Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Wesley Clark's Straight Talk

According to the wingnut blogs, General Wesley Clark has exceeded the bounds of decency. He suggested that being shot out of the sky isn’t tantamount to leadership. While no one doubts John McCain’s courage as a prisoner, Clark merely expressed his opinion that McCain's military service is not necessarily synonymous with Presidential leadership ability of the complex kind needed to lead the United States.

Here’s what Clark said to Bob Schieffer about John McCain:

CLARK: He has been a voice on the Senate Armed
Services Committee. And he has traveled all over
the world. But he hasn't held executive
responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that
he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron.
He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall.
He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come
in and say, "I don't know whether we're going to be
able to get this point through or not, do you want to
take the risk, what about your reputation, how do we
handle this publicly? He hasn't made those calls,
Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say,
Barack Obama hasn't had any of these experiences
either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and
gotten shot down.

CLARK: I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and
getting shot down is a qualification to become
president.

Ezra Klein points out that even McCain himself doesn’t say his wartime captivity and courage amounts to a lock on the Oval Office:

John McCain would be the first to tell you that getting shot
down doesn't prepare you for the presidency. When folks ask
him about his war heroism, he's even got a stock reply: "It
doesn't take a great deal of effort to get shot down," he
laughs.

Let’s not forget that we’re deciding on who should lead the country, not lobbying to reward the most valiant candidate with the Presidency for courage under duress. Anyone who wants to gut Wesley Clark on this needs to take a breath before accusing him of a lack of patriotism.

UPDATE— What seems to have been overlooked in this flap is the strident statement by Bob Schieffer, supposedly the newsman in the exchange. In making the controversial remark, Clark is responding to Schieffer’s interruption, in which the interviewer posits that Obama hasn’t been shot down while serving his country, as if this somehow disqualifies him from leadership.

McCain’s courage and patriotism under torture in Vietnam are indicators of good character and personal toughness. These are admirable things in a person and would be positive things in a President. They don’t mean he is a great leader or a visionary. They don’t bear on judgment. His patriotism is not exclusive of other kinds of patriotism and his military service is not management experience. Clark, as another military man, it seems to me, is within his experience to comment on that distinction.

Schieffer, on the other hand, stirred the pot in the way he set up a false dichotomy between those who have been shot down in service to this country and those whose service has been of a different kind. The whole ‘controversy’ is ridiculous. Clark is one of the few people who could compare military management and political leadership experience with a politician/war hero like McCain. What Clark is responding to is Schieffer inappropriately tying war heroism to the Presidency; he wasn't discussing whether McCain's service record is admirable.

Sy Hersh's Report on High-Stakes Military Actions Inside Iran

You need to read Sy Hersh’s new expose in the New Yorker on the White House’s continuing undercover efforts to gin up military action against Iran, using commandos already in Iran and operating across the border of southern Iraq, as well as across the western Afghan border. Apparently, Democratic leaders in the Congress are giving into the Presidential efforts in secret, even while Barack Obama is publicly opposed. Huge sums of money are involved in the effort and commandos regularly cross into Iran to arm and fund Iranian collaborators and to attack and kidnap Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements.

Hersh’s report indicates that dangerous efforts are indeed underway, despite Sec Def Gates’ skepticism and tough resistance from the military brass. Excerpts below, to encourage readers to follow the link to the New Yorker:

…late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting,
Secretary of Defense Gates met with the
Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings
are held regularly.) Gates warned of the
consequences if the Bush Administration staged a
preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator
recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and
our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here
in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the
Democrats at the lunch, and another senator
asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and
Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the
senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here
speaking for myself.”…

…a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war
on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and
general officers, including combatant
commanders”—the four-star officers who direct
military operations around the world—“have
weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral
William Fallon, who until recently was the head of
U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of
American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March,
Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a
series of interviews stating his reservations about
an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last
year he told the Financial Times that the “real
objective” of U.S. policy was to change the
Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a
means to get to that spot strikes me as being not
the first choice.”…

…The Democratic leadership’s agreement to
commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more
secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given
the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon,
and many others. “The oversight process has not
kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the
Administration, the person familiar with the
contents of the Finding said. “The process is
broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re
authorizing.”…

…The Iranian press “is very open in describing the
killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said.
It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it
more important that it publishes these things. We
begin to see inside the government.” He added,
“Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash
somewhere. There were three or four incidents
over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even
naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have
been killed.”

(More Discussion)

FISA Passes Cloture, Feingold Excerpts Below

Below are excerpts from Senator Russ Feingold’s comments on the Senate floor, before the vote for cloture on FISA, which passed, 80-15. The cloture vote essentially ended the battle to hold off the FISA bill, which will now pass the Senate.

