How big is media surveillance under Obama

I'm as unhappy as the next guy about government surveillance on journalists and private citizens but I sure wish the media had been this focused when the Bush administration was doing it illegally. Even the NYT is verging on scaremongering about Obama's DoJ. I mean the hed screams US Leaks Inquiries Show How Wide a Net is Cast. About midway through the article it admits, "It is not clear how often the government has obtained reporters’ communications records."

The only person they could get on record for the story is one government guy whose life was ruined under the Bush administration for allegedly leaking about warrantless wiretaps -- on everybody. Meanwhile here's an interesting twist to the Rosen saga.

On Saturday, a Fox News executive said that the notice had gone to News Corp., its parent company, on Aug. 27, 2010, but that Fox News was not told until Friday. The executive said they were still trying to sort out how the notice fell through the cracks.

You might have thought this would be something the parent corp would have brought to their news station's attention right away. Kind of convenient they suddenly discovered it after the AP got all sorts of steam out of their surveillance. And again, in these Obama era cases it's not about wholesale spying on the population or the media. As the government states, "law enforcement officials said the leaks were alarming because someone had shared information while overseas intelligence operations were still under way."

If somebody can show me where any of these stories exposed government misconduct, I'm happy to join in the outrage but so far all I see is a few journos outing active counter-terrorism operations in countries that do pose a danger to our national security, effectively shutting them down because of the exposure. I don't feel so well served by that kind of traffic baiting journalism.

I have to agree with Kevin Drum about this hue and cry over this.

Something about the Rosen case just doesn't add up. But a lot of people don't seem to be taking the possible outing of an intelligence source very seriously. They're acting as if the DOJ prosecution is over a completely meaningless story. That might be, but I think a bit less circling the wagons, and a bit more serious questioning, might be in order here.

I often watch these big journos on the twitter. They hate Obama, not for his politics but because he doesn't treat them with the respect they believe they deserve. Sadly, I don't believe the vast majority of them deserve the respect. They aren't informing the public. When he does hold a presser, they leap to find a single phrase out of hundreds of words and manufacture some kind of fauxtroversy out of it. They skip most of the salient points he makes about policy. Too boring. Doesn't bring in the eyeballs. Maybe if they showed the POTUS the kind of respect he deserves, they would get some in return.

I come to defend Holder, not condemn him

The AP phone records story is still developing so I don't have much to say yet. Still waiting for more facts to emerge from the noise. So far I've seen nothing to suggest the government acted illegally. As a TPM reader points out:

More important it is clear to anyone who understands what happens in this type of investigation that the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records. Those records came from the phone company not from AP. They relate to dates and times of phone calls not content. Under the law such a subpoena is perfectly proper and under the law Justice and the phone company must notify the party (in this case AP) that records were subpoenaed.

I think AP protests just a bit too much and seeks to smear Justice (knowing full well that many Republicans will jump on this quickly).

Which of course will be great for traffic. This is Drudge bait as tempting as pure crystal coke from Columbia to a junkie.

To be clear, it's vitally important to protect the freedom of the press, especially in its social mandate to investigate government wrongdoing. While it's apparent our present day media had mainly failed in that mission, devoting most of their time to inventing psuedo-scandals in order to drive traffic and make profits for their wealthy owners, we nonetheless need to continue to protect the media from government intimidation and protect whistleblowers from retribution when they assist the media in exposing government malfeasance.

All that being said, let's review why the DoJ started the investigation on the AP and its inside sources. This scoop was not the Pentagon Papers. They weren't exposing something like bombing Cambodia and lying about it, or the cover-up of the Mai-Lai massacre. The AP exposed an undercover, anti-terrorist operation that thwarted a bomb plot which would have killed Americans. In doing so, the AP jeopardized the life of an inside US intelligence asset and effectively forced a CIA operation that could have netted vital intelligence in stopping future terrorism to shut down.

