Political MoJo

How to Be a Good Neocon When It Comes to Syria

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| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 1:32 PM PDT
A Free Syrian Army rebel holds his position during fighting in the strategic village of Aldoreneh, Syria, in December 2012. Miguel Juarez Lugo/Zuma

What do the most hawkish neocons desire in Syria? A full US military presence in the air and on the ground.

In recent days, hawks on the right (and the left) have pumped up the volume in calling for US military action in Syria. Last week, President Barack Obama sent a letter to key members of Congress saying that US intelligence has obtained evidence of "small-scale" use of chemical weapons, presumably by forces associated with the Syrian government. But the White House has noted that the "chain of custody" for these weapons hadn't been confirmed and that further corroboration was needed. The use of any chemical weapons in Syria by government forces would violate the "red line" Obama declared last year.

But the president in the past few days, most notably at his press conference on Tuesday, has stated that he intends to proceed deliberatively and that more information is necessary before reaching a firm conclusion about the use of chemical weapons. He also said at the press conference that if confirmation is obtained, it would be a "game changer" for the "international community"—that is, not a cause for immediate unilateral US military action—and that it would cause him to "rethink the range of options." In recent days, White House aides have told me that possible responses (for which Obama would seek support at the United Nations and the Arab League) could include boosting or changing the nature of the now-nonlethal aid being provided to anti-government rebels or a "limited" military strike on a target related to chemical weapons or of symbolic or strategic importance to Damascus. "There are no easy answers," more than one White House aide has said with a sigh, noting that many rebels are now tied to Al Qaeda or other extremists and the Syrian government maintains a state-of-the-art air defense system.

The usual hawks, though, are pushing for immediate and elaborate military intervention—without always being specific. On ABC's This Week, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chair of the House intelligence committee, said the red line "cannot be a dotted line" and "some action needs to be taken." On CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) maintained "there's a growing consensus in the US Senate that the United States should get involved." And several Democrats have echoed the call for doing something in response to the latest reports on chemical weapons. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said "action must be taken." House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, "I myself think that we have tolerated for too long all of the assaults on the Syrian people made by its own government. I think we have to take it to the next step." But, she added, "That does not mean troops on the ground."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), while fervently urging military intervention, agreed no US troops should intrude upon Syrian territory. He called for an international force that would locate and secure chemical weapons in Syria. "There are a number of caches of these chemical weapons," he said. "They cannot fail into the hands of the jihadists." He repeated his proposal for establishing a no-fly zone and providing arms to the rebels, who already have been receiving weapons from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are each eager to back the Sunni opposition fighting the Alawites of Bashar al-Assad's regime. McCain, though, did caution against placing US "boots on the ground in Syria," contending "that would turn the people against us." Even neocon favorite John Bolton, in a Wall Street Journal article slamming Obama for, yes, foreign policy fecklessness, pointed out that military action aimed at Syrian chemical weapons is an iffy propsect: "[T]he humanitarian costs of chemical-weapons use inside Syria are potentially high, but so are the risks to American and allied forces trying to destroy or seize chemical weapons, given the dangers and complexities involved." (He also noted "the unpleasant fact that the opposition is thick with terrorists—including al Qaeda—and radical Islamicists.")

But real neocons, it seems, do not get squishy when the question is US troops on Syrian soil. After Obama's press conference, a publicist for the American Center for Democracy shot out a press release touting the group's director, Rachel Ehrenfeld, and her proposals for action in Syria. She has three simple steps for the United States: bypass the United Nations and impose a no-fly zone in Syria; stop giving arms to rebels associated with Al Qaeda; and deploy US troops within Syria to secure chemical-weapons facilities. Given that Syria probably has scores, if not hundreds, of chemical-weapons sites, such a force would entail tens of thousands of US troops, perhaps hundreds of thousands. And these soldiers would likely have to fight their way to these sites. (No cake-walking here.)

Her proposal would entail invading Syria with a massive force of US troops. But Ehrenfeld's position is not that surprising, considering the board members and advisers for her American Center for Democracy. They include Richard Perle, one of the most hawkish neocons, who led the cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq, and former CIA chief R. James Woolsey, who after 9/11 promoted the neoconnish conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was the secret puppet master controlling Al Qaeda. On the ACD's list of advisers are retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney and retired Maj. General Paul Vallely, who were each over-the-top supporters of the Iraq War on Fox News.

One sign that Syria is indeed a hard case is that the neocons and the usual hawks are not entirely united. They are torn over whether to arm the anti-Assad forces, substantial portions of which are aligned with jihadists and extremists hostile to the United States, Israel, and the West. Some are squeamish about sending in US troops. Yet Bill Kristol, the son-of-the-godfather of the neocons, a few days ago denounced Obama's reluctance to take military action in Syria and proclaimed, "No one wants to start wars, but you've got to do what you've got to do." Ehrenfeld and the American Center for Democracy are demonstrating that the most hawkish neocons are ready to heed Kristol and go all-out in Syria. They want American boots on the ground, and they're not likely to stop squawking until there is an invasion.

