Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’

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Clinton’s India ties may complicate Obama policy

December 2, 2008

MATTHEW LEE and PETE YOST
AP News

Dec 01, 2008 18:30 EST

The close ties with India that Secretary of State-nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton forged during her years as a U.S. senator and presidential candidate could complicate diplomatic perceptions of her ability to serve as a neutral broker between India and its nuclear neighbor, Pakistan.

With tensions rising between India and Pakistan after last week’s deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Hillary Clinton faces an early test of her influence in South Asia, where President-elect Barack Obama on Monday said that instability and the rise of militants pose “the single most important threat against the American people.”

Both Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have maintained warm relations for years with India and the Indian-American community. As New York’s senator for eight years and as a 2008 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton toured India and visited with Indian officials and entrepreneurs, and her campaigns profited from the largesse of Indian-American fundraisers. Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation has been funded by some of the same well-heeled Indian businessmen who backed his wife’s campaigns.

In her new role as the nation’s top diplomat, Hillary Clinton would project Obama’s policies, not her own. But even foreign affairs experts who wave off suggestions that Hillary Clinton would lean toward either Asian power acknowledge that the perception of such a tilt could cause suspicions in Pakistan. South Asia experts reject the assertion of bias, but they acknowledge it exists.

“There are some who believe it, but I think most people think she is an objective observer with a good understanding of South Asia,” said Walter Andersen, Associate Director of the South Asia Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies. Andersen insisted perceptions of Hillary Clinton’s bias toward India are “based on inaccuracy.”

Karin Von Hippel, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed, saying Hillary Clinton is “very balanced” and “understands almost better than anybody how delicate the situation is between these two countries.”

Still, perceptions matter, especially in the region. “There are concerns that she is seen as pro-India, she and her husband both,” said one Washington-based foreign diplomat with extensive experience in South Asia. “The Pakistanis definitely see them as closer and friendlier to India.”

The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue of India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars — two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir — since winning independence from Britain.

Influential members of the Indian-American community have rejoiced in Hillary Clinton’s selection as secretary of state.

“Sen. Clinton will continue the close relationship between the United States and India that started with the Clinton administration and has progressed in the Bush years,” said Varun Nikore, founder of the Indian-American Leadership Initiative, an independent political organization supporting Democratic candidates.

“You cannot expect that any nominee for secretary of state would have a special relationship going into this job, but we’re very lucky that we have in Sen. Clinton someone who is already well-versed on one of the more important countries and emerging economies in the world,” said Nikore.

A current State Department official allowed that Bill Clinton had substantially boosted engagement with India, but noted that any administration would likely have done so. The official stressed that President George W. Bush has continued that course, most recently signing a civilian nuclear pact with New Delhi.

“None of this has been meant to exclude Pakistan, but it is a zero-sum game when you are dealing with these two countries,” the official said. “You can’t do something with one without it affecting the other.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration thinking.

Ties between the United States and India improved dramatically, as did Pakistani suspicions of pro-India bias in Washington, during Bill Clinton’s administration, which embraced India as a major power and market as it opened its economy in the 1990s.

The administration’s disparate treatment of India and Pakistan was most apparent during a 2000 Asian trip, with the president spending five days in India and seven hours in Pakistan.

The Clinton White House barred media coverage of the Pakistan stop and released only an official photo of Bill Clinton and Gen. Pervez Musharraf seated among aides, 12 feet across from each other. Bill Clinton admonished Pakistan’s military government to retreat from its nuclear weapons course and to lower dangerous tensions with India.

In a speech to India’s Parliament on that trip, Bill Clinton said he shared many of New Delhi’s concerns about “the course Pakistan is taking; your disappointment that past overtures have not always met with success; your outrage over recent violence. I know it is difficult to be a democracy bordered by nations whose governments reject democracy.”

Early during her presidential campaign in 2008, the former first lady pointed to the “strong partnership” that Bill Clinton forged between India and the U.S. As New York’s senator, Hillary Clinton also touted her role as co-chair of the Senate India Caucus.

“As president I will work with India to make our strong friendship even stronger,” Hillary Clinton promised earlier this year.

During the presidential campaign, Indian-Americans reciprocated Hillary Clinton’s long-standing embrace of India by giving generously — $2 million at a single fundraiser in New York in 2007.

At one point, the Obama camp prepared, but then disavowed, a campaign memo that carried the headline “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab),” a mocking play on the standard reference to a candidates’ party and constituency.

The memo, which created a furor in India and the Indian-American community, also referred to the Clintons’ investments in India, Sen. Clinton’s fundraising among Indian-Americans and the former president’s $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company that has moved U.S. jobs to India.

Obama called the memo “a dumb mistake” and “not reflective of the long-standing relationship I have had with the Indian-American community.”

