Bush Bamboozles Democrats on Iraq Agreement
Yesterday the Bush-Maliki agreement went before the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on international organizations, human rights, and oversight, chaired by Jim McGovern.
There was only one small problem: did the committee actually have a copy of the agreement?
Delahunt also berated the Bush administration for refusing to release an official copy of the agreement to the public.
Perhaps they had a classified version. We got our copy from the Iraq Oil Report.
McGovern seems to be the only Member of Congress familiar with the Constitution, which requires Senate approval of all treaties. He wants to know: is the Bush-Maliki agreement a treaty or not? The Boston Globe reports,
The Bush administration has labeled the pact a "status of forces agreement," which can be implemented without congressional approval.
But here's another small problem: Bush may want to "label" it a SOFA, but the document itself is explicitly not a SOFA! The official title is:
Agreement
Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq
On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq
It is a withdrawal of forces agreement - what rightwingers would call a surrender agreement. The words "Status of Forces Agreement" appear nowhere in the document.
So if it's not a SOFA, what is it? It's just an agreement between George Bush and the Iraqi Government (assuming it passes Parliament, which isn't so certain).
Here's the question Jim McGovern failed to ask: if it's not a SOFA, what in the Constitution or international law gives our President the power to sign this kind of agreement?
And this isn't just a theoretical question. If it's not a Constitutional agreement, is it enforceable under international law? Or is it not even worth the paper it's (not) printed on?
If the Iraqi parliament approves this agreement, U.S. troops and contractors may have none of the protections they believe they have. They could be prosecuted or sued in Iraqi courts or even other national courts.
These questions are way too important for Jim McGovern and other Democrats in Congress to let themselves to be bamboozled by George Bush.
Update 1: Ben Armbruster rightly notes the Iraqi version of SOFA called a 'withdrawal accord' - but so does the American version.
Update 2: Juan Cole:
McClatchy says that despite official Pentagon support for the agreement, some high DoD officials are dismayed at how much authority the agreement gives away to the Iraqis and blame the White House for being so eager for the agreement that they caved in to Iraqi demands.
Oh yeah...Remembering the War and Other National and Global Crises
By Dave Lindorff
The ongoing and deepening global economic crisis, to which Barack
Obama owes his presidential election victory, is no small thing, to be
sure. It also presents us on the left with a lot of openings to press
for progressive change.
We saw how the Republican attempt to derail Obama by labeling him a
?socialist? actually backfired?especially when people were reminded
that a fundamental premise of socialism is ?income redistribution,? in
which some of the wealth of the rich is taken away through taxation,
and transferred through federal programs to those who are less wealthy.
Joe the Plumber was outraged, but when most Americans who were having
trouble paying for gas or making their next mortgage payment, or who
were worried that their jobs might be about to vanish, thought about
that for longer than a sound-bite, it turns out that, not surprisingly,
they decided socialism and redistribution didn?t sound like a bad or
scary idea at all.
The same can be said of labor unions. In good times, many Americans
have bought the argument that unions are just out to grab dues payments
from their paychecks. But as job security vanishes and wages languish,
people are waking up to the idea that they are simply expendable
?inputs? to employers, and that a union can help them stand up to
abusive, uncaring management. Republican propaganda about the sanctity
of ?secret ballot? union elections?ironic given the GOP?s simultaneous
assault all over the country on the right to vote?fell on deaf ears.
Government itself, long a dirty word thanks to years of
conservative propaganda, aped and spread through the corporate media,
is coming back into favor, now that people see that they cannot count
on either themselves or their employers to pull them through hard
times. The idea that government can step in with things like extended
unemployment insurance benefits, food stamps, and even renegotiated
mortgages, makes people who once mocked ?big government? view things a
little differently.
But this unprecedented economic crisis also poses dangers.
Because we are so obsessed with the ongoing collapse of the economy
and the gathering storm of debt, unemployment and loss of retirement
savings that it entails, it?s easy for all of us to lose sight of other
crises that demand our urgent attention and action.
Chief among these are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing threat of climate change.
