Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The Associated Press headline this morning was

Bush: China must end detentions, ensure freedoms

Couldn’t it have been

China: Bush must end detentions, ensure freedoms

?

Immunity, immunity, immunity. I am sick of hearing members of Congress talk about how important it is to protect telecommunications corporations by giving them legal immunity. They say that there ought to be retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that broke the law by handing over huge amounts of private information about the personal communications of millions of Americans to George W. Bush.

Why? Why should telecommunications companies be placed above the law? Why should they be given a get out of jail free card when they break the public trust?

What about us – you know, the customers? Why aren’t members of Congress worried about protecting us?

The telecommunications corporations promised to keep our personal information secret. They entered into legal agreements with us, guaranteeing that we could use their communications services in private, without worrying that people would be able to look through our emails, listening to our telephone calls, and watching us surf the web.

Yet, that kind of spying against us Americans is exactly what the telecommunications corporations did, and it’s what they continue to do. It’s one of the kinds of spying against Americans that now will continue under the FISA Amendments Act.

But, the members of Congress who voted for the FISA Amendments Act don’t seem to care about that. They don’t care that millions of Americans were illegally betrayed. No, all they care aut is the comfort of the big telecommunications corporations.

Luckily, there are a few members of the House of Representatives who have had the integrity to speak up for us, the American people, the customers of the abusive telecommunications corporations. One of those members of Congress is John Hall, who represents the Hudson River Valley in the House of Representatives.

After reading the text of the FISA Amendments Act, Congressman Hall spoke on behalf of the right of customers whose private lives were invaded to seek justice in a court of law:

“The rule of law lies at the core of America’s founding principles, and the language in this bill was too weak to ensue that any breach of our laws that may have occurred under the warrantless wiretapping program will be fully addressed. It is not appropriate to deny Americans the right to pursue these matters in court, or to short-circuit the judicial review that lies at the heart of our system of checks and balances, which is the bedrock of our Constitution. Accordingly, I voted against this bill.”

Thank you, John Hall, for showing that there is at least one member of Congress who remembers that the Constitution was written to protect people, not corporations.

I just quit MoveOn. It isn’t because I disagree with their politics. It’s because they have compromised their politics.

Just yesterday, I got an email from MoveOn expressing their opposition to H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act. That’s the right stand, because the FISA Amendments Act is a terribly abusive law that violates the Constitution and breaks trust with the American people. It allows massive, unrestrained spying programs by the government against American citizens, without any search warrant or any form of probable cause required.

The people who voted for the FISA Amendments Act won’t tell you this. They’ll tell you that the powers granted under the bill are just fine, and there’s nothing to worry about. But, have you actually read the legislation? Don’t believe what they tell you until you’ve read the bill yourself.

It’s bad enough that 105 Democrats in Congress turned coat and joined forces with George W. Bush to pass the FISA Amendments Act. What’s worse is that Barack Obama has announced he will join them. Barack Obama is betraying the supporters who helped him win the Democratic nomination.

What about MoveOn? They’re pretending nothing has happened. They’re moving ahead with fundraisers for Barack Obama.

That’s not the kind of politics that MoveOn is supposed to stand for. That’s why, until they repudiate Barack Obama or convince Barack Obama to change his position, I have quit MoveOn.

I encourage you to do the same. Here’s the short message I sent to Moveon explaining why I’ve quit.

“Barack Obama just endorsed the FISA Amendments Act. MoveOn says it’s against that law, as it should. It’s a betrayal of the Constitution and an abuse of our trust. Barack Obama should lose the endorsement of MoveOn because of this betrayal. When MoveOn repudiates Barack Obama, I will rejoin MoveOn. Until then, I will not be with you – and no bake sales for Obama.”

On Friday, President George W. Bush admitted that he knew about torture techniques being used by American agents well before the existence of torture in Abu Ghraib was revealed. Bush admitted that he knew that Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and other top White House aides had a meeting to agree to what kinds of torture would be done.

More than that, George W. Bush has now admitted that he approved those torture techniques for use by agents of the American government.

By approving torture, George W. Bush was in violation of domestic federal law, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions, a treaty approved by Congress with the force of law within the United States. That makes President Bush a criminal – but more than that, a war criminal.

There is no question now – George W. Bush has acknowledged that he participated in activities that are obviously high crimes.

Don’t let anyone ever say that it’s a mystery what happened at Abu Ghraib. George W. Bush knew that torture tactics had been approved, because he approved them. Remember when George W. Bush said that the torture by Americans at Abu Ghraib had been due to just a “few bad apples”? Well, there were bad apples, that’s for sure, but what President Bush never said is that he knew very well that the most rotten apples of all were right in the White House.

The policies that led to the Abu Ghraib torture came right from the top – from George W. Bush himself. That fact is beyond dispute now.

Impeachment by Congress is not enough. George W. Bush should be handed over to an International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, put on trial, and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

It’s official. Terror has been identified by the President of the United States as one of the government’s tools in its supposed War on Terror.

Explaining why he vetoed legislation from Congress that would have explicitly outlawed waterboarding and other forms of torture, George W. Bush said that “The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror.” With that statement, President Bush is on the record as saying that torture is regarded by his White House as among the “most valuable tools” against terror.

Americans who know how to think will regard this statement as strange, given that the purpose of torture is to encourage compliance through the creation of terror.

So, the Bush White House is using terror as a tool in the War on Terror. That suggests to me that the War on Terror is not really a war against terror at all. We ought to call it a War For Terror or a War Of Terror instead.