Now as president-elect, Obama has chosen Hillary Clinton to be his chief diplomat and highlighted India and Pakistan as priorities for his administration.

“The situation in South Asia as a whole and the safe havens for terrorists that have been established there represent the single most important threat against the American people,” he told reporters at a news conference Monday as he unveiled his foreign policy and national security team, including Hillary Clinton.

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Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

Source: AP News

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Team

November 27, 2008

Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation, Nov 23, 2008

I hate to say I told you so, but here it goes.

In late September, in this column, I criticized Barack Obama for what I called a “pathetic” debate with John McCain, in which Obama got nearly everything about foreign policy wrong:

“He checked all the boxes. Barack (“Senator McCain is right”) Obama couldn’t find anything to disagree with the militarist Arizonan about. Support for NATO expansion? Check. Absurd anti-Russian diatribes? Check. Dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Check. I’m ready to attack Pakistan? Check. (Actually, on this one, McCain was the moderate!) Painful sanctions against Iran, backed up by the threat of force? Check. Blathering about the great threat from Al Qaeda? Check. It went on and on.”

I pointed out that Obama went out of his way to say things like: “I believe the Republican Guard of Iran is a terrorist organization.” And: “A resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region.”

Last July, in a major feature piece for The Nation on Obama’s foreign policy, I wrote:

“But in many respects, Obama seems likely to preside over a restoration of the bipartisan consensus that governed foreign policy during the cold war and the 1990s, updated for a post-9/11 world. … Even as he pledges to end the war in Iraq, Obama promises to increase Pentagon spending, boost the size of the Army and Marines, bolster the Special Forces, expand intelligence agencies and maintain the hundreds of US military bases that dot the globe. He supports a muscular multilateralism that includes NATO expansion, and according to the Times of London, his advisers are pushing him to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on in an Obama administration. Though he is against the idea of the United States imposing democracy abroad, Obama does propose a sweeping nation-building and democracy-promotion program, including strengthening the controversial National Endowment for Democracy and constructing a civil-military apparatus that would deploy to rescue and rebuild failed and failing states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.”

So are we surprised that now, as president-elect, Obama is selecting people whose views are coherent with Obama’s frequently stated views? Are we surprised that the views of Obama’s conservative and centrist advisers are, in fact, coherent with Obama’s own? And are we surprised that his choices for his foreign policy and national security appointments are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist, and pro-military circles without even a single — yes, not one! — chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic party? No, we are not.

What does it mean, then? Do we still believe that Obama was pretending to be conservative and cautious on foreign policy during the campaign, in order to get himself elected? Or is the truth, like Occam’s razor, far simpler? Perhaps what Obama (and his advisers) said during the campaign reflects what they really believe.

We could all make lists of people that we might have chosen for secretary of state, defense, attorney general, homeland security, intelligence, and national security adviser. (True, not all of Obama’s appointments are certain, yet, but the writing is on the wall.) It’s now likely that not one of those posts will be filled with someone who either voted against the war in Iraq as a member of Congress or who, from outside Congress, vocally opposed the war. Not one.

What about Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Chris Dodd, Sherrod Brown, and Jim Webb from the Senate? Where is John Kerry? What about Gary Hart and Al Gore? What about any one of a dozen or more prominent members of the antiwar and progressive caucuses in the House of Representatives, such as Lynn Woolsey, Jim McDermott, or Jim McGovern? What about the generals who, unlike General James E. Jones, didn’t campaign with McCain and who spoke out against the war? What about the many prominent experts on disarmament and nonproliferation, like Lt. General Robert Gard, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, and Peter Galbraith, all of whom serve on the board of directors of the Center for Arms Control? Or Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, a leading arms control expert? Well, you get the idea.

Here’s the likely lineup so far: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser James E. Jones. For director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral tangled up in the military-industrial complex? Key Obama advisers such as Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy; Tony Lake, a former national security adviser; Susan Rice, an Africa specialist and former State Department official; and Mark Lippert, Obama’s top Senate foreign policy aide are likely to get important deputy-level jobs, though Danzig — who is on record supporting Gates for the job — may yet get the top Pentagon post.

As I pointed out in my July piece for The Nation, Rice and Lake — along with outside advisers Samantha Power and Sarah Sewell — are on record supporting tough military action overseas in case of humanitarian crisis. Rice and Lake have said explicitly that they favor war against Sudan. Two years ago, they wrote in the Washington Post:

“The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan’s oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy — by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.”If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it. Impossible? No.”

Clinton, who now seems to be a lock for the State Department, would be likely to hire a passel of hardliners for her own aides, including people like Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and Leslie Gelb, all three of who serve on the advisory board of the ultra-hawkish group, United Against Nuclear Iran. She’d also draw on relatively conservative officials from the Center for a New American Security, the Brookings Institution, and other Washington thinktanks who are in tune with her own hawkish views on Israel, Iran, and projecting U.S. muscle abroad.

