[Dialogue] Today's Times

[KroegerD@aol.com]

Published on Sunday, February  12, 2006 by the _New York  TImes_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/)  
The Trust Gap 
Editorial
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more  often 
than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like  democracy, 
judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust  him. We also can't 
think of a president who has deserved that trust  less. 
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time.  But 
last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the  point.  
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the  National Security Agency 
to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of  Americans and others in the 
United States without obtaining a warrant or  allowing Congress or the courts 
to review the operation. Lawmakers from  both parties have raised considerable 
doubt about the legality of this  program, but Attorney General Alberto 
Gonzales made it clear last Monday  at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the 
slightest intention of  changing it. 
According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to  police 
itself and hold the line between national security and civil  liberties on its 
own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy  doesn't work that 
way. It's not clear that this administration knows where  the line is, much 
less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's  own dedication to the 
truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony  at his confirmation hearing 
last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a  question about whether he 
believed the president had the authority to  conduct warrantless surveillance. In 
fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was  doing just that, and had signed off on it 
as White House counsel. 
THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since  the Abu Ghraib scandal 
illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and  other abuses at United States 
military prison camps. There have been  Congressional hearings, court rulings 
imposing normal judicial procedures  on the camps, and a law requiring 
prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet  nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it 
clear that he intends to follow  the new law on the treatment of prisoners when 
his internal moral compass  tells him it is the right thing to do.  
On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States  military 
authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners  who had gone 
on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest  being held 
without any semblance of justice. The article said  administration officials were 
concerned that if a prisoner died, it could  renew international criticism of 
Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is  not some minor embarrassment. It is a 
lingering outrage that has  undermined American credibility around the world. 
According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees  are 
neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield  in 
Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were  handed over to 
the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan  warlords. Others 
were just swept up. The military has charged only 10  prisoners with terrorism. 
Hearings for the rest were not held for three  years and then were mostly sham 
proceedings. 
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to  run 
these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim  who is 
to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled  with 
dangerous terrorists. 
THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me"  moments was when he 
told Americans that the United States had to invade  Iraq because it possessed 
dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat  to America. The White House has 
blocked a Congressional investigation into  whether it exaggerated the 
intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist  that the decision to invade was based 
on the consensus of American  intelligence agencies. 
But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article  by 
the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar,  who 
said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a  decision to 
invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice  President Dick 
Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded  only the analysts who 
produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the  president never asked for an 
assessment on the consequences of invading  Iraq until a year after the 
invasion. He said the intelligence community  did that analysis on its own and 
forecast a deeply divided society ripe  for civil war.  
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment,  Mr. 
Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on  the 
brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the  columnist Robert 
Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr.  Pillar was not to 
be trusted because he dissented from the party line.  Somehow, this sounds like 
a story we have heard before.  
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes  dissembles 
clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example,  that the White House 
did not tell the truth about when it learned the  levees in New Orleans had 
failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at  the civil liberties, due 
process and balance of powers that are the heart  of American democracy is 
another. 
© 2006 The New York Times  
###
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060212/e2b71ac1/attachment-0002.htm