The only course of action now to fight FISA (from my humble point of view) is to support an amendment opposing the telecom immunity provision now— and to put every Congressional and Senate candidate’s feet to the fire this election season over their position on repealing and reforming FISA in the next Congress. This bill is poison to democracy.

Feingold:

On the ‘Exigency’ Exception:

…this new bill does generally provide for FISA
Court review of surveillance procedures before
surveillance begins. But it also says that if the
Attorney General and Director of National
Intelligence certify that they don’t have time to get a
court order and that intelligence important to
national security may be lost or not timely acquired,
then they can go forward without judicial approval.
This is a far cry from allowing an exception to FISA
Court review in a true emergency because arguably
all intelligence is important to national security and
any delay at all might cause some intelligence to be
lost. So I am concerned that this ‘exigency’
exception could very well swallow the rule and
undermine any presumption of prior judicial
approval.

On Data Mining:

…this bill doesn’t protect the privacy of Americans
whose communications will be collected in vast new
quantities. The Administration’s mantra has been:
“don’t worry, we have minimization procedures.” Mr.
President, minimization procedures are nothing
more than unchecked executive branch decisions
about what information on Americans constitutes
“foreign intelligence.” As recently declassified
documents have again confirmed, the ability of
government officials to find out the identity of
Americans and use that information is extremely
broad. Moreover, even if the Administration were
correct that minimization procedures have worked in
the past, they are certainly inadequate as a check
against the vast amounts of Americans’ private
information that could be collected under this bill.

On Telecom Immunity:

…this immunity provision doesn’t just allow
telephone companies off the hook for breaking the
law. It also will make it that much harder to get to
the core issue that I’ve been raising since
December 2005, which is that the President ran an
illegal program and should be held accountable.
When these lawsuits are dismissed, we will be that
much further away from an independent judicial
review of this program.

In Summary:

…This bill is a tragic retreat from the principles that
have governed government conduct in this sensitive
area for 30 years. It needlessly sacrifices the
protection of the privacy of innocent Americans. And
it is an abdication of this body’s duty to stand up for
the rule of law. I will vote No.

For more information, check Repeal FISA and the ACLU.

Dodd Stands Up to President's FISA Rights Grab—Will Filibuster

Senator Chris Dodd will lead a filibuster against the FISA bill, joined by Senators Feingold and Wyden. God knows whether they can awaken enough of the public to stop the sellout of our liberties and freedoms, but they’re willing to try, which is more than can be said for the majority of the Senate.

Below are excerpts from Senator Dodd’s comment on the floor of the Senate regarding the FISA bill about to be voted on. His entire speech is worth watching on video or reading on his website:

I am here today because of a pattern—a pattern of
abuse against civil liberties and the rule of law.
Against the Constitution—of which we are
custodians, temporary though that status may be.

And I would add that had these abuses been
committed by a president of my own party, I would
have opposed them, every bit as vigorously.

I am here today because warrantless wiretapping is
merely the latest link in a long chain of abuses.

So, why are we here? Because, Mr. President – it
is alleged that giant telecom corporations worked
with our government to compile Americans’ private,
domestic communications records into a database
of enormous scale and scope.

Secretly and without a warrant, those corporations
are alleged to have spied on their own customers –
American customers.

Here’s only one of the most egregious examples.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Clear, first-hand whistleblower documentary
evidence [states]…that for year on end every e-
mail, every text message, and every phone call
carried over the massive fiber-optic links of sixteen
separate companies routed through AT&T’s Internet
hub in San Francisco—hundreds of millions of
private, domestic communications—have
been…copied in their entirety by AT&T and
knowingly diverted wholesale by means of multiple
“splitters” into a secret room controlled exclusively
by the NSA.

…What is at stake is nothing less than equal
justice—justice that makes no exceptions. What is
at stake is an open debate on security and liberty,
and an end to warrantless, groundless spying.

This bill does not say, “Trust the American people;
Trust the courts and judges and juries to come to
just decisions.” Retroactive immunity sends a
message that is crystal clear:

“Trust me.”

And that message comes straight from the mouth of
this President. “Trust me.”

What is the basis for that trust? Classified
documents, we are told, that prove the case for
retroactive immunity beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But we’re not allowed to see them! I’ve served in
this body for 27 years, and I’m not allowed to see
them! Neither are a majority of my colleagues. We
are all left in the dark.

I cannot speak for my colleagues—but I would
never take “trust me” for an answer, not even in the
best of times. Not even from a President on Mount
Rushmore.