And then there is General Jones.

Out of the blue, in the third presidential debate, Obama cited Jones as someone he trusts on national security. He is an advocate for stepped-up defense spending. And, notes CNN, it’s all one big, happy family:

“One person close to the transition noted Jones is a bipartisan figure who has warm relationships with both current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may stay on the job for at least a brief period, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is now on track to be nominated as Secretary of State after Thanksgiving.”

Not once, but twice he was asked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be her deputy secretary of state. Adds the London Times, in an analytical story on Jones:

“Last year he conducted an investigation on behalf of Congress on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.”‘Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan,’ he said. He also said that the war in Iraq had caused the US to ‘take its eye off the ball’ in Afghanistan, and gave warning that the consequences of failure there were just as serious as defeat in Iraq – views publicly expressed by Mr Obama.

“Before Mr Obama travelled to Afghanistan during the presidential campaign he was briefed by General Jones, who in 2007 was appointed by Dr Rice as a special envoy for Middle East Security.”

National Review Online calls the idea of Jones at the NSC “a pretty good sign for hawks, a pretty bad sign for doves,” which just about sums it up.

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Barack Obama mentor Abner Mikva warns over Hillary Clinton choice

November 26, 2008
From The Times
November 26, 2008

Barack Obama

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

The list of Bill Clinton’s foreign donors could prove to be embarrassing

Tim Reid in Chicago

One of Barack Obama’s longstanding mentors and oldest friends said yesterday that he believes Bill Clinton will be a complicating factor for the new president and that his list of foreign donors could prove embarrassing.

Abner Mikva, a former federal judge who was Mr Clinton’s White House counsel – and an early supporter and close friend of Mr Obama – told The Times that the choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State worried him because of her husband.

Although not a member of the White House transition team, Mr Mikva was once one of Mr Obama’s most powerful patrons in Chicago, and is the first person with ties to the President-elect to express misgivings publicly about Mr Clinton’s impact on the new administration.

“I worry about the difficulty not that she brings, but that her husband brings,” he said over breakfast at the University of Chicago, where he recently retired as a law professor. “His entire career since leaving the White House has involved foreign contacts, foreign speeches and foreign contributions,” Mr Mikva, also a former US congressman, said.

“I don’t know how you separate her activities from his – how you vet those. As far as I’m concerned they will all have to be made public. I think that will be very embarrassing to President Clinton and to the donors.”

One of the main stumbling blocks to Mrs Clinton’s nomination as Mr Obama’s Secretary of State – which will be announced formally next week – was Mr Clinton’s financial ties to foreign governments, and the list of donors to his philanthropic foundation and presidential library.

After negotiations between both camps last week, Mr Clinton agreed to hand over the names of more than 200,000 donors to the Obama White House transition team, and to have future foreign speeches and engagements vetted so as to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with his wife.

Mr Mikva added: “I’m not saying there is anything illegal. But it causes complications trying to make clear that what they do in private has nothing to do with our foreign policy.”

Mr Mikva, 82, said he had a “tremendous amount of confidence” in Mr Obama’s ability to confront the challenges he faces. “It transcends the confidence I’ve had in any other political figure, and I’ve been around.”

Yet he said he was worried that the expectations for him were too great, and that some of the biggest problems that Mr Obama will face will be from within his own party, particularly as the President-elect is going to “be doing some unpopular things”.

He spoke an hour before Mr Obama told Democrats and Republicans that “the old way of doing business” was over.

He declared his intention to pour over the federal budget “page by page, line by line”, to cut wasteful spending programmes.

Having announced a huge economic spending package on Monday to “jolt the economy back into shape” – it could reach at least $700 billion – Mr Obama said: “If we’re going to make the investments we need, we must also be willing to shed the spending we don’t.” Mr Obama wants to forge an economic policy combining massive spending, which will lead to a ballooning federal deficit, with a targeted and disciplined spending strategy.

He will take office with the US Government already awash in red ink. A record deficit of $237.2 billion was reported in October, which reflected only a portion of the $700 billion (£542 billion) financial rescue package passed by Congress last month.

“In these challenging times, when we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an option,” Mr Obama said. “It is an imperative. We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programmes that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politician, lobbyist or interest group. We simply cannot afford it.”

Mr Obama introduced Peter Orszag as his choice for director of the Office of Management and Budget, who will be responsible for overseeing the federal budget and cutting spending.

Mr Orszag is currently director of the Congressional Budget Office. “He doesn’t need a map to see where the bodies are buried in the budget,” Mr Obama said. “He knows what works, and what doesn’t.”

Mr Obama also chose Robert Nabors to be Mr Orszag’s deputy. Mr Nabors has been a top staff aide on the House Appropriations Committee, from where spending Bills initiate.

Echoing Abraham Lincoln once again, Mr Obama said that his new economic team will have to “think anew and act anew”. They will.