Sorry, if that strikes me as more self-serving than noble. Finding it difficult to couch this one as serving the public. Feels more like serving the bottom line of the AP with a sensational scoop that actually endangered the public. So while it's far too easy for the government to claim national security as a cover for secrecy, in this one particular case I see no evidence Holder can't claim national security concerns drove the investigation. At least not so far.

Domestic threats

[photo via Alaska Dispatch]

An organization connected to the West Point Military Academy released a new study showing extreme far-right groups in the United States "while diverse in their causes, are similar in their use of violence" to "draw attention to and emphasize their given ideology."

Unsurprisingly the crackpot conservative contingent on Capitol Hill, as with a previous study done in 2009, is taking it personally.

A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.

“Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?” the staffer said. “The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?”

Of course, this organization does generally focus on foreign terrorism threats but in the world according to far right conservatives, even acknowledging that domestic threats exist is apparently a serious affront to God, country and their self-identity.

And never mind that ALF and ELF are mere vandals who only destroy property, (which shouldn't be condoned either), but they don't threaten harm to humans to further their cause. Indeed they make a point to avoid it. Further I can barely recall the last time either of these groups commited a major act of vandalism beyond a vague recollection of ELF blowing up some big piece of construction equipment many years ago. As for the Weathermen, they dissolved about 30 years ago. Which proves that in the fevered imaginations of crackpot conservatives, old lefty villians never die.

In any event, as a proud liberal, I have no problem with violent left-wing extremists being identified and called out for endangering the public safety. If right wing conservatives feel threatened by the extremists on their side being held to the same scrutiny, I'd suggest they either rethink their loyalties or seek professional help in dealing with their own paranoid fantasies of imagined persecution.

Darrell Issa is worse than a terrorist

No seriously. This Darrell Issa belongs in Gitmo. This just in from Imani. In his never ending quest to prove he's the world's biggest asshole, Darrell Issa signed a death warrant for Libyan activists working with the US:

But this afternoon, Darrell Issa—in a stroke of sheer idiocy—published reams of State Department documents, and this woman’s name appears in the documents—unredacted.

And now her life is in danger. The lives of several other Libyans named in the documents are in danger. And House Republicans, specifically Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz, are to blame.

Republicans have become a greater security threat to America than the terrorists. If they don't arrest them for treason, Congress should at least be demanding their resignation. Effective immediately.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Iraq war declared over

The headlines should rightfully read, US military occupation of Iraq comes to a close. Or something like that. Still, as a life long anti-war, pro-peace activist, I suppose I should be celebrating this:

BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.

In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked the more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for “the remarkable progress” made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy.

Panetta also said the many "lives lost in Iraq were not in vain." Wish I could believe that, but I still don't know what the hell we were ever doing there and don't see what we accomplished that was all so great.

Yeah, yeah, I know we toppled the hideous dictator Saddam Hussein, who was so cruel to his people. But there are hundreds of thousands less Iraqis there now to appreciate it, having been "liberated" into the graveyards. And of those remaining, are their lives really any better now? Let's ask these Iraqis:

As many as 2 million Iraqis — nearly 6 percent of the country's estimated more than 31 million population — are thought to have been forced from the cities and towns where they once lived and are housed in circumstances that feel temporary and makeshift.

More than 500,000 of those are "squatters in slum areas with no assistance or legal right to the properties they occupy," according to Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. Most can't go home: Either their homes have been destroyed or hostile ethnic and sectarian groups now control their neighborhoods.

The last via Atrios who rightly notes, "We'll never really acknowledge the hell we unleashed."

Perhaps if even one of the Very Serious People who cheerleaded throughout the debacle and were wrong, wrong, wrong at every turn had really admitted how much they screwed it up or had paid even the tiniest price in credibility for it, it would feel more like a victory to me. But all these people still draw down the big bucks as they rest easy on their big media perches or remain safely snuggled into their "think tank" sinecures. Somehow that doesn't feel like winning to me.

Sorry to say, I just don't feel like celebrating. We lost this so-called war on so many levels. Small wonder the "victory" pagentry is so subdued.