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Obama Is Right About Gitmo: It's Bad for Us All

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| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 12:57 PM PDT

"It's not a surprise to me that we are having problems at Guantanamo," President Obama said on Tuesday, reiterating that the prison needs to be closed. It makes cooperation with allies more difficult, he said, also noting that Guantanamo is unsafe and too expensive. "I am going to go back at this," he said, "I am going to reengage with Congress that this is not in the best interest of the American people."

America's so-called war on terror has always been fundamentally flawed. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, which struck many as a sensible response to 9/11, felt like the beginning of something terrible: a war against an idea, rather than a global crime-fighting effort against a particularly ruthless organized crime organization. The notion that waging a war could put an end to the phenomenon of terrorism has always been naive, and it's left many innocents dead in its wake.

[Read more]

Study: Budget Cuts Are Making Us Sick

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| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 9:38 AM PDT
Leremy/Shutterstock

Two months ago, $85 billion in automatic slash-and-burn spending cuts to federal and state programs kicked in because Congress couldn't come up with a better way to deal with the deficit. Today, my colleague Tim Murphy reports on the ways those cuts are playing out across all 50 states, from shuttered Head Start programs to massive layoffs. If that weren't bad enough, a pair of prominent researchers said Monday that austerity policies are making people sick.

Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Stanford University epidemiologist Sanjay Basu are publishing a new book this week detailing how austerity cuts are causing ill health across Europe and North America by driving up depression, suicide, and infectious diseases, and limiting access to medicines and healthcare. Reuters reports:

[T]he researchers say more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the "Great Recession" and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America.

In Greece, moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 percent since 2011—driven in part by increasing drug abuse in the context of a 50 percent youth unemployment rate.

Greece also experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programs.

And more than five million Americans have lost access to healthcare during the latest recession, they argue, while in Britain, some 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness by the government's austerity budget.

Previous work by the same researchers has also linked rising suicide rates to austerity measures. But they maintain that the bad health effects are not inevitable, even in the worst crises, and point to the Great Depression as an example. "During the 1930s depression in the United States, each extra $100 of relief spending from the American New Deal led to about 20 fewer deaths per 1,000 births, four fewer suicides per 100,000 people and 18 fewer pneumonia deaths per 100,000 people," Kate Kelland writes at Reuters.

The austerity mentality may be on the decline. New numbers show that the US national debt is falling for the first time in six years; an influential study linking high levels of national debt to slower growth has been debunked; some are saying the era of austerity is over. Still, in a press conference Tuesday, Obama reiterated the importance of deficit reduction, so we're not out of the sick room yet.

As Basu told Reuters, "Ultimately... worsening health is not an inevitable consequence of economic recessions. It's a political choice."

Florida Passes Law To Speed Up Executions

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| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 9:29 AM PDT
death penalty

States across the country have spent the last few years reconsidering the wisdom of capital punishment. Over the past six years, five states have abolished the death penalty entirely, including Maryland just last month. But Florida, where the execution rate is second only to Texas, isn't having that conversation. Instead, Gov. Rick Scott (R) is currently considering a bill passed by the legislature this week that would speed up executions in the state by limiting "frivolous" appeals by inmates and shortening the time they spend on Death Row. (Florida has about 400 people on Death Row, 10 of whom have been there more than 35 years.)

Called the "Timely Justice Act," the bill would create new deadlines for certain filings and force the state to move faster towards an execution after a ruling by the state supreme court. Florida legislators behind the bill believe it will save money (executions currently cost state taxpayers about $24 million each) and bring closure to victims, but legal advocates say that it's likely to do nothing but raise the possibility that Florida will execute an innocent person. They're on pretty solid ground with that argument, given that 24 people on Florida's Death Row have been exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s.

It's not very hard to convict someone of a capital crime in Florida, which is the only state in the country that allows a jury to recommend a death sentence with only a simple majority vote of 7 to 5. Also, the state has one of the nation's worst indigent defense systems, ensuring that anyone facing a capital charge is likely to get a bad lawyer in the deal. Because of other state budget crises, Florida has slashed the money available for indigent defense, and it caps the fees in a capital case at $15,000, an amount that barely covers a lawyer's time in court through the trial. The fees are so bad that few lawyers will take capital cases. (Florida's indigent defense system is generally a mess. After the state legislature in 2009 set very low flat fees for private lawyers who are appointed to handle criminal defense cases, lawyers fled the system in droves. Things got so dire that at one point judges attempted to force lawyers to take the cases through "involuntary" appointments.)