His chief economic advisers Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, as well as Mr Orszag, all have ties to Robert Rubin, Mr Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. His mantra was balanced budgets. They are about to plunge America even further into debt.

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Guest Columnists Warn Obama About Escalating in Afghanistan

November 24, 2008

Out of the frying pan into the fire? In today’s New York Times, three columnists — including a guy named Rumsfeld — warn that a “surge” in Afghanistan could last decades and/or not even be worth it or make matters worse, while our economy collapses.

By Greg Mitchell | Editor & Publisher

NEW YORK (November 23, 2008) — (Commentary) Out of the frying pan into the fire? In his race for the White House, Barack Obama called long and often for sending many more troops to Afghanistan (even before we withdraw quite a few from Iraq). It was a required thing to say on the campaign trail to show toughness and also to make the politically winning point that President Bush had fought the wrong war, in Iraq, when we had not yet cleaned out Afghanistan.

Did he really mean it? If so, is it really the right thing to do, especially with our chief national security threat now coming from within – in the form of our economic crisis?

The New York Times today presents a host of op-eds on Iraq and Afghanistan, including one from a guy named Rumsfeld and another from someone called Chalabi. The ones related to the Afghan conflict should raise questions for readers, and I hope, the Obama team. Just this morning, the Karzai government revealed that Obama had called the nation’s leader and pledged to increase U.S. support. The NATO commander wants to nearly double troop strength there.

This past August, I devoted a column here to this subject after a brief flurry of front-page articles on Afghanistan arrived to mark U.S. deaths there finally hitting the 500 mark. The war in Afghanistan, long overlooked, is now getting more notice, I observed, before asking: “But does that mean the U.S., finally starting (perhaps) to dig out of Iraq, should now commit to another open-ended war, even for a good cause, not so far away?”

Nearly everyone in the media, and on the political stage, still calls this the “good war.” Obama has even said “we must win” there. But it’s the same question we have faced in Iraq: What does he define as “winning”? How much are we willing to expend (in lives lost and money) at a time of a severe budget crunch and overstretched military? Shouldn’t the native forces — and NATO — be doing more? And what about Pakistan? And so on.

We’ve been fighting there even longer than in Iraq, if that seems possible. Now do want to jump out of a frying pan into that fire in an open-ended way?

Few voices in the mainstream media – and even in the liberal blogosphere – have tackled this subject, partly because of long arguing for the need to fight the “good war” as opposed to the “bad war.” But now some very respected commentators – with impeccable pro-military credentials – are starting to sound off on the dangers.

Back in August, I was reduced to quoting Thomas Friedman from a recent New York Times column: “The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want….Obama needs to ask himself honestly: ‘Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?'”

And I reprinted at length comments from Joseph L. Galloway, the legendary war reporter, based largely on a recent paper written by Gen. Barry McCaffrey after his tour of the war zone. McCaffrey had said “we can’t shoot our way out of Afghanistan, and the two or three or more American combat brigades proposed by the two putative nominees for president are irrelevant.” Galloway noted sardonically: “We can’t afford to fail in Afghanistan, the general says, but he doesn’t address the question of whether we can afford to succeed there, either.”

Now the New York Times today presents several cautionary views. Here are three of them, hardly a group of lefty peaceniks.

Continued  >>

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Israeli army brass advocate timely war on Iran

November 24, 2008

The Global Research, Nov 23, 2008

Press TV

An Israeli security assessment has recommended devising contingency plans to attack Iran even if it means courting a conflict with the US.

The leaked paper drawn up by Israeli military chiefs maintains that Tel Aviv has a ‘limited’ window of opportunity to act against Iran before the country obtains a nuclear weapon, claiming that in 2009, Israel might have to face a nuclear Iran ‘alone’.

Senior Israeli officials had earlier expressed concern that an Obama administration might lead up to the restoration of Washington-Tehran relations.

President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to begin direct and unconditional talks with top Iranian officials on the country’s long-disputed nuclear program.

Israel alleges that Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has plans ‘to build a nuclear weapon’. Under the allegation, Israeli officials have long argued that the use of military force is a legitimate option in retarding the country’s nuclear progress.

Iran denies the Israeli claim, insisting that the country’s nuclear activities are solely directed at the civilian applications of the technology.

The Israeli army assessment claims ‘Iran’s threat to Israel’s survival’ is at the top of the list of challenges facing Tel Aviv and recommends close cooperation with the US to prevent a Washington-Tehran rapprochement.

According to the assessment, Israel must therefore draw up a plan for military action against Iran, in case other countries show reluctance to counter the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

The paper is to be presented to the cabinet next month as part of the National Security Council’s annual situation assessment, Haaretz reported.

This comes as outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert arrived in Washington on Sunday for talks with US President George W. Bush.

During his three-day stay, Olmert is expected to attempt to make President Bush pledge to counter the Iranian nuclear program.