Filing and crying

Image One in this article has been haunting me since I first saw it yesterday on my twitter feed. It followed me everywhere. On the social nets. On the internets. When I woke up at 3AM and flipped on the TV, the late night newscasters were covering the multiple attacks in Afghanistan.

And tonight comes, a rare back story from a photographer. The photo-journalist describes the experience of taking that profound photo. He's no rookie:

He realized he was amid a circle of bodies, almost exactly at the place where the explosion had happened. He saw a few pairs of eyes moving, but body parts were scattered on the floor. His hands were shaking. Having covered Afghanistan — the place where he was born — since 2004, Mr. Hossaini has seen suicide attacks before. In 2007, he photographed an attack that killed 70 civilians. He cried then, too.

But this time was different.

Late night news guy informed me there were three simultaneous attacks. Shiites from Pakistan. Who couldn't have possibly gained access without Taliban assistance. Don't even want to think about what that means.

But I have a feeling this won't be the last photo that wakes me up in the middle of the night. Not if we're going to be there for two more years. No, I don't know why.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

91 dead in Oslo

People have made it very clear to me that Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Federal building in 1995 was not a Christian, the connection between that vicious, inhuman act and the Waco, Texas incident notwithstanding. He couldn't be, you see, by virtue of the fact that he did such a thing.

It's too bad that Muslims who are horrified by terrorism aren't given the benefit of the same rationale, but I'm still waiting to hear about Anders Behring Breivik. Despite the initial prejudice that had the Oslo bombing and the murders at a Summer camp as the work of al Qaeda, it looks like Breivik, identified by a survivor as the attacker, was a Christian Conservative disturbed by the presence of other cultures, other religions, in Norway. Would he fit in with a spectrum of Americans, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Tea Party, trying to promote our intentionally secular Republic as a "Christian nation" and perhaps an exclusively Christian nation?

How long can we go on pretending that religious tribalism of any denomination hasn't been and doesn't remain a potentially destructive, oppressive and communicable human vice?

Osama bin Laden laughs in Hell

Speaking of of old friends today, Radley Balko is an old pal I lost touch with when I moved out drug policy reform blogging. I picked this link up on Twitter a couple of days ago and now some of the big bloggers are linking, so he won't notice I've linked in. But if you missed this post, it's worth reading for the list of what we've lost in the last ten years and this is still worthy of quote of the day:

Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.

As I said before, with bin Laden dead we've served vengeance and that is a victory we probably needed. But Osama left us living in our own, self-created, hell on earth. Justice will never be served unless and until we restore our lost civil liberties and regain our sense of reality on the limits of protecting ourselves against terrorism.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Obama owns this mission

Going to take days to shake out the speculative chaff from the grains of truth rattling around the competing narratives about bin Laden. It's been perversely amusing to watch the contortions among the usual suspects on the fringe right as they try to twist the facts to fit their personal mythology where Bush is the hero and torture always works. Doug J summarizes it best with his post title, Midway through the Obama recession, George W. Bush wins the war on terror. They're sure to convince each other.

In the real world, it's clear that Obama is not George W. Bush. Obama is not swaggering around pretending to be President while others make the decisions. Look at the close up of his face. Obama owns this mission.

With due credit to the 79 commandos and one dog that actually accomplished the deed, it was Obama's decision to send them in there and the choice obviously weighs heavy on him.

Whatever else can be said about the killing of bin Laden, and much more surely will be, it's undeniable his death is a major victory in bringing a symbolic closure to 9/11 and as a reminder that the United States still has capabilities that need to be respected in the world order. Like it or not, that's important to our national security. Despite my mixed emotions about the event and Obama's presidency in general, I'm enormously proud of him for keeping this campaign promise.

Vengeance is served: Osama bin Laden is dead

Not sad that Osama bin Laden is dead, but neither do I feel any joy. Mostly I feel kind of detached, like I'm watching this unfold, alone, from a great distance.