I can’t put it better than this:

“Trust me” government is government that asks that
we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man;
that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view
of government places trust not in one person or one
party, but in those values that transcend persons
and parties.

Those words were not spoken by someone who
took our nation’s security lightly, Mr. President.
They were spoken by Ronald Reagan -- in 1980.

…My daughters, Grace and Christina, are six and
three. They are growing up in a time of two great
conflicts: one between our nation and its enemies,
and another, between what is best and worst in our
American soul. And someday soon, I know I am
going to hear that question: “What did you do?”

I want, more than anything else, to give the right
answer.

That question is coming for every single one of us in
this body. Every single one of us will be judged by a
jury from whom there’s no hiding: our sons, our
daughters, our grandchildren. Someday soon, they’ll
read in their textbooks the story of a great nation,
one that threw down tyrants and oppressors for two
centuries; one that rid the world of Nazism and
Soviet communism; one that proved that great
strength can serve great virtue, that right can truly
make might.

And then they will read how, in the early years of
the 21st century, that nation lost its way.

We do not have the power to strike that chapter. No,
Mr. President—we can’t go back.

We can’t un-destroy the CIA’s interrogation tapes.
We can’t un-pass the Military Commissions Act. We
can’t un-speak Alberto Gonzales’s disgraceful
testimony. We can’t un-torture innocent people. And
perhaps, sadly, shamefully, we cannot stop
retroactive immunity. We can’t un-do anything that
has been done in the last six years for the cause of
lawlessness and fear.

We cannot blot out that chapter. But we can begin
the next one, even today. Let its first words read:
“Finally, in June 2008, the Senate said: ‘Enough.’”

For anyone who is moved to action by Senator Dodd’s courageous opposition to the sell-out of our liberties and freedoms, you might want to let his office know.

Senator Dodd’s Washington office phone: (202) 224-2823

Senator Dodd’s website mail link

(See Memeorandum for discussion, Raw Story for more info)

Obama on FISA: Time to Triangulate?

The FISA debate is reminding us of the Democratic Party leadership’s ever-defensive approach to the election cycle. It seems that the leadership, Obama included, feels empowered (or perhaps pressured) into doing its role to protect our civil liberties when not immediately threatened by the fear-mongering of the GOP over terrorism. But just get a few months away from an election and all bets are off.

The House’s FISA capitulation and the supine submission to it by the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee are prime examples of the way the Democratic leadership has approached, fearfully, every election since the Reagan revolution. It’s an approach Obama actually took a strong stance against during the primary season, winning the support of many rank and file Democrats in the process. Giving in now exemplifies the same lack of resolve that the country’s electorate has been reluctant to support over the last several election cycles (2006 was a reaction to the collapse of the GOP more than an endorsement of the Democrats).

Obama promised a clean break from the weasely cave-ins Democratic triangulators could be regularly counted on to make whenever the Right began blowing hard about the ‘urgent’ need to shore up some imagined legislative weak spot in our National Security armor. Never mind, the Right demanded, that the only major security disaster to strike the country’s mainland in over a century occurred while these chickenhawks were in charge, focused entirely on a non-existent Soviet-era threat by missile attack, while a low-tech terror strike against our commercial air industry rendered American military defenses helpless.

The Right wing response ever since September 11 has been to try to accrue more power to the Presidency, at the expense of the people, to press our vibrant national discourse down into fear, hoping we never question the competence of their leadership. Over this period, mainstream Democrats have been largely acquiescent to this strategy, concerned that they will be called names and accused of “aiding the terrorists.” Again, never mind that competent attention to the signals of alarm before 9/11 might have foiled the original plot without additional detention or spying powers. The Administration responsible for being asleep on the watch now wanted more surveillance authority— and less oversight.

Last year, Barack Obama noticed that people in the Democratic Party were fed up with their leaders’ spinelessness and signaled that he would stand up for Constitutional principles if nominated. His early assessments of Hillary Clinton’s campaign took into account that she had followed the leadership’s risk-averse strategy by avoiding conflict with the President over most national security issues. Clinton had not even broken with the President over Iraq until it became politically safe to do so.

“Part of it is designed to narrow the target for the Republicans when you get to the general election,” Obama observed, and it “usually gets politicians where they need to go.” But, he said, “I don’t believe it gets America where we need to go.”

Katherine Seelye quoted Obama again in her November 2007 Times piece, in which his comments on Clinton indicated his disagreement with staying to the Right on security issues, “We are not a nation that undermines our civil liberties. We are not a nation that wiretaps without warrants.”