Earlier in November, an unnamed senior European Union diplomat said that the bloc is concerned that ‘a possible Israeli strike against Iran is not completely off the radar’.

The official suggested that the perfect time for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear installations ‘is between now and January 20’ — when US President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

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Activists Seek Executive Order Banning Torture

November 20, 2008

NEW YORK – Shutting down the infamous detention centre at Guantanamo Bay is just one of a series of measures to reform U.S. counterterrorism practices being urged by the watchdog organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW).

[]

In a report released Sunday, the New York-based HRW urged President-elect Barack Obama to quickly repudiate the abusive policies put in place by the George W. Bush administration in its “global war on terror”.”The Obama administration is going to have a difficult task to restore America’s standing in the world,” Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism programme director at HRW, told IPS. “The Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies deeply damaged the reputation of the United States.”

HRW’s 11-step action plan — entitled “Fighting Terrorism Fairly and Effectively: Recommendations for President-elect Obama” — suggests how the U.S. could again become a credible leader in the fight for the global implementation of human rights.

“But it depends on how dramatically the Obama administration makes a clear break with the past,” Mariner added.

According to HRW, some 250 terrorist suspects are still being held as “enemy combatants” at the military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay opened in 2002. Most of the detainees have now been in custody for nearly seven years, without charge.

As president, Obama should close the detention facility — a step he has already pledged to take — and establish a task force to review all the detainees’ cases to determine whether they should be charged and brought to trial or released.

Also among the 11 steps is the abolition of military commissions to try suspected foreign terrorists. HRW argues that these commissions lack “basic fair trial guarantees” and that federal criminal courts were the “best-equipped” and “time tested” venues to handle terrorism cases.

Similarly, plans to legalise the indefinite preventive detention of suspected terrorists – based on “predictions of future dangerousness” — should be rejected by Obama, HRW says.

Justifying detention without charge by classifying people as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terror”, as has happened to suspects arrested in locations like Bosnia, Thailand and along the U.S.-Mexico border, should also be stopped.

HRW also condemned the use of torture and inhumane interrogation techniques by U.S. armed forces and intelligence agencies — “including stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, and noise, and depriving them of sleep for long periods”.

To ban these practices, which have led to the deaths of some detainees, Obama should quickly issue an executive order and repudiate legal memos issued by the Bush Justice Department and presidential directives under the outgoing administration that permit torture and other abuses.

HRW called on the new administration to redress victims of abusive counterterrorism policies — something which has not happened so far as the victims have effectively been shut out of U.S. courts.

Above all, past abuses should be investigated, documented and publicly reported by a non-partisan commission with subpoena power, and former government officials who were responsible for some of the crimes should not be given immunity from prosecution, the group said.

Last week, Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey who chairs an intelligence oversight panel, issued a statement saying that “while an executive order [to ban torture] will not remove the need for legislation on the issue,” if Obama did so, it would “begin to restore our moral leadership on the issue”.

Holt also expressed support for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), a coalition of religious groups from all over the country that is lobbying to eliminate the use of torture as a part of U.S. policy.

On Nov. 12, NRCAT held a nationwide action day with more than 50 delegations of religious leaders holding meetings with members of Congress. Thirty religious groups participated in a demonstration in front of the White House, where President Bush is spending his final days in office.

While she agreed on the need to fight terrorism, Mariner of HRW rejected many of the measures taken after the 9/11 terror attacks, emphasising that “the Bush administration entirely disregarded even basic principles of the rule of law.”

“The government addressed terrorism in an extremely counterproductive way,” Mariner said.

Instead of diminishing the terrorist threat, reports of human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere fuelled the recruitment of supporters for militant groups, which argued the U.S. was in fact leading a “war on Islam”.

Asked whether she believes Obama will heed the recommendations of HRW, Mariner stressed that by voting against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to authorise trials by military courts, “Obama has already stood up against these abuses.”

The president-elect also explicitly pledged to close Guantanamo during his campaign.

“So we are confident that consistent with his message of change, his actions and his criticism, he is going to repudiate the abusive counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration,” Mariner said.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

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George W Bush could pardon spies involved in torture

November 16, 2008

George W Bush is considering issuing pardons for US spies embroiled in allegations of torture just before he leaves the White House.

By Tim Shipman in Washington  | Telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 5:20PM GMT 15 Nov 2008

Senior intelligence officers are lobbying the outgoing president to look after the men and women who could face charges for following his orders in the war on terrorism.

Many fear that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and put an end to the policy of extraordinary rendition, could launch a legal witch hunt against those who oversaw the policies after he is sworn in on Jan 20.

Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.

A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons, said: “These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves.

“An effort is under way to get pre-emptive pardons. The White House has indicated that the matter is under consideration.”