I keep hearing people talk about this event as justice served. But this wasn't justice. It was vengeance. There's a difference. Not to say it's necessarily a bad thing that 9/11 has now been symbolically avenged. And to the extent that it brings some sense of closure to the families of the dead, both on 9/11 and throughout all the invasions and current occupations that followed, I guess that's a good thing. Not so sure it's a cause for great celebration though.

I had dozed off last night watching dumb teevee. Woke up and heard the newsman say bin Laden is dead. Then they broke to commercial and sleep took me again. When I woke up this morning and saw the dancing in the streets my first reaction was surprise, followed closely by discomfort.

I know everyone processes emotional events like this differently, but as a life long anti-war and anti-death penalty activist, I found the cheering of death, even of such a vile person as bin Laden, to be somehow ugly and inappropriate. But then, in cruising the internets, I was reminded that these were mostly college kids in the streets. The tragedy of 9/11 was the defining moment of their generation and within their limited historical experience, I can understand how this would feel like a victory to be celebrated, even if I don't share their relief.

In contrast, I read that when the active duty troops heard the announcement, they reacted with silence. I would guess many were thinking what one soldier told a reporter.

"OK, he's dead," he said. "Can we go home?"

Sadly, the answer is likely to be no and as long as war and death continue, the victory belongs to bin Laden. Destruction and chaos were his express desire and these things won't end with his death. Neither victory or justice can be claimed until they do. When our world leaders lay down their arms against each other and agree to mutually deploy our forces in a battle against the real enemies on this planet -- climate change, poverty, sickness and hunger -- then will I celebrate with champagne in the streets.

I expect it will be a long wait. So for now, think I'll just engage in some quiet reflection and send my silent thanks to those troops who not only won't be coming home today but will also be facing increased danger from bin Laden's remaining loyalists. May the God of their choice protect them from harm.

The truth about terrorism

As Curly of the Three Stooges might have said, "What a revolting development."

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies”: specifically, “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan” (the full report is here). Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military occupations.

As Atrios often says, but we can't leave until all the people who want us to leave are dead. [Via John Cole.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Terrorist recruitment tools

I've seen a few people suggest that we're not allowed to mention how the far right is aiding the enemy with this current anti-Islam fever because that what they said about us when we protested the war in the first place. Well screw that false equivalence. It's true about them. Counter-terrorism experts believe it's "playing right into the hands of radical extremists." There's proof.

The supercharged debate over the proposed center has attracted the attention of a quiet, underground audience -- young Muslims who drift in and out of jihadi chat rooms and frequent radical Islamic sites on the Web. It has become the No. 1 topic of discussion in recent days and proof positive, according to some of the posted messages, that America is indeed at war with Islam.

In contrast, when we were arguing, and marched and fought against the invasions and occupations, we sent the opposite message. One would think that would be obvious.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

When Intelligence is Stupid

Worth breaking the WaPo embargo for is part one of a new series investigating our intelligence agencies, or more specifically the explosion of agencies and money sunk into our intelligence appartus since the 9/11 attacks. The stats are sobering:

Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

More expansion is still being authorized under the Obama adminstration but it clearly isn't making our counter-terrorism efforts any more effective. In fact the evidence suggests it's having an adverse effect with the information overload, interagency turf wars and failure to share intelligence making the whole operation fairly useless.

None of this is particularly surprising. The only real question I have at the moment is why did the WaPo wait until a Democratic president was elected to start investigating? Seems to me this investigation, while it's good, would have been a whole lot more useful a few years ago before it grew to this proportion.

Brawl over bookkeeping in NYC anti-terror funds

Yes the White House cut NYC's funding for anti-terror measures but the lost money was then distributed through different channels. In fact, NYC ended up with a 24% increase in funding over what they received from the Bush administration. They racked up some $245 million in grants, which apparently represents about 1/3 of the total grants distributed.