The wars are not going away on their own. The Iraq puppet
government of Nouri al Maliki is close to approving a deadline for the
removal of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. That is more than
three years from now?nearly as long as the US was involved in World War
II! It?s longer, even, than the absurd 16 months that Obama said it
would take for him to end the US war and occupation of Iraq during his
campaign, which was bad enough. (In the case of Afghanistan, it
represents a decade of war?as long as the Vietnam War!) The danger is
that Obama will allow that status of troops agreement with Iraq to
become his timetable for withdrawal. We have to say ?No!? The Iraq War
must be ended immediately.
Afghanistan, meanwhile, is in a meltdown, and every day that US
forces operate there, the opposition to US occupation grows, simply
strengthening the Taliban. Similarly, the more the US tries to attack
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in neighboring Pakistan, the more
opposition grows to the US in Pakistan. If we opponents of the war
allow Obama to go ahead with his plans for a larger US military force
in Afghanistan, we will end up with an even bigger and wider war in the
Middle East and Asia, with more terrorist recruits, and with whatever
remains of US funds for important domestic initiatives swallowed up by
the Pentagon and the secret intelligence budget.
Let me put this simply: Nothing progressive that has been proposed
by the Obama campaign can be achieved while the US is engaged in these
two criminal wars. No health care reform, no increase in education
loans, no early childhood education, no public works jobs programs,
Nothing.
And then there is climate change. The Obama campaign promised to
finally end eight years of a new Dark Ages, when government simply
denied science or actively attacked science, and to start taking
serious action to reduce America?s role in spewing out carbon into the
atmosphere. But you don?t hear much about that anymore. That?s because
reducing America?s carbon footprint costs serious money?money for
research into non-carbon energy sources, money for a power transmission
system to serve wind generation farms, money to develop a new
generation of non-polluting vehicles and to rebuild light rail and
inter-city rail systems. And once again, with the economy in a crisis,
and with the two wars sucking up all available tax revenues that aren?t
being given away to banks and Wall Street financial firms and insurance
companies, none of that is going to happen either, unless we demand it.
Meanwhile, while the progressive folks who put their all into the
Obama campaign are reveling in his and their Election Night success,
and are now taking a breather, the forces of darkness that control the
Democratic Party (think Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Rahm
Emanuel and the whole Democratic Leadership Council), are grabbing
control of the new administration, filling the incoming Obama cabinet
with carryover hacks from the Clinton administration, even including
the Clintons themselves, and, in some cases, the outgoing Bush
administration).
This is, in other words, no time to sit back and relax, reveling in
the admittedly hard-to-believe prospect of an African-American moving
into the White House. It is a time for action and then more action.
When Barack Obama makes that dramatic walk from his Inauguration
Day speech at the Capitol building to the White House, the streets need
to be lined with protestors holding up signs calling for an immediate
end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the new Congress tries to vote for a $50 ?billion or
$150-billion bail-out of the US auto industry, we need to be packing
the halls shouting it down. That money should be going only into
development of zero-emission automobiles, and it should be in the form
of voting-share equity in those companies.
Here, for what it?s worth, are my top 10 demands for action by the new Democratic government iin Washington:
1. US forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately! Shift the
funds saved to reconstruction aid for those two countries and to
veterans benefits, with any extra savings going to help fund education
in poor school districts in the US.
2. Slash military spending by closing most or all overseas military
bases, by dramatically reducing nuclear forces to near zero, by
reducing the number of men and women in uniform, and by closing bases
in the US. Savings should go to shoring up the Social Security and
Medicare Trust Fund.
3. Open up the secret intelligence budget, currently running at over
$40 billion a year, and cut it, for starters, by half. Savings should
also go to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund. (Along the way,
ban all spying on Americans, and revive the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act in full as originally written.)
4. Break up the banking and automobile industry, as well as any
other industry in which any player is so large it is able to extort
money out of the government by threatening that its failure would cause
a national economic crisis. ?Too big to fail? needs to mean ?too big to
be permitted to exist.?
