approached them asking that they desist. Each individual has to consult their conscience in situations like this. But I personally can see no benefit to Israeli democracy or even Kam herself by keeping silent. Undoubtedly, intelligence agencies have threatened her with horrible punishments if she doesn’t maintain absolute muteness. As a 23-year-old relatively unfamiliar with the school of hard knocks that is the Shin Bet or military intelligence (where she presumably worked and which presumably investigated the leak), she’s quaking in her boots. Who could blame her?

But I think that others need to have different priorities. Even if Kam doesn’t want to, or can’t fight for herself we must do so ourselves. And again, we do this for the sake of Israeli democracy. We do this to attempt to draw red lines and prevent the intelligence services from crossing them. For we know that the Israeli national security state puts little stock in the rights of its citizens–witness the trampling of the rights of those whose passports and identities were stolen by the Mossad in carrying out the Dubai assassination.

We must make common cause with those Israelis and human rights NGOs who fight against such outrages. As such, a measure of thanks is due the Israel Democracy Institute and its ejournal, The Seventh Eye, which has featured fine reporting on this matter. Sol Salbe has directed me to an excellent archive of linked online articles about Kam’s situation. Indymedia Israel also wrote up the story (web page now taken down) providing additional information. Maariv published a highly allusive piece by Kam’s apparent boss, which reminds me of samizdat of decades past, which satirized the political culture of authoritarian regimes through allegory, indirection and oblique allusion. Here is the first sentence:

How can a journalist be detained for over a month and everyone stays silent? The journalists in Shoo-Shoo-land must be nonentities, otherwise it would be impossible to explain how in the past month not a single one of them wrote a single word on the journalist’s detention.

Let’s not forget that we’re talking about the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ here. And lest we forget how the Shin Bet has dealt in the past with similarly damaging incidents, we need only remind ourselves of the Kav 300 Affair.

I wonder why the spooks did not target Kam sooner since she leaked the documents over a year ago. Possibly, she was working on a current story they didn’t want to see the light of day and this prevented her from reporting it. Or perhaps, the current political climate in which the far-right is running roughshod over the rights of peace and human rights activists with the approval of the government has emboldened the intelligence establishment to light out after practicing journalists. It may also be possible that Kam is part of a larger constellation and the investigation includes her, but goes beyond her as well.

We must fight back. We must help Israeli democrats turn back this assault on freedom of the press, free speech, and democracy.

Tags: anat kam house arrest, civil-liberties, freedom of press under attack, Israel Defense Forces, national-security, national-security-state, palestinian militants, shabak, shin-bet, targeted-assassination
Posted in Mideast Peace | 13 Comments »

McCain: No Habeas for Osama, ‘He Will Be Executed’

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

John McCain is trying to paint Barack Obama into a corner regarding the question of whether Osama bin Laden deserves due process if or when U.S forces capture him. Leaving aside the fact that McCain’s good buddies Bush and Cheney haven’t been able to capture him for seven years despite their “best” efforts, perhaps the question of whether Osama deserves due process should be preceded by capturing him.

In attempting to turn Obama into the typical bleeding heart Democrat on national security issues, McCain has painted himself into a very deep, dark corner. In a message entitled I Will Deliver Justice (yeah, just like Bush has done), he writes:

…After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in U.S. civilian courts to dangerous terrorist detainees, he is now running away from the consequences of that decision and what it would mean if Osama bin Laden were captured. Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg [sic] war trials…There was no habeas at Nuremburg [sic] and there should be no habeas for Osama bin Laden.

…Let me be clear, under my administration Osama bin Laden will either be killed on the battlefield or executed.

How can a president of the United States guarantee that someone will be executed before he has been tried or even apprehended? I’ve never heard to such a thing before. Hasn’t McCain heard of a mere formality called judicial due process? Or have we gotten to he point where we can dispense with that too as we have with so many of our other civil liberties?

This statement sounds like an open invitation to those who might capture Bin Laden to execute him summarily. That would be handy because then there would be none of those messy legal proceedings in which he could string out the execution McCain so desperately seeks.

In McCain’s message we have a perfect crystallization of the different outlooks of the two candidates. Obama believes in justice. McCain believes in vengeance. In my Jewish religion, vengeance is reserved for the Lord. I’d prefer to keep it that way. Osama Bin Laden deserves justice when and if he is caught; not vengeance.

