Joe Lieberman is giving scum a bad name

Who'd a thunk it? Here is GI Joe calling for "investigation" of media outlets reporting on Wikileaks.

He may be the single most dangerous, irresponsible public figure in America today.

Next he and the neocon war lobby are likely to spin that the release of Wikileaks makes a strike on Iran even more unavoidable than before. Look for George Will, William Kristol, John McCain, John Kyl, Lindsey Graham, et al, to pick up that theme.

If we had had less useless secrecy to begin with, we would be in a far better position today to maintain some kind of moral high ground. The bad guy here is not the guy who caused the truth to be told but the guys who tried to hide the truth and then to hide behind a shield of lies and official privilege.

The investigation we really need is of the neocon project and its stooges in the high-profile media and the Congress.

If we have something to fear from the truth...

[Q] Mr. President., I know that you were responsible as President for setting up the CIA. How do you feel about it now?

[A] I think it was a mistake. And if I had known what was going to happen, I never would have done it. I needed...the President needed at that time a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were getting in those days, and there must have been a dozen of them, maybe more, bring them all into one organization so that the President would get one report on what was going on in various parts of the world.

Now that made sense, and that's why I went ahead and set up what they called the Central Intelligence Agency.

But it got out of hand. The fella...the one that was in the White House after me never paid any attention to it,and it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I've told you that one Pentagon is one too many.

Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something to report on. They've become...It's become a government all of its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody.

That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there's got tot be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things.

And when you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic society don't mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn't prove that, I don't know what does.

You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn't matter whether it's the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA.

From Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, by Merle Miller.



AS long as there have been governments, the cult of official secrecy has enabled and empowered every form of corruption, sloth, indifference, violence, venality and tyranny.

When America was new, George Washington declaimed against "entangling alliances," in large part because of their deleterious impact on democracy. Ferociously committed to that isolationist principle in the beginning, by slow degrees America abandoned it as she become a world power. By the end of World War II, America and the Soviet Union carved up the management of the world between them, each having more or less a free hand in their own sphere, and each feeling their historical mission justified certain categories of duplicity, deception, manipulation and murder. Like all crimes, crimes of state become easier and more addictive as they are repeated, and by the end of the Cold War America's foreign policy establishment had accumulated an impressive catalogue of sins and atrocities committed in our name, and the habit of lazy self-justification. Here comes Julian Assange, and now the elites profess themselves shocked, shocked, at the content of the Wikileaks memos and the alleged possible repercussions from their release. But even more than the contents of the leaked memos, the over-the-top reaction of the Washington power players to the leak reveals much that they would prefer remain hidden. Eric Holder threatens prosecution, Hillary Clinton huffs and puffs, Barack Obama lets it be known that he is infuriated. and Republican members of Congress wonder why we can't prosecute Wikileaks for treason, terrorism, or aiding and abetting the enemy. And in so doing, they underscore why secrecy is a dagger to the heart of democracy.

The leaks are in themselves, so far, not explosive enough to justify all the rhubarb. We are not talking about launch codes or satellite frequencies here. None of these revelations amount to more than petty court gossip or the sort of informed, perfevered speculation that has been current on talk radio for years now. Among the "highlights" of the revelations:
---The Saudi King favors an attack on Iran's nuclear program;
---China has directed cyberattacks on the United States;
---Russian President Medvedev" plays Robin to Putin's Batman;"
---German Chancellor Angela Merkel "avoids risk and is seldom creative;"
---Iran has bought sophisticated missiles from North Korea -- missiles that can hit Europe;
---Chinese operatives have hacked into computers of governments worldwide, the Dali Lama, and major US Businesses;
---The US and South Korea have discussed contingencies to unify Korea should the state in the North implode, including concessions that may be necessary to China to help them accept a pro-US government in the unified Korea;
---Donors in the Saudi Royal family keep Sunni militants groups, in particular Al Qaeda, active and well-financed;
---The United States has made an effort to remove highly enriched uranium out of Pakistan to protect it from falling into the hands of militants in case of a Pakistani collapse;
--- US diplomats have been directed by superiors to spy on their counterparts and when possible to collect DNA samples.

Taken individually, it is hard to reconcile these out-of-context factoids with any sense of meltdown or even urgency. What is there to worry about? Medvedev's hurt little feelings? Merkel's vanity? Is China going to pout because the suspicion of their crimes has seen the light of day? So what if they do? Most preposterous of all is the matter of US Diplomats involved in professional surveillance of their counterparts; does anyone imagine that the diplomatic world has ever been anything but a hive of the most vicious, assiduous, back-stabbing treachery?

If nation-states are going to let cotton candy like these representations influence calculations of hard national interest, they are too irrational to influence anyway.

No informed citizen 50 miles outside of Washington would express too much surprise at any of this. In fact, not only does the content of this massive leak fall short of the dark suspicions that alienated Americans routinely harbor about their own government, but many ordinary Americans are so used to feeling utterly disconnected from and manipulated by their own government that, from spite, it is almost cheering to see the power structure this agitated and upset.

That level of unhappiness is mainstream, and if the government does not know it, it is because they do not want to know.