In addition to frontline CIA and military officers, others at risk could include David Addington, Dick Cheney’s former counsel, and William Haynes, the former Pentagon general counsel who helped draw up the regulations governing enhanced interrogations.

Many in the Democratic party and human rights groups are calling on President-Elect Obama to tear up Mr Bush’s executive orders licensing intensive interrogations on his first day in the Oval Office. They also want an immediate end to rendition, whereby suspects are flown to countries that practise torture.

But some in the intelligence community fear that an overhaul of the justice department could embolden those who would like a full-blown investigation of what went on at Guantanamo Bay, with charges to follow for those involved.

Presidents can issue pardons at their discretion and those granted the immunity of a pardon do not need to have been previously charged with a crime.

Granting pardons to spies who allegedly used torture would complicate the politics surrounding Mr Obama’s moves to end aspects of the war on terror that are blamed for tarnishing America’s international reputation.

In meetings over the last two weeks, Mr Obama has been briefed by US intelligence chiefs on the extreme danger posed by some terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay camp. His advisers last week floated the idea that, while some will be released and some put on trial in normal courts, a third category of legal status may have to be created for the most dangerous – a move that met with howls of protest from civil liberties groups.

There are just 255 prisoners still held at the base on the island of Cuba, but they include the so-called “Dirty 30”, bodyguards to Osama bin Laden captured during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.

The ex-CIA official said: “The Bush people are trying to be helpful but this is the one thing that they are pushing hard on. They’re saying, ‘Don’t rush into anything.’ It’s easy to say close the place, but what do you do with the detainees? There are some serious head cases in there.”

Some conservatives argue that if Mr Bush were to issue pardons to protect those who took part in his administration’s security regime, it would make it easier for the incoming administration to find out exactly what went on, the goal of many who want to prevent repetition of what they view as abuses.

The ex-CIA official said: “If you want people to tell the truth, the best way would be to give them legal guarantees. A pardon is not the only way you can do that, but if Bush does it, it will save Obama the political problem he would have if he offered people immunity later.”

But critics say such a move would be a disgrace. James Ross, legal and policy director for Human Rights Watch, said: “It would be the first pre-emptive pardon in US history for war crimes. Such a pardon might seek to protect low-level government officials who relied on legally dubious Justice Department memos on interrogations.

“But it would also provide blanket immunity to senior administration officials who bear criminal responsibility for their role in drafting, orchestrating and implementing a US government torture programme.”

Mr Bush has received around 3,000 requests for pardons and conservatives would like him to help Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice for his role in leaking the name of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame. Mr Bush has already commuted Mr Libby’s sentence.

Presidential pardons are always controversial, though Mr Bush has granted fewer than 200 so far, less than half of those handed out by Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day in office alone. When Gerald Ford took over from Richard Nixon, he pardoned his predecessor, forgiving all federal crimes he may have committed during the Watergate scandal.

Andrew Johnson pardoned the soldiers of the Confederacy and Jimmy Carter did the same for Vietnam War draft dodgers.

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Robert Fisk: Obama has to pay for eight years of Bush’s delusions

November 15, 2008

He will have to get out of Iraq, and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths

The Independent, Saturday, 8 November 2008

Barack Obama

REUTERS

How is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the US itself?

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American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about US intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of “raw” reports from American spies and their “assets” around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a US navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no US Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a US military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a US military base in east Asia.

That this nonsense was disseminated around the world by those tasked to defend the United States in the “war on terror” shows the fantasy environment in which the Bush regime has existed these past eight years. If you can believe that bin Laden drops by a shopping mall on an American military base, then you can believe that everyone you arrest is a “terrorist”, that Arabs are “terrorists”, that they can be executed, that living “terrorists” must be tortured, that everything a tortured man says can be believed, that it is legitimate to invade sovereign states, to grab the telephone records of everyone in America. As Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times a couple of years ago, the Bush administration wanted these records “which contain crucial documentation of calls for a Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Indiana, and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Alabama, to help in the search for Osama bin Laden”. There was no stopping Bush when it came to trampling on the US Constitution. All that was new was that he was now applying the same disrespect for liberty in America that he had shown in the rest of the world.

But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the US itself? John F Kennedy once said that “the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war”. After Bush’s fear-mongering and Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair’s sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new US legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more?

Obama has got to close Guantanamo. He’s got to find a way of apologising to the world for the crimes of his predecessor, not an easy task for a man who must show pride in his country; but saying sorry is what – internationally – he will have to do if the “change” he has been promoting at home is to have any meaning outside America’s borders. He will have to re-think – and deconstruct – the whole “war on terror”. He will have to get out of Iraq. He will have to call a halt to America’s massive airbases in Iraq, its $600m embassy. He will have to end the blood-caked air strikes we are perpetrating in southern Afghanistan – why, oh, why do we keep slaughtering wedding parties? – and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths: that America can no longer remain uncritical in the face of Israeli army brutality and the colonisation for Jews and Jews only on Arab land. Obama will have to stand up at last to the Israeli lobby (it is, in fact, an Israeli Likud party lobby) and withdraw Bush’s 2004 acceptance of Israel’s claim to a significant portion of the West Bank. US officials will have to talk to Iranian officials – and Hamas officials, for that matter. Obama will have to end US strikes into Pakistan – and Syria.