Vengeance is what Bin Laden has wrought on the world on behalf of imagined Muslim grievances against the west. Why should we embrace his twisted code in meting out punishment to him? What message will that send to the rest of the world and, in particular, his followers and potential supporters? Don’t we want them to think that we live by a code that is fair, consistent, and civilized? Or do we want them to think that we are as bloodthirsty as the jihadists?

Hat tip to Sol Salbe and the Lowy Institute blog, The Interpreter.

Tags: bin laden, habeas corpus, mccain, national-security, obama, supreme court
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 10 Comments »

Military Commissions Bill ‘Sets Back Basic Rights 900 Years”

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

(credit: Dan Wasserman/Boston Globe

Now that Senate Democrats have caved, the entire body is set to enact one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in decades (and there have been many bad ones so you know this has to be BAD). Who do you think I quoted in my post title? Ted Kennedy? John Murtha? John Kerry? Hillary Clinton? No, I quoted a Republican: Arlen Specter. Yes, I know for Club for Growth/neocon Republicans Specter is a pinko turncoat from the cause. But if Arlen Specter can make such a sweeping statement, you know it’s bad.

The NY Times has published a savage attack on the legislation, Rushing Off a Cliff which reads in part:

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser…

It [the legislation] serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

And they follow this passage with a comprehensive primer on where the bill would do the most damage to civil liberties and constitutional law:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

The Times rightly reserves some of its fury for Democrats who care more about limiting damage to their election prospects than they do about preserving the bedrock principles of constitutional law in this country.

I understand to an extent Democratic unwillingness to mount serious opposition to the Military Commissions bill. In their view, anything that detracts from their opportunity to win back one or both Houses is a losing proposition. But of what use would those majorities be if we had in place the worst civil liberties legislation since, as the Times puts it, the Alien and Sedition Act? Do Democrats think they’ll just snap their fingers after the elections end and blow the law into oblivion? I don’t think it will be as easy as all that. Have they forgotten the presidential veto? Although Bush was one of the few president’s in history not to use it in his first term, I assure Senate Dems that he’d love to use it to counter any effort to undermine this law (once it’s enacted). Harry Reid may have to wait years for the Supreme Court to receive a case allowing them to rule this execrable bill unconstitutional. YEARS. Do we think the fabric of our Republic is so strong that it can withstand the strain of something as godawful bad as this?

To me, Reid’s “deal” with the Republican leadership allowing the legislation to go forward without mounting a filibuster is a Mephistophelean deal with the devil. Or to use another metaphor, this is Pandora’s box. Once you open it, it will open the floodgates to untrammeled tyranny. We’ve already seen some of the most egregious presidential violations of American civil liberties in decades during this Administration. But what comes in the aftermath of this bill’s passage will be like child’s play compared to what came before.

I do not understand why we’re not hearing more from principled conservatives like William Buckley, Bush pere, the Reaganites, etc. who must be plotzing about this development. And if they’re not, then they’re not true conservatives in the pure sense of the term, meaning those who desire to conserve our bedrock principles.

Those who vote for the Military Commissions Act are bringing about the unmooring of U.S. constitutional law from its foundations. It is one of the saddest days in the history of American legislative politics that I can remember (and I go back to the 1960s).

Tags: democrats-refuse-to-oppose-republican-terrorism-bill, fighting-terror, habeus-corpus, national-security, senate-nears-passage-of-military-commissions-act
Posted in Politics & Society | 9 Comments »

John Yoo: Supreme Court’s Guantanamo Ruling ‘Suppresses Creative Thinking’

Sunday, July 2nd, 2006

John ‘Torture ‘Em Good’ Yoo has come up with one of the unintentionally funniest quotes of the day in today’s NY Times article on the Supreme Court’s Guantanamo decision:

cartoon: Bob Gorrell/Creator’s Syndicate

“What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking.”

Poor guy. All that ‘creative thinking’ that went into justifying all torture of terror suspects short of “organ failure.” Those Supremes just took away Johnnie’s right to do away with the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution as constraints on U.S. anti-terror policy! What spoil sports!

He further expands on his complaints:

“The court has just declared that it’s going to be very intrusive in the war on terror. They’re saying, ‘We’re going to treat this more like the way we supervise the criminal justice system.’

“It could affect detention conditions, interrogation methods, the use of force,” he said. “It could affect every aspect of the war on terror.”

…In past wars, the court used to let the president and Congress figure out how to wage the war. That’s very different from what’s happening today. The court said, ‘If you want to do anything, you have to be very specific and precise about it.’ “

Gee, he must be really PO’ed that the Court has finally decided that Bush’s free post-9/11 ride was over. National security issues are going to get the same scrutiny that a capital murder case gets. What took ‘em so long?!