So why all the hollering? Who is kidding whom here? What is this Kabuki play intended to accomplish? Why does the orchestrated, theatrical, righteous indignation on the part of our leaders feel like some sort of baroque psywar campaign against American voters?

Noam Chomsky has it right; this sturm und drang of outrage against Wikileaks is about transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in a democracy, and the right of the ruling class and their stooges to run roughshod over the world with impunity and complete deniability, and to ignore the obligation to submit to the law and the supremacy of the people. We're beyond all this transparency stuff, the government is saying; what we do is too important. The roar of protest from Washington is the sound of the Bipartisan Beltway Bubble closing ranks and showing who is in charge. All this outrage is calculated to protect the ensconced sinecures and the well-feathered nests of the Foreign Policy Establishment and their clients from an empowered, enfranchised, informed and righteously angered population, the national interest be damned.

We are at a point where the people operating the government in our name have established a Constitution-free zone for themselves, and in all matters, they have their foreign and domestic agendas which overlap very little with those of the population. And they think that is how things ought to be.

When Richard Nixon learned of the Pentagon Paper's publication in The New York Times, his first reaction was partisan joy, because he know that most of their contents would reflect badly on Kennedy and Johnson. Under prodding from Henry Kissinger, he came to see them for what they were: a threat to the free hand of the secret government of the American Empire to do what it pleased, where it pleased, when it pleased, to whom it pleased. Once convinced of this point of view, witnesses attest, Nixon became a frothing, whirling dervish of rage and revenge, pacing the Oval Office double-time, purple faced and spitting venom, pounding his fist into his palm and muttering over and over: "We CANNOT have foreign policy made on the front page of the New York Times!!!" Among other things, Nixon realized that he could no longer be entirely certain even of the loyalty of the government apparatus. This may well mark the inflection point of the Nixon presidency into paranoia, chaos, and crime.

Like Nixon, today's czars look upon the obligations of a free society as a poor second to the hard-headed imperatives of sophisticated, worldly statecraft. There is no place in this worldview for a public airing of the facts, no possibility of a challenge to authority, no checks and balances. Thus, the multi-trillion dollar, apocalyptic sinkholes of Afghanistan, Iraq, and if we are not careful, Iran.

The real crime that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al are concerned about is the crime of crashing the private party of those who have long since hijacked the American government for their own ends and who have implicated all of us in an escalating quagmire of death, poverty, chaos and suffering.

Long ago, the United States of America made a deal with the devil and chose empire. Now the empire strikes back, at us.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

AP is reporting that Julian Assange is suddenly on Interpol's most wanted list based on a Swedish warrant for a "drawn-out rape probe." The last time this happened was August 10, 2010, about 2 weeks after the release of the Afghan War Diary.

Maybe everyone is acting in good faith. Maybe.

On the other hand, it is an old, obvious trick of corrupt and compromised law enforcement to use the powers of arrest, investigation, subpoena and imprisonment to make troublesome people shut up and go away. Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow South, and the Soviet Union under Stalin notoriously and blatantly used the judicial system to bully dissidents and activists.

If Interpol is capable of this kind of naked police power to harass a whistle blower, we are in more trouble than anyone thinks and we need to get rid of Interpol, and fast. The burden is on them to say it ain't so. Tick tick.

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Raw Story has an article here about G.I. Joe Lieberman calling today for a preemptive attack on Yemen.


The world is full of bad people who want to inflict violence on others, and some of those bad people are members of the US Senate. Joe Lieberman is the leading incumbent neocon warmonger zombie in the Western World, and his flights from reality become more and more desperate and degenerate as he wears out his welcome in decent society and his circle of influence shrinks and fades. He never saw an American use of force that he did not like, nor an Israeli strike that he did not want to back up with American funds, blood and credibility. As is well known, he wants -- as a matter of high principle -- to dramatically increase the American commitment and footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, he wants Iran attacked big, bad, and soon, and now he heaves and froths with bloodlust for that well-known military threat to America, Yemen.


I wonder who Joe and his neocon colleagues think will lend us the money for this noble effort. To hear them tell it we have no money for anything but creating useless trouble for ourselves and everyone else. For that, money grows on trees.

Osama Bin-Laden wanted to create a spectacular enough attack so that Americans like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld would impulsively jump into a quagmire with both feet. He read the neocons well and succeeded beyond any reasonable hopes. To this day, Senators like Lieberman, McCain, Kyl, and Spectre, and their allied jackals of the press -- Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and George Will, among others -- press every opportunity to call for bleeding this country a little more in some fruitless, senseless, vile vanity of an empire in decay, decline, debt and denial. If not here, then there will do just as well.

The good news is that the influence of the neocons is almost certainly over with. The bad news is that they have been creating a lot of trouble for a long time and we still have to clean it up, and G.I. Joe and his ilk can't seem to keep their mouths shut. And here we are, about hip-deep in the big muddy and a long, long way to go.

Reflecting on slavery, Thomas Jefferson said "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." He could not have imagined the suffering, the destitution, the malignant violence and chaos and insanity that his worlds presaged. What kind of blowback are we asking for? What price are we gonna have to pay when we have to pay it, as we surely will? What horrors are we giving birth to in the name of some half-bright overdignified revenge fantasy? Does Joe know, or care?