Not that will stop the usual gasbags from wailing about the cuts without noting the overall gains. It's no wonder our electorate is so uninformed. It's a full time job to keep track of the spin and the lies. Most people don't have the temperment or the time for it.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Times Square Bomber - Updated

It's much too early to bother to link to any media on this. With their usual rush to get the "scoop" and thus printing any oddball rumor, I figure it will be at least a couple more days before we get any real information. However, this picture is the seminal shot of the event so far.

Somehow that big Yahoo! sign behind the mayor and the governor really does say the proverbial 1000 words. [graphic NYT article via MediaFixBlog]

Update: Republicans and other far right spokesmouths are remarkably treating this in an adult, non-hysterical manner. What could possibly be different from this event and the maniacal response they have had to other similar incidents? Oh right. The latest news suggests the perp is likely a white guy in his 40s. In other words, someone just like them.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Dan Riehl harbors domestic terrorists

I've been doing a lot of pushback on the false equivalency that the right wing spokesmouths are pathetically trying to build between lefty radicals and tea party terrorists. I did a long post at DetNews yesterday that I would actually encourage you to read in full. But I want to quote this part because it's been sticking with me ever since. More I think about it, the more horrifying I find it. This is a comment on Riehl's very recent post.

Remember, all actions to stop liberals--be they your congresspeople, or your neighbors--are now legitimate.

"We see this as a violation of equal protection of the law, an affront to our sovereignty, and as a breach of the U.S. Constitution."

A government takeover of health care is exactly why the 2nd Amendment is there. They fired the first shot--but we will won't stop until we fire the last one.

All actions.

This was in near the top of the comments on the post when I found it on google. Clearly Riehl, who is a leading voice of the far right and a regularly featured *pundit* on the teevee would have, or at least should have, seen it. One can only conclude that death threats to any liberal in America, even ordinary citizens, is AOK with Dan Riehl but don't expect the "both sides do it" media to make that connection. So irresponsible.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Trying terrorists

Great interview with AG Eric Holder in the New Yorker today. Did a long form post here but the take away point on trying terrorists in criminal courts:

Our criminal justice system convicted 150 terrorists as opposed to only 3 convictions by military tribunal.

Much more at the link. Really worth reading in full.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Good Question

Sully gets an email that asks a very good question about the crotch bomber. Why didn't he just blow himself up in the bathroom? Clearly, he should have known that the passengers would try to stop him when he lit the bomb in his pants.

Short answer: Because the point wasn't to bring down the plane, but rather to scare us into over-reacting. They don't care if they kill us. They just want us to live in terror. And the GOP is playing right into their hands.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Last word on the UndieBomber

The wingers are still trying to make the failed crotch bomber a problem for the Obama administration and it appears no amount of facts tying the incident to the Bush administration's failure to properly construct an effective system to screen travelers is going to crack their cognitive dissonance. So it is and will be with that crowd.

As far as I'm concerned everything that needs to be said is right here:


In Hawaii, Obama hears about investigation of govt failures in airliner bomb attempt. [WH Photo]

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Cheney's mysterious CIA program

There's a lot of conflicting reports and analyses on CIA program that Cheney ordered to kept secret -- from everyone. The mainstream narrative being pushed is that it was a simple covert assassination program, targeting only leading AQ operatives overseas. I find that hard to buy myself. I'm lining up behind TPM who thinks something is not adding up to the total picture just yet.

So regardless of how you might feel about targeted assassinations, it's not at all clear why this particular program would be so radioactive -- compared to what the U.S. was, and still is, doing more or less openly -- that (1) Cheney would demand the CIA not brief Congress about it for eight years; (2) Panetta would cancel it immediately upon learning of it; and (3) Democrats would howl quite so loudly when finally informed.

Of course, as Steve points out, a secret assassination squad was outed by Sy Hersch back in March. But that doesn't really explain why it's a story now. No one was overly concerned then. I think it's far more likely that they had potential targets in the US. For all we know, they might have eliminated a few designated enemy combatants.

Of course, that's pure speculation on my part. Still, it seems highly unlikely we have the whole story yet.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]