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside that this pisses off people like John Yoo so?? I know I felt that way when I read this sentence written by Adam Liptak:

The wholesale rejection of the administration’s positions in Hamdan may have its roots in part in judicial hostility toward the memorandums Professor Yoo helped prepare several years ago.

Justice Stevens couldn’t have picked a more worthy constitutional ‘creative thinker’ toward whom to express his hostility.

Liptak closes his interview with Yoo with another beaut:

Professor Yoo was not inclined to accept the decision as a triumph of the democratic process. Instead, he saw it as a judicial usurpation of the president’s power to protect the nation. “The court is saying we’re going to be a player now,” he observed ruefully.

And I say: ‘About time!’

Tags: john-yoo, military-commissions, national-security, presidential-powers, supreme-court-guantanamo-ruling, war-on-terror
Posted in Politics & Society | No Comments »

Federal Judge Rebukes Homeland Security Department for Rejection of Tariq Ramadan

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

The NY Times writes that a judge has rebuked the Justice Department for its refusal to decide whether to grant an entry visa to Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan:

A federal judge in New York yesterday ordered the Bush administration to decide by September whether to grant an entry visa to a prominent Muslim scholar. The scholar has been barred from entering the United States for nearly two years, first because of supposed ties to terrorism, then for unspecified national security reasons.

The ACLU, which brought the suit, put it more forthrightly than the Times:

A federal judge today ruled that the government cannot continue to stonewall the visa application of Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim scholar, and that the government cannot bar non-citizens from the United States simply because of their political views.

Ramadan has been attempting to enter the U.S., first to accept a teaching position at Notre Dame and more recently to speak at a PEN Center conference.

The judge’s decision addressed inconsistencies in the government’s various accounts of why it refused his entry:

Judge Crotty, noting the government’s shifting reasons for Mr. Ramadan’s exclusion, said, “While the Government may exclude Ramadan if he poses a legitimate threat to national security, it may not invoke ‘national security’ as a protective shroud to justify the exclusion of aliens on the basis of their political beliefs.”

The judge more specifically rebutted contentions that Ramadan may be a national security threat:

Judge…Crotty…noted that Ramadan “shuns violence as a form of activism and has consistently spoken out against terrorism and radical Islamists.” Judge Crotty also pointed out that, “while the United States has not granted Ramadan a visa to enter the country, Great Britain, its one staunch ally in the battle against terrorism, has not only admitted him into England so that he may teach at Oxford, but has enlisted him in the fight against terrorism.”

In explaining why it’s refused to render a definitive judgment on his visa application, the government made the rather Orwellian claim that it needed to do so in case Ramadan made future statements that would render him ineligible for admission. To which the judge replied:

“Allowing the government to wait for ‘possible future discovery of statements’ would mean that the government could delay final adjudication indefinitely, evading constitutional review by its own failure to render a decision on Ramadan’s application. The Court will not allow this,”

This would seem to put Homeland Security and State on notice that if they do not come up with substantive evidence that Ramadan is a national security threat then they will have to admit him. Unfortunately, Ramadan will have to wait as long as September to discover whether he may finally speak to the people of the United States about his view of Islam and its relation to western civilization; or whether he and the ACLU will have to go back to court to get the visa entry denial overturned.

This is a perfect example of how the executive branch can roll back civil liberties precedents in a seeming heartbeat, while it takes the victims and groups like the ACLU years to get the civil liberties pendulum back into a more balanced equilibrium.

The full Crotty decision is available here.

Tags: aclu, civil-liberties, national-security, new-york-times, patriot-act, tariq-ramadan, using-u.s.-immigration-policy-to-deny-political-speech
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | No Comments »

Did Mary McCarthy Leak the CIA Secret Prison Story?

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Did she or didn’t she? That is the question. Her lawyer says she didn’t. Emphatically. The CIA says, according to the NY Times, she leaked but won’t say what or to whom:

Mary O. McCarthy (source: CNN)

Intelligence officials would not say whether they believed that Ms. McCarthy had been a source for a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles in The Washington Post about secret C.I.A. detention centers abroad. Media accounts have linked Ms. McCarthy’s firing to the articles, but the C.I.A. has never explicitly drawn such a connection.

This statement stands in bold contradiction to the first article the Times wrote on the subject, in which David Johnston and Scott Shane stated:

The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency’s secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.

So why won’t the same “intelligence officials” who first said she blabbed about the prisons story stand by what they said earlier? It’s downright weird to me.

