When Wings Take Dreams

For Dubya's comeback, I suggest renting Will Ferrell's America:You're Welcome, a comedic but accurate account of the Bush presidency. It seems Dubya is annoying our allies. Gerhard Schroeder lambasted Bush for lying about why he didn't support the American invasion of Iraq and the British called him out on the assertion that waterboarding yielded information that prevented the Heathrow Airport plot. As a library of research has shown, it was the handiwork of the Brits and uncoerced leads from Muslims that stopped the plot.

In one of the televised interviews, W defends his approval of torture by saying that his lawyers said it was legal. Of course, Dick Cheney massaged the legal opinions, which another whole library has established.

If you are confused about Rightness and Wrongness of America's torturing people, I recommend Charles Fried and Gregory Fried's "Because it is Wrong:Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror". The father and son team debated the issues in the book privately and publicly over a year before committing their ideas to print. Charles Fried had been Reagan's Solicitor General and his son Gregory is a philosophy professor. The two handle the approaches to warrantless wiretapping and torture in their book. While both conclude they are wrong, they disagree to what are the remedies. Charles Fried backs the Obama approach of moving forward, while Gregory wants the torturing part of the Bush years to be punished and some semblance of a national reconciliation commission created.

George W's admission that he approved torture actually puts the United States in a difficult spot. Under the Torture Convention, signatory states are required to take the necessary remedis to stop the practice but also to bring the culprits to justice. This also applies to all sugnatories. In effect, George W. Bush should not be allowed to travel to Europe, Canada or any other country that has signed the Torture Convention. In addition, the United Nations rapporteur on torture is also owed considerable explanations by the United States about its practices on torture and renditioning. These requirements do not end with a change in administration. Jonathan Turley at the beginning of the Obama Administration cautioned the DOJ that if they brushed the crimes of torture under the rug than the new Administration would become liable under international law.

For those tempted to buy "Decision Points", don't. I'll report on anything newsworthy or noteworthy in the weeks ahead. I'll be reading in a quest to answer the question about why the Bush Administration was always so passive/aggressive toward every crisis. It seems Bush himself always needed at least two years before he acted on anything. In his interviews, he has lied about when he first learned about the impending financial collapse of the world economic system. He says March 2008 but the hard-copy evidence points to the same time the previous year. In the memoir he admits he let the situation in Iraq deteriorate for two years before he did anything about it.

My bet is still on Rumsfeld to produce a memoir, which actually says something truthful.

From the interviews to date, the tone of the former President gives you some hint of where the current GOP gets its rhetoric from. This tendency to make bold-faced assertions and then double-down on them if they are proven to be factually incorrect. Dubya's revisiting the reasons for war with Iraq takes us back to the good old days where he accused Saddam of harboring terrorists (he did harbor the PFLP), building vast amounts of WMDs (he wasn't and hadn't since the Gulf War), or at least having the capability (recent justification but also proven wrong), and gaming the international system by cheating on the UN food for oil program (true but can you justify war on these grounds?).

I can't wait to read about 9-11. What was it about the August warnings titled "Bin Laden Plans to Attack America" that he didn't believe. In the interviews, he tries to maintain that no one really knew who committed 9-11 until days later when intelligence picked up Al Qaeda's bragging about it. He and Cheney have argued that no one knew anything about Al Qaeda until after 9-11. This is just plain wrong as the Clinton Administration had a full-time office just tracking Bin Laden and documenting the group's plans and ideology. The same can be said about determining the group's personnel. There has been a huge smokescreen created by the Bush people over 9/11 and the rationale for why the huge military/ terrorist/ intelligence complex was created after that day.

Some of this is understandable. You get caught with your pants down on the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. It's understandable you would want to cover up the obvious tracks leading to this event. But I find the whole rationale for torture in the Bush Administration to hang on this supposed ignorance about Al Qaeda and the wonderous revelations produced by waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed. But those revelations made the U.S. chase around the world on false leads, produced the false info that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda, and did not produce information about the LAX plot or the Healthrow plot or anything else. The United States and its allies knew buckets of information about AlQaeda. They didn't need torture or the wonderful fantasies about the "ticking time-bomb" to motivate people.

Watching Dubya, I still get this sense the guy was not in control. If you go back to the parts of the interview with Matt Lauer about his authorizing torture,listen to it closely. You get the sense his participation was very late in the game and that he was merely asked to bless the torture that had already been approved. Even in this very major decision, he comes across as disengaged, not quite aware of what is going on.

Years ago, people speculated about Nixon's state of mind and whether he was actually engaged in the last years of his presidency. There were rumors about drink, maudlin late night tours of the Capitol, boatrides to Mount Vernon. But then slightly more than a decade ago, a book was published of all the memos he wrote while President. In these memos he was obsessed with the most minute details of policy, personnel, and politics. He even spent time actually describing the ridiculous uniforms for the White House Guards. In fact, Nixon was in total control--just not emotionally in control of himself.

Maybe we will find out the same about Dubya. But today I have my doubts.