Joe Lieberman is not the problem but it is very important to understand what he is. He and his philosophical cohort represent a kind of American who has always gotten us, and everyone else, into a lot of trouble. He is not a clown or a fool. He is a clever zealot in a high place, a true believer who thinks he might actually be going down and intends to make an awful lot of noise on the way out, consequences be damned. Like Joe McCarthy, he has a gifted eye for the most attention-getting and outrageous stunts, and he revels in being thought of as a problem. He has at least the rest of his Senate term to say stupid things publicly, annoy his grownup Senate colleagues, and court the long-term affections of defense contractors, insurance conglomerates, and Fox News. Not a bad gig, if you really weren't raised to know better.

During the 2000 Presidential election, Ralph Nader said that there was no meaningful difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush. That was, and is, nonsense. But in retrospect, to put someone like Joe Lieberman on the ticket as nominee for Vice-President speaks so poorly of Al Gore's judgement and values that it is almost impossible to care very much any more.

During the 2000 Vice Presidential debate, Cheney and Lieberman made a big to-do about what close friends they were and how much they agreed on things. Cheney said that he loved having dinner with Lieberman at the table of Lieberman's mom, which he had done many times -- because he was so close to his buddy Joe. That about says it all.

A justly managed Hell would make sure that Joe Lieberman would spend eternity selling life insurance door-to-door in the bad part of Baltimore in the winter. He is less scrupulous than W.C. Fields, less sane than Howard Hughes, less responsible than Inspector Cleuseau, and he has the moral compass and high public purpose of Spiro Agnew. His career and persona will stand forever as a monument to how corrupt, inbred and cynical the American political system has become by the year 2010. One look at his bland, insincere face is all you need to know how foul and viscous the rot really is at the bottom of the barrel.

When Joe McCarthy's hubris and insanity caught up with him, the Senate, too slowly as usual, condemned him publicly. A consensus had formed that McCarthy was so outrageously irresponsible and out of control that he was on the verge of destroying the reputation of the Senate and the cause of anti-communism. Ralph Flanders of Vermont led the charge with a ringing and a courageous speech that included this soundbite: "If the junior Senator from Wisconsin was a paid communist, he could not have done a better job for them." When the bill really comes due for the folly and the crimes of the neocons, something like that will have to be said for Joe Lieberman.

America and the world are long overdue for a vacation from each other.

The Great Satan better think it through

The President of Iran is a dangerous idiot, but he may well hold on to power for a while. He seems to be trying to stay on top by uniting his population -- previously riven by factional disputes, many of those factions opposing his rule -- against the foreign Satans who deign to tell Iran what kind of weapons it may have (a la Fidel Castro).

He is dangerous in at least two very serious ways. One, he plainly wants the weapons, to use or to threaten to use. Iran is capable of developing them, and he may well be capable of using them. Two, he saw what happened after 9-11, and he knows that he can do a lot more damage to the West in general, and America in particular, by leading them to bleed and bankrupt themselves in even more neocon folly of stupid, proud, imperial overreach.

Indeed, many of those who led us over the cliff into Afghanistan and Iraq have not learned a blessed thing. Today President Obama released with much fanfare further evidence of Iran's perfidy with regard to its nuclear plant and already Senators Kyl, Lieberman and McCain can hardly contain themselves in their rapt anticipation of American or Israeli bombers swooping over Iran, presumably eliminating any and all "threats" to the US, Israel, ethnic minorities, liberal democracy, Western business interests, country music and good posture.

But even without a direct American or Israeli attack on any labs or factories, Iran is in position already to exponentially escalate the costs of everything going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. With some kind of attack, the region could well and truly explode. And its President knows that it is an open question whether America's War Party has the leverage left to force an expansion of warfare to Iran, ahead of American public opinion which is rapidly solidifying in favor of deescalation in both Iran and Afghanistan.

Can there be any doubt that he is right about that last point? The neocons all over the world see their window of opportunity closing, and the pressure is on President Obama, in particular, to act now or to allow Israel to act, the consequences be damned. They sense, correctly, that they have just about worn out their welcome in American public opinion, and they day is coming when they will have to relinquish most of their influence in Washington as well.

Nuclear proliferation is a serious issue and Iran is a rouge state. It may be that some kind of military action is indeed called for. But the neocons are not to be trusted on this or any other matter. This is a great opportunity for President Obama to repeat his message to the UN on Monday that the US can not be expected to do the heavy lifting by itself. A real coalition of the states in the neighborhood -- in particular Russia and China -- plus the US, equitably sharing the costs, the risks, and the diplomatic heat, would go a long way towards spreading a good message about why nuclear weapons are not worth it. Failing that, the risks and the costs outweigh the benefits of any kind of attack by the US or Israel.

And even more fundamentally, how hard is everyone trying to resove this peacefully?

If the neocons have their way the US will borrow more money from China to wage war on Iran in order to teach them how to be good. That would likely do more damage to the United States in the long run than anything a nuclear armed Iran could do. That must not be allowed to happen.