So who’s right? Your guess is as good as mine. But there are a few questions that trouble me:

If Mary McCarthy did not leak this story and is innocent of the charges, then why did her lawyer say that she doesn’t plan to take legal action against the agency?

Yet Mr. Cobb said he did not believe that Ms. McCarthy, who has not spoken publicly since her dismissal, intended to fight her termination either in court or in the public arena.

“This is not somebody who’s hoping to make $20,000 a day on the lecture circuit,” Mr. Cobb said. “Going to war with the government is not high on her list.”

If your boss fired you for cause and the cause was non-existent wouldn’t you fight? When I asked my wife this question she replied: “Maybe she’s just sick and tired of working there and wants out.” Given that she plans in her next career to practice family law, that seems a good indication that she has had it with her career as an intelligence operative and wants to start over with something completely different. So it is possible that such motivation lies behind her lawyer’s statement. But I don’t find it completely convincing.

In other words, I believe a person wrongly terminated from a high-profile position–and whose firing will involve personal and professional vilification emanating from the highest echelons of government–would fight to retain their good name.

Tags: cia-secret-prisons, extraordinary-rendition, mary-mccarthy, national-security, new-york-times, press-leaks
Posted in Politics & Society | 2 Comments »

Russell Feingold: Finally a Democrat Who Will Do Something!

Monday, March 13th, 2006

The NY Times today reports that Russell Feingold announced on ABC News’ This Week that he will introduce a motion of censure against George Bush for his illegal eavesdropping program:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D, WI): finally a Democrat with some guts (photo: Linda Spillers/ABC News)

Senator Russell D. Feingold said Sunday that he would introduce a measure in the Senate to censure President Bush over the domestic eavesdropping program.

“Proper accountability is a censuring of the president,” Senator Russell D. Feingold said Sunday.

“What the president did by consciously and intentionally violating the Constitution and laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered,” Mr. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said on the ABC News program “This Week.” “Proper accountability is a censuring of the president, saying: ‘Mr. President, acknowledge that you broke the law, return to the law, return to our system of government.’ “

All I can say is–thank God! Finally a Democrat who won’t pussyfoot around the margins and comes right out and says what a lot of folks have been saying for some time. If you’re not willing or able to mount an impeachment strategy then at least DO SOMETHING! Don’t just stand back while Pat ‘Rumbling’ Roberts runs the Intelligence Committee into a ditch while refusing to initiate or complete a full investigation of the NSA program. The Democrats have to stop acting as if they’re afraid of their own shadow. They have to be out front with bold pronouncements that capture headlines and imagination. That’s what Russ Feingold has done. That’s what Paul Wellstone would be doing were he alive today.

Instead, what are leading Democrats wasting their time over? The Dubai ports deal! They’re taking a bold stand for nativism and Know Nothingism to protect and defend the Republic. Right. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton–for shame! Where are you on the NSA eavesdropping program? Sure I bet you made a statement or two fulminating about it. But Feingold is the only one so far (besides John Conyers) with the guts to lay it on the line.

The Republicans will ridicule him and make him out to be a traitor (that’s their strong suit–villainous calumny), but more Americans will either stand up and applaud or at least begin to take this issue more seriously:

Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the majority leader, called the proposal “a crazy political move.” And Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said it was “the worst type of political grandstanding.”

Mr. Frist, who appeared on another segment of “This Week,” said support for a censure would undermine the nation’s efforts to fight terrorism and defend itself against its enemies.

“We are right now at a war, in an unprecedented war, where we do have people who really want to take us down,” Mr. Frist said.

“The signal that it sends — that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief, who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that we know is making our homeland safer — is wrong,” he added. “And it sends a perception around the world.”

The only people who can really “take us down” are lawless leaders like Bush and Cheney who think nothing of tossing the Constitution out the window in order to advance their ideologically-charged national security goals. Al Qaeda can possibly do serious, but limited physical damage to us. But how do you measure the damage that a president can do who willfully disregards the laws of the land, takes us into a war whose premise is based on a tissue of lies, and then rides roughshod over our liberties in the name of keeping us safe from terror?

As for: “…our commander in chief, who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that we know is making our homeland safer …” what a load of horseshit. What, did this boilerplate patriotism come from some pablum-based speechwriting grab bag? Spare us such drivel. I’ll take Russ Feingold’s refreshing forthrightness any day.