5. Join the Kyoto Treaty, and pledge to immediately begin a campaign
to reduce US carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 or better, 2030.
Establish a crash national research program to develop carbon-free
energy sources, and provide funding for households to convert to
passive geo-thermal heating and cooling systems. Funds can come from
the unused $350-billion portion of the Paulson/Bernacke Wall Street
bailout fund. (Talk about a job-creation program, not to mention a big
whack at imported oil!)
6. Pass the Employer Free Choice Act, requiring employers to
recognize a labor union wherever a majority of the workers have signed
cards saying they want a union, and requiring those employers to
negotiate and reach an initial contract agreement within 90 days, or
under mandatory mediation.
7. Reassert the Constitutionally mandated authority of Congress by
rescinding all Bush/Cheney-era signing statements and executive orders
and declaring them, by Presidental declaration and by Joint Resolution
of the Congress, to have been invalid and unconstitutional.
8. Order the US Justice Department to investigate the actions of the
prior administration and, where crimes are discovered, to prosecute
offenders, up to and including the former president, to the full extent
of the law. This would include obstruction of justice, abuse of power,
commission of war crimes, conspiracy, fraud, bribery, war profiteering
and criminal negligence.
9. Appoint Ralph Nader as new chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, with a powerful mandate take the necessary steps to restore
competition and fairness to the nation?s media. (My pet proposal:
Establish a government loan fund to allow workers at failing newspapers
to buy their publications from the owners and to operate them as
employee-owned enterprises, on a tax-free basis.)
10. Enact a national health care program that provides health
insurance for every person in America. My choice here would be a
single-payer system?essentially an expansion of Medicare to cover
everyone, funded by progressive taxation. Failing that, a system in
which the government has an insurance program operating in competition
with the private sector, should eventually lead to a single-payer plan.
One idea: dispatch a public-citizen commission to Canada to study the
Canadian health system and report back to Congress and the White House
in 90 days.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is ?The Case for Impeachment? (St. Martin?s Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Feingold Wants Us to Scream About Bush's Pardons
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) wrote a good article for Salon about Bush's expected pardons:
An unpardonable use of power
If President Bush cares about his place in history, he should think twice before issuing pardons that call his judgment, and the integrity of the rule of law, into question.
Feingold acknowledges the problem - Bush's pardon power is broad:
The power of the pardon is close to absolute. Short of interfering with their own impeachment, presidents can pardon whomever they choose.
I'm not sure why Feingold limits the impeachment exception to the President himself because the Constitution gives President power to pardon "except in cases of impeachment," which means all impeachments - not just the President, but anyone in his Administration who might be impeached (Cheney, Libby, Addington, Gonzales, etc.)
That aside, Feingold explains why Bush's pardons would be so controversial:
At the end of his term, however, this president should think twice before issuing pardons that call his judgment, and the integrity of the rule of law, into question.
If President Bush were to pardon key individuals involved in the misdeeds of his administration, from warrantless wiretapping to torture to the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the courts would be unable to address criminality, or pass judgment on the legality of some of the president's worst abuses. Issuing such pardons now would be particularly egregious, since voters just issued such a strong condemnation of the Bush administration at the ballot box.
But what can we do to stop Bush's pardons?
There is nothing to prevent President Bush from using the pardon in such a short-sighted and self-serving manner -- except, perhaps, public pressure that may itself be a window on the judgment of history. Everyone who can exert that pressure, from members of Congress to the press and the public, should express their views on whether it would be appropriate for President Bush to use his pardon power in this way.
In other words, we should scream our heads off. That's fine - and we've been doing exactly that. (Our anti-pardon petition has over 45,000 signatures.)
But Congress can do more than scream. Congress can pass resolutions urging Bush not to issue corrupt pardons. And if Bush ignores those resolutions, Congress can impeach him - either before he leaves office or afterwards.
Feingold and other Democrats have avoided impeachment since 2006 to win elections. But now that those elections have been won, it's time to put impeachment back on the table, to make sure Bush's final act is not a gigantic f*** you to the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the American people.