Indeed, there’s a growing concern among America’s allies in the Middle East that the US military has to be brought back under control – indeed, that the real reason for General David Petraeus’ original appointment in Iraq was less to organise the “surge” than it was to bring discipline back to the 150,000 soldiers and marines whose mission – and morals – had become so warped by Bush’s policies. There is some evidence, for example, that the four-helicopter strike into Syria last month, which killed eight people, was – if not a rogue operation – certainly not sanctioned byWashington or indeed by US commanders in Baghdad.

But Obama’s not going to be able to make the break. He wants to draw down in Iraq in order to concentrate more firepower in Afghanistan. He’s not going to take on the lobby in Washington and he’s not going to stop further Jewish colonisation of the occupied territories or talk to Israel’s enemies. With AIPAC supporter Rahm Emanuel as his new chief of staff – “our man in the White House”, as the Israeli daily Maariv called him this week – Obama will toe the line. And of course, there’s the terrible thought that bin Laden – when he’s not shopping at US military post offices – may be planning another atrocity to welcome the Obama presidency.

There is just one little problem, though, and that’s the “missing” prisoners. Not the victimswho have been (still are being?) tortured in Guantanamo, but the thousands who have simply disappeared into US custody abroad or – with American help – into the prisons of US allies. Some reports speak of 20,000 missing men, most of them Arabs, all of them Muslims. Where are they? Can they be freed now? Or are they dead? If Obama finds that he is inheriting mass graves from George W Bush, there will be a lot of apologising to do.

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Obama’s Victory – Fear and Hope

November 15, 2008

Immanuel Wallesrstein, Commentary No. 245, Nov. 15, 2008


The whole of the United States and indeed the whole world was watching, and almost all of it was cheering, the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Although, during the electoral campaign, everyone tried to play down the centrality of the racial issue, on Nov. 4 it seemed that no one could talk of anything else. There are three central questions about what most commentators are calling this “historic event”: How important is it? What explains the victory? What is likely to happen now?

On the evening of November 4, an immense crowd assembled in Grant Park, Chicago, to hear Obama’s acceptance speech. All those who were watching U.S. television saw the camera zoom in on Jesse Jackson, who was in tears. Those tears reflect the virtually unanimous view of all African-Americans, who regard Obama’s election as the moment of their definitive integration into the U.S. electoral process. They do not believe that racism has disappeared. But a symbolic barrier has been crossed, first of all for them, and then for all the rest of us.

Their sentiment is quite parallel to the feelings of Africans in South Africa on April 27, 1994 when they voted to elect Nelson Mandela president of their country. It has not mattered that Mandela, as president, did not fulfill the whole promise of his party. It will not matter if Obama does not fulfill the whole promise of his campaign. In the United States, as in South Africa, a new day has dawned. Even if it is an imperfect day, it is a better day than before. The African-Americans, but also the Hispanics and the young people in general, voted for Obama out of hope – a diffuse hope, but a real one.

How did Obama win? He won the way anyone wins in a large, complex political situation. He put together a large coalition of many different political forces. In this case, the gamut ran from fairly far left to right of center. He would not have won without that enormous range of support. And, of course, now that he has won, all the different groups want him to govern as each prefers, which is of course not possible.

Who are these different elements, and why did they support him? On the left, even the far left, they voted for Obama because of deep anger about the damage the Bush regime inflicted on the United States and the world, and the genuine fear that McCain would have been no better, perhaps worse. On the center-right, independents and many Republicans voted for him most of all because they had become aghast at the ever-increasing dominance of the Christian right in Republican party politics, a sentiment that was underlined by the choice of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. These people voted for Obama because they were afraid of McCain/Palin and because Obama convinced them that he was a solid and sensible pragmatist.

And in-between these two groups were the so-called Reagan Democrats, largely industrial workers, often Catholics, often racist, who had tended to desert their Democratic party roots in recent elections because they viewed the party as having moved too far left and disapproved of its positions on social questions. These voters moved back to the Democratic party not because their outlook had changed, but because of fear. They were deeply afraid of the economic depression into which the United States has moved, and thought that their only hope was in a new New Deal. They voted for the Democrats despite the fact that Obama was an African-American. Fear conquered racism.

And what will Obama do now? What can Obama do now? It is still too early to be sure. It seems clear that he will move quickly to take advantage of a crisis situation, as his new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, put it. I suspect we shall see a dramatic set of initiatives in the traditional first 100 days. And some of what Obama does may be surprising.

