That marvelous Maverick McCain talked about the recent US airstrike in Pakistan, supposedly aimed at killing Al Qaeda's Al-Zawahri, that wound up killing a bunch of civilians instead: McCain defends Pakistan airstrike Sydney Morning Herald 01/16/06.
Thousands of Pakistanis protested in Karachi over the strike, which has complicated relations with Pakistan, at least in the short run. Whatever one thinks of the approach, Bush selected Pakistan as a key ally in the so-called "war on terror", particularly important in combatting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Maverick McCain, celebrated by our "press corps" for his alleged independence and integrity, said, well, so some civilians were killed, tough luck. We'll do it again if we feel like it.
Here are excerpts from the transcript of CBS' Face the Nation for 01/15/06:
[BOB] SCHIEFFER: And Senator McCain is in the studio with us this morning, as is Jan Crawford Greenburg, who is recovering from spending every minute inside the hearing room during the Samuel Senator McCain, let me start with this, this report that a US drone has apparently bombed a village in Pakistan -18 people are killed. What do you know about this?
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona): All I know is that the number-two guy in al-Qaida was suspected to be there and recent reports indicate that that was probably not true, or if he was, he wasn't killed, although we don't know the details yet. It's terrible when innocent people are killed. We regret that. But we have to do what we think is necessary to take out al-Qaida, particularly the top operatives. This guy has been more visible than Osama bin Laden lately. We regret it. We understand the anger that people feel, but the United States' priorities are to get rid of al-Qaida and this was an effort to do so.
SCHIEFFER: Well, it certainly has inflamed some people and you're hearing criticism the United
States ought not to be bombing in another country. It's my understanding that tens of thousands turned out to protest.
Sen. McCAIN: Yeah.
SCHIEFFER: What do we do about that and what do we say to people about that?
Sen. McCAIN: I think we say that this war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly al-Qaida does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want to equate our behavior with theirs but we have to go where these people are and we have to take them out. And the fact that maybe we didn't take them out years ago when we should have is a cautionary tale. We regret - all Americans regret the loss of innocent lives. I would remind our friends in Pakistan that in the recent tragedy of the earthquake, we did do a lot to try to help the plight of those who were suffering, and we do appreciate not only the friendship of the Pakistani people but President Musharraf who's been a steadfast ally. We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again. (my emphasis)
Maverick McCain was celebrated in the mainstream press for his anti-torture law. There was always a question why McCain was pressing for a new law to outlaw torture when it was already outlawed several times over. It always seemed to me a more effective way to press the administration to stop torturing would have been for him to insist on a meaningful investigation by the Republican Congress and to use his own media visibility to constantly highlight the issue.
Here is how the legendary Maverick dealt with the issue on Face the Nation:
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about the anti-torture law. That was your project to outlaw torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners, and you spoke as someone who was once a prisoner. You got that law passed, and you were the one who pushed it. But when the president signed it, he more or less said that he would abide by it unless there were extraordinary circumstances. Did the president say something different here? Are you satisfied with what he said? And what do you make of his statement?
Sen. McCAIN: I'm not particularly satisfied. I don't think it was necessary. But I had numerous conversations with the president about this issue and many more with Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser. They understand what this law was and they understand that we didn't carve out any exemption. I believe the president will abide by it. (my emphasis)
The President publicly chucks the agreement he personally made with McCain to accept the new law, by issuing a presidential "signing statement" reasserting his claimed power to disregard any law he chooses on national security grounds. And thereby saying as publicly as he's likely to that he has no intention of obeying the new law any more than the old ones that he was already breaking with the torture.
Which was the obvious problem from the beginning with the new law.
Is that bold Maverick now standing up for the Constitution, spotlighting the torture issue and opposing the unprecedented assertion of royal dictatorial authority by the President?
Not exactly. He's had a chat with Stephen Hadley. And he's satisfied that Bush will obey this law.
Now, McCain is a media darling. According to the press script faithfully articulated by reporters and Big Pundits alike, McCain is the daring maverick, the bold independent, the blunt straight-talker.
So let's compare Maverick McCain's "straight-talk" on Face the Nation - "I believe the president will abide by [the law]" - to what Al Gore said in his Martin Luther King Day speech at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia: 'We the People' Must Save Our Constitution CommonDreams.org 01/16/06.
Gore is the man elected President in 2000 but deprived of his office by the Supreme Court's Scalia Five and the Bush operation in Florida. He is anything but a media darling. The press script for him is that he constantly "reinvents" himself and tells fibs all the time.
And there's no question that he sounds different from Maverick McCain in this speech. Entering Andrew Jackson mode he said:
For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer - even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.
The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.
At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.
Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.
This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.
The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture. (my emphasis)
And he made clear the implication of the type of imperial Presidency that Bush is claiming under the "unitary executive" theory, of which ScAlito is a big fan:
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?
The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."
The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.
For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it.
Now, since I'm not a Big Pundit and don't aspire to be one, I'll just say the obvious. Gore made a strong defense of the Constitution. And also of McCain's anti-torture legislation. In fact, he made a much better case for the latter than the Maverick himself did on Face the Nation: "I believe the president will abide by it", declared the famous "straight-talker".
Jules Witcover, who would be one of our leading pundits if we had a real press corps in America, wrote about Gore's speech this week: An old/new voice for the Democrats? Tribune Media Service 01/18/06. He wrote, being the real journalist that he is:
The former vice president took aim at torture policies not explicitly excluded by the administration, at the faulty intelligence that justified the invasion of Iraq, and what he said were other constitutional abuses, quoting the Founding Fathers' warning of "the tyranny" of the unchecked executive. ...
The powers that Bush has claimed for himself as a wartime president in a war he has said will last indefinitely, Gore warned, could amount to a president permanently free of the checks and balances by the Legislative and Judicial branches provided in the Constitution.
"Time and again," he said, "the Executive branch has usurped Congress' role," with no challenge from the Legislative, and he challenged his former colleagues "to uphold your oath to defend the Constitution of the United States." He challenged the public as well to engage itself, taking a slap at a citizenry that has lulled itself with idle television-watching.
In all, the Gore speech was the most forceful and comprehensive criticism yet mounted by a prominent member of a Democratic Party that finds itself essentially without an effective voice approaching next November's congressional elections and a presidential election two years later.
The conventional wisdom in the Democratic Party is that Gore himself is finished, having lost an election in 2000 he should have won. But the same was said of Richard Nixon after his 1960 loss, and he proved otherwise. With most other Democrats unable to find their sharpest tongues, Al Gore's latest extensive indictment of Bush has shown them how it has to be done, if not giving them cause to reconsider him as the messenger after all. (my emphasis)
If we have to depend on "moderate"Republicans like Maverick McCain to challenge Bush's abuses of power, then Constitutional government in America is already over.
But if the Democrats in Congress can follow Gore's lead and start challenging the administration's lawbreaking head-on, they may be able to get enough Republicans to join them for opportunistic reasons to build majorities that can press for serious investigations.
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