Meanwhile, in the White House...

Obama sweeps the Potomac Primary!

But you already know that. These primaries are so exciting, it's easy to forget that they take place in the shadow of a criminal regime which is still in control. As noted in today's New York Times, "the White House seems eager to lock in as many of the president’s policies as possible before he leaves office in 11 months."

Today the Senate voted in favor of retroactive immunity for telecoms. Sixty-nine U.S. senators believe that it should be illegal for American citizens to sue the telecommunications companies which helped the government spy on them. This vote, a major victory for the Bush administration, overturned a measure to exclude the immunity clause from the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The House version of the bill does not include immunity. There was some resistance in the Senate, and the good fight was led by Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold. But they were up against defecting Democrats, and Bush's promise to veto the bill if immunity isn't included.

Bush's most ominous piece of unfinished business is his failure to find Osama bin Laden. But we do have Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in custody, and five others said to have been in on the attacks. So in an effort to create a false sense of 9/11 victory before he leaves office, Bush would like to punish those mindless killers by mindlessly killing them.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did play a key role in the conception and execution of the 9/11 attacks; the 9/11 Commission Report famously identified him as "the principal architect." He is to 9/11 what Karl Rove is to George W. Bush. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the nightclub bombings in Bali, and the murder of Daniel Pearl are also on his resume. Killing him won't change any of that. He's more than willing to die for what he believes in; he's a religious fanatic. The American right wing, which speaks the same language, is happy to oblige aspiring martyrs. America kills. It's an American value, and it's a value we share with our most trusted allies, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Pakistan, and Syria.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Robert Gates paid a visit to Iraq; upon his return, he said maybe we shouldn't go ahead with that summertime troop drawdown after all. In the State of the Union address last month, Bush promised that "more than 20,000 of our troops are coming home," but that was just something he said. During the time Gates was in Iraq -- two days -- 22 people were killed by car bombs in Baghdad, 53 were killed by gunmen in northern Iraq, and 34 were killed by what the Associated Press calls "a suicide trucker."

So there is a concern that if we pull out some troops, we might not be able to keep saying violence is down. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee might not be able to keep saying "the surge is working." Ah, that wonderful surge. A whole year ago, Bush sent 20,000 more troops to Iraq. This resulted in there being 20,000 more troops there. If we now withdraw 20,000, Bush has suddenly realized, then there will be 20,000 fewer. And that would be bad, because the notion of impending success in Iraq has somehow been revived. Over the course of the last year, the troop escalation has resulted in a sense that our military is more in control. Well, of course. If we'd sent 40,000, it would look even more that way. Perhaps the strategy here is that if we just keep sending troops until the Americans outnumber the Iraqis, then most Iraqis will be Americans.

And the war must continue; it can't end, because too many people are making too much beautiful money. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the Army Criminal Investigation Command are in the midst of 142 ongoing investigations into bribery, contract fraud, kickbacks, and theft. The Center for Public Integrity estimates that at least $102 billion has been spent on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last five years; spending on these contracts has increased by more than 50% each year. And Bush is still doing everything he can to keep the party going.

The Justice Department wants to force companies to report internal fraud in government contracts, which sounds perfectly reasonable. The Bush regime is fine with that, provided there's a loophole: Contracts "to be performed outside the United States" are exempt.

I'm as swept up in the election as any of us. But the truth is that before we set about choosing our next president, we should impeach the one we've got.

Noah

8:24 AM

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Meanwhile, in the White House...