It was only by directly taking on the Republican right that Obama established his reputation for supporting real change during the primaries. The Congress had also shown some brass by resisting the threats of the Administration over FISA. Now that the leadership in the lower house has sold out completely on the FISA bill, Obama has pulled in his sails to oppose only the amnesty provision for telecom companies in the House version of the bill, without fighting the loss of individual liberties that other provisions allow. It’s a pretty tentative response for a candidate who has raised our expectations that he would champion the Constitution against assault.

Frankly, while I’m not happy about sweeping the massive abuses the current Administration has already inflicted under the rug, I’d rather let the telecom companies have their amnesty than give away our future right to freedom from warrantless wiretaps, how about you? Maybe it’s time to share our feelings with Senator Obama.

Obama’s offices:
Senate DC office: (202) 224-2854
Senate DC fax: (202) 228-4260
Campaign: (866) 675-2008 (choose option 6)

(Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald for the link to Seelye)

A Sustainable Refrigerator for the Developing World

Here is venture capitalist Adam Grossner's brief TED talk on an inexpensive refrigerator for the people, utilizing only exposure to heat, which will cool a liquid container for 24 hours. This item, which his crew believes can be manufactured for $25-40 each, could radically change the lives of millions of poor people globally. It uses no electricity, only the campfire so many people light daily to cook with.

All that seems to remain is financing the manufacture and distribution of the product to people who need it. Maybe you know someone at a development non-profit who would like to underwrite a test program.

Links: Adam Grossner TED bio, David Roberts' Gristmill post and reader discussion

Hansen's Warming Warnings: Twenty Years Later

From Dr. James Hansen’s HuffPo piece:

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks
spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current
example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt,
exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight,
melting more ice. As a result, without any additional
greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the
summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and
Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small
additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths
respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well
under way, it will become unstoppable. Debate among
scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by
a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a
business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two
meters is likely within a century. Hundreds of millions
of people would become refugees, and no stable
shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that
humanity can conceive.

James Hansen and 350.org

James Hansen has spent a good deal of his career as a climatologist sounding the alarm about global warming and climate change. Now he’s convinced that we’re almost, if not already, out of time. Hansen isn’t waiting for others to suggest solutions anymore. He’s blunt and clear about what has to be done.

Hansen wants the oil industry turned into the 21st century equivalent of tobacco kings, frequently charged with hiding the effects of their products on the health of consumers. His accusation is that the heads of companies like Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy consciously spread disinformation about the causes of global warming in the interest of keeping regulation at bay and profits huge.

Hansen first testified twenty years ago before Congress that global warming, caused by man-made carbon emissions, was threatening to cause planetary upheaval. Today, his prescription includes a moratorium on new coal-fired plants, the transformation of the US power grid to include renewable sources, and an Apollo-like program to discover and improve technologies for storing and accessing renewable energy sources.

Hansen has also moved into the political arena. He finds it necessary to call out legislators who stand in the way of finding solutions and will work to list legislators who do so as worthy of defeat. His new organization, 350.org, has a full-page ad in today’s NY Times and in other newspapers, calling for a pledge to reduce the carbon emission levels in the atmosphere to levels below those when he first signaled the danger to our Congress in June of 1988.

Check out the links below to learn more about Hansen’s new effort to put global warming at the top of our political and social priority list.

Grist Magazine

NY Times

Firedoglake

350.org

Turley on FISA

Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School. on the Congressional capitulation on FISA

(hat tip to Glenn Greenwald )

Nova Highlights German Renewable Energy Incentives

Nova’s episode, “Saved by the Sun” is a fascinating study of the solar power industry and its potential to help combat the climate crisis that threatens human civilization on planet Earth.

One part of the program that is of significant interest is the piece on German legislation, designed to stimulate the growth of renewable energy. The German Renewable Power Act, intended to increase the percentage of renewable energy sources in the country’s power supply to at least 12.5 per cent by 2010 and to at least 20 per cent by 2020, is already ahead of target after a few years in effect.

How did the Germans do it? Financial incentives. They offered power producers, large and microscopic, a fee for the power they generated by renewable means which was higher than the going rate consumers paid. They also guaranteed the selling price over time, making investments in solar and other renewable generation infrastructure safe to finance for anyone with the resources and the will to do so.

While Germans pay more for power than most Europeans, the legislation remains popular and has created a thriving solar industry, putting back money into the economy and cutting into the cost of cleaning up the environment, as well as cutting the health costs which inevitably accrue from using dirty power. Imagine what kind of solar energy industry the US, with more available space and desert areas ideal for solar power generation than Europe, could support with incentives like Germany's.