Still, there are two situations, the two biggest, that are largely beyond his control – the transformed geopolitics of the world-system, and the catastrophic world economic situation. Yes, the world received Obama’s victory with joy, but also with prudence. It is notable that two major centers of power issued statements on the geopolitical scene that were quite forthright. Both the European Union in a unanimous statement and President Lula of Brazil said they looked forward to renewing collaboration with the United States, but this time as equals, not as junior partners.

Obama will pull out of Iraq more or less as promised, if for no other reason than the fact that the Iraqi government will insist upon it. He will try to find a graceful exit from Afghanistan, which will not be too easy. But whether he will do something significant in relation to the Israel/Palestine deadlock and whether he can look forward to a more stable Pakistan is very unsure. And he will have less to say about it than he may think. Can Obama accept the fact that the United States is no longer the world’s leader, merely a partner with other power centers? And, even if he can, can he somehow get the American people to accept this new reality?

As for the depression, it will no doubt have to play out its course. Obama, like all the other major leaders in the world, is a captain on a very stormy sea, and can do relatively little more than try to keep his ship from sinking altogether.

Where Obama has some leeway is in the internal U.S. situation. There are three things where he is expected to act and can act, if he is ready to be bold. One is job creation. This can only be done effectively in the short run through government action. And it would be best done by investing in reconstructing the degraded infrastructure of the United States, and in measures to reverse environmental decline.

The second is the establishment, at last, of a decent health care structure in the United States, in which everyone, without exception, will be covered, and in which there will be considerable emphasis on preventive medicine.

And the third area is in undoing all the damage that has been done to basic civil liberties in the United States by the Bush administration, but also by prior administrations. This requires an overhauling both of the Department of Justice and the legal and paralegal apparatus that has been constructed in the last eight, but also the last thirty, years.

If Obama acts decisively in these three arenas, then we might say that this was a truly historic election, one in which the change that occurred was more than symbolic. But if he fails here, the letdown will be momentous.

Many are trying to divert his attention into the arenas in which he cannot do much, and in which his best position would be that of a lower profile, the acceptance of new world reality. There is much about Obama’s future actions to fear, and much that offers hope.

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Bush’s last 100 days the ones to watch

November 5, 2008

BY JESSE JACKSON | Chicago Sun-Times, Nov 4, 2008

The air crackles with anticipation. Fingers are crossed. It gets hard to breathe. Hope, for so long locked in a closet, begins pounding on the door.

And throwing caution to the wind, many already are talking about Barack Obama’s first 100 days. Will he move directly to the Apollo investment agenda, providing money to refit buildings, implement the use of renewable energy and generate jobs in the drive to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Will he put forth a comprehensive health-care plan or begin by covering all children? Will workers finally be given the right to organize once more? How will he handle mortgage relief and/or help cities burdened by poverty?

But even as our minds, against all discipline, look beyond this day to the possible victory and change, we’d better start paying attention to another 100 days — President Bush’s last months in office.

Bush and Vice President Cheney represent a failed conservative era — and they know it. As the administration moves into its last 100 days, there seems to be a flurry of activity: regulations to forestall Obama’s new era of accountability; a flood of contracts to reward friends and lock in commitments; a Wall Street bailout that is pumping money out the door.

Consider: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is handing out $350 billion to the banks, drawing a special circle around nine banks — including Goldman Sachs, the firm he previously headed — as clearly too big to fail. The money apparently has no conditions, even though the entire purpose was to get the banks to start lending once more to one another and to companies and individuals.

Now it appears that banks plan to hoard the cash, to use it to help pay for mergers with other healthy banks (not weak ones), or to pay out dividends and bonuses. And Paulson, instead of publicly rebuking them, has let it be known that mergers would be a good thing.

Instead of getting the banking system working for small businesses and people again, our money is being used to consolidate the strength of a few megabanks.

There has been a rapid increase in military outlays over the last few months. Is the Pentagon being called on to help bolster the economy — and perhaps McCain — in these final weeks? Or, more likely, is the Pentagon pumping out money to reward its friends and lock in spending before the new sheriff gets to town?

The Washington Post reports that the White House is “working to enact an array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.”

About 90 new rules are in the works, and at least nine are considered “economically significant” because they would impose costs or promote societal benefits that exceed $100 million annually. Many will make changes that the new administration will find it hard to reverse for years to come. More emissions from power plants; more exemptions from environmental-impact statements; permission to operate natural gas lines at higher levels of pressure — the changes could be the last calamities visited upon us by the Bush administration.

Congress — the old one, not the new one just elected — comes back into special session right after the election. Representatives Henry Waxman and John Conyers would be well advised to convene special hearings to try to curb what Bush has cooked up for his last 100 days. Let’s not let the new dawn that is possible be dimmed by clouds left over from an old era that has failed.

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