Tags: Bill-Frist, eavesdropping, national-security, nsa-spy-scandal, russell-feingold
Posted in Politics & Society | No Comments »

Washington Post: Congress “Craven”on Dubai Ports Deal

Sunday, March 12th, 2006

I couldn’t believe the puffery in today’s NY Times’ Republicans Hail Colleague Who Fought Bush on Ports (the article is nowhere to be found on the Times website nor in Google News so I don’t have a link; by the way, I’ve never seen such a thing happen before at Nytimes.com. UPDATE: there is now a link as of 3/12) making Peter King out to be a maverick new Republican kingmaker because of his “leadership” opposing the Dubai Ports Deal. And King relishes his newfound celebrity in the most disgusting way:

Mr. King–who CNN dubbed “King of the Ports”–often sounded as though he could hardly believe the rapid and unexpected turn of events. “I have to keep pinching myself on all this stuff.”

The man is a demagogue and xenophobe to boot. What does he have to be proud of?

The Washington Post appears to agree with me. Only they take the entire grandstanding Congress to task for its egregious performance over the past two weeks in its editorial, Happy Now?:

THEY SPEND drunkenly…fail at oversight and…can’t stop the administration from abusing detainees or tapping phones. But never call the members of Congress powerless: Yesterday, in the exalted name of anti-terrorism, the Senate rebelled against its Republican leadership and joined the House in a vote to prevent a company based in a moderate, friendly Arab country from making a minor investment in the United States. When it became clear that some such blocking measure would pass, Dubai Ports World threw in the towel, announcing that it would sell all of its U.S. operations…and do business elsewhere.

…This [Dubai Ports World] investment always was a business decision, not the early stages of a covert attack on Baltimore. Quite rightly, the company and its Dubai-based owners…didn’t want their country’s and their company’s names dragged through the mud, so they cut their losses.

The Post lays out the pernicious “message” that Congress is sending to Arab nations and businesses and the damage that may be done to U.S. security and economic interests throughout the region from such stupidity:

…Our brave new Congress has achieved more than the irrational spiking of one business deal. It has also sent a clear message to the Arab world: No matter how far you move along the path of modernization and cooperation, Americans may be unable to distinguish you from al-Qaeda. Dubai welcomes hundreds of ship visits every year from the U.S. Navy and allied ships. It has worked with U.S. agents to stop terrorist financing and nuclear cooperation. But none of that mattered to the craven members of Congress–neither to the Democrats who first sensed a delicious political opportunity nor to the Republicans who then fled in unseemly panic. As to long-term damage to the United States’ security, economy and alliances? Not of concern to the great deliberative body.

No one should underestimate the potential damage. Any government in a Muslim-majority country will have to ask itself: Why take the risk of friendship? If governments find no good answer to that question, the fight against radical Islamic terrorism will suffer. Meanwhile, Arab investors may think twice before putting their money in a country where their companies risk expropriation…Arabs are rapidly becoming a major supplier of foreign capital. This isn’t a good moment for Americans to discourage foreign investment, given the nation’s dependence on foreign capital (see: Congress, drunken spending by). Nor will the message — that foreign ownership was unobjectionable when it was British but intolerable when it was Arab — do much to advance U.S. efforts to promote equitable investment rules for its own companies abroad.

Here the Post dishes out special opprobrium for the Congressional leaders who led the charge and warns those in Congress who try to ‘Monday morning quarterback’ the disaster that they have nowhere else to look but in the mirror for the cause:

Over the next few days, many excuses for this fiasco will be offered, by those who should have known better, by those who know better already and by those who may awake to the embarrassment of their mass hysteria. Some will blame the president, because he politicized the discussion of terrorism or was highhanded in threatening to veto a bill banning the sale. But if Congress can’t do the right thing in the face of such provocations, it is lamer than the excuses themselves.

Some, meanwhile, will blame the public, because opinion polls showed overwhelming objections to this deal. But it was Congress that brought this matter to public attention; here we think, for example, of the cynical actions of two Democratic senators from New York: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, who heads his party’s effort to win back control of the Senate in this year’s elections. Congress falsely portrayed the deal as the “purchase” of U.S. ports. Congress failed to tell the public that port security is run by the U.S. Coast Guard, not the men who pay the salaries of the (overwhelmingly American) longshoremen. Congress created this storm, in other words, and then toppled in its wind.

A hat tip to Villainous Conspiracy and Emirates Economist.

Tags: anti-Arab, charles-schumer, dubai-ports-deal, hillary-clinton, national-security, peter-king, port-security, u.s.-congress, u.s.-xenophobia, washington-post
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