The lawyers who do take the capital cases are often largely incompetent. Florida made the news a few years ago after one of its mentally ill death row inmates, Albert Holland Jr., won a US Supreme Court case in which Justice Stephen Breyer found that Holland did a better job of representing himself than his court-appointed lawyers did. The New York Times explains what sorts of representation Holland had gotten in Florida:

Consider Kenneth Delegal, who was assigned to defend Mr. Holland at a 1996 retrial on charges that he killed a Pompano Beach police officer in 1990. Mr. Delegal was removed from the case after being sent to a mental health facility. Later, the two men would see each other at the Broward County jail, where Mr. Delegal was held on drug and domestic violence charges.

The next lawyer, James Lewis, was a friend of Mr. Delegal’s and had shared office space with him. When Mr. Delegal went to court after his removal from Mr. Holland’s case, seeking to be paid about $40,000 for his work on it, the new lawyer testified on behalf of the old one, saying the fees had been “reasonable and necessary.”

Mr. Delegal died of a drug overdose about a month after the fee hearing, and a local paper asked his former colleague Mr. Lewis about his troubles. “I heard some rumors,” Mr. Lewis said, “but I chose not to know.”

The new Florida bill attempts to address the issue of terrible lawyers and the appeals they generate by setting competence standards for lawyers taking capital cases, and it would bar anyone found guilty twice of giving "constitutionally deficient representation" from handling another capital case for five years. But the bill doesn't provide any more money to pay for more competent counsel.

The bill's opponents haven't convinced Florida lawmakers of any of this. During a legislative debate last week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) said, "Only God can judge. But we sure can set up the meeting." The bill awaits Scott's signature.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for April 30, 2013

Tue Apr. 30, 2013 7:29 AM PDT

Capt. Paul Gates, commanding officer of Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, pauses during a dismounted patrol with Afghan National Civil Order Policemen (ANCOP) during Operation California in Kajaki district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 28, 2013. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Trent A. Randolph/Released.

A Brief History of CIA "Ghost Money"

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| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 7:24 AM PDT
bag of money(Foreign-policy metaphors...)

On Monday morning, the New York Times ran a story reporting that for the past decade the CIA has been funneling tens of millions of dollars, off-the-books, directly to the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The payments, occasionally dropped off in plastic bags, were part of the intelligence agency's attempts to buy access in Karzai's government and encourage support for the war against Al Qaeda and extremist elements. The CIA continued to transfer hundreds of thousands in cash, even as it became increasingly clear that the cash wasn't doing much to curb Karzai's tendency to defy and frustrate the United States government. Afghan officials have used the payments for an assortment of expenses, including underwriting "informal negotiations" and buying off warlords, some of whom are connected to the Taliban.

"We called it 'ghost money,'" Khalil Roman, Karzai's former deputy chief of staff, told the Times. "It came in secret, and it left in secret."

Since the news broke, Karzai released a statement admitting his office accepted the funds, but claiming that the small fortune was used only for legitimate and noble purposes, such as rental costs and helping "injured people." (Years ago, it was reported that Karzai's now deceased half-brother was a paid CIA asset.)

The Times report notes that though intelligence agencies will often pay foreign officials for information or influence, pouring satchels of "ghost money" directly into a foreign leader's office is a less common practice. However sketchy this sounds (and however corruption-infected the Karzai government may be), such transfers do not violate American law. "Under US law, there are statues that prohibit the payment of bribes in securing contracts, if you're [a part of] a corporation; but such laws don't necessarily apply to the US government itself," John Prados, a senior research fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, says. "There is no provision in any executive order that governs the intelligence community that prevents this kind of thing...Cash is the mainstay of American covert operations in Afghanistan."

And this is not new. Here are a few other episodes in recent history in which the CIA has secretly sent wads of "ghost money" to the offices of foreign leaders:

Iran

Following the Western-backed coup in 1953 against democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, CIA officer Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of Teddy) sent over $1 million cash to General Fazlollah Zahedi, who replaced Mossadegh as prime minister.

South Vietnam

As American intervention in Vietnam deepened, the CIA lavished three-quarters of a million dollars on South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu between 1968 and 1969. He had come to power following years of chaos caused by the CIA-supported coup against South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.

The Congo/Zaire

Being a vicious anti-communist authoritarian, President Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire received CIA dollars of appreciation during several decades of the Cold War. He rose to power in the early 1960s with the help of a lot of foreign-supplied guns and cash, much of which was provided to him by you know who.

Jordan

Between the 1957 and 1977, the CIA allegedly paid millions of dollars to King Hussein of Jordan. Accounts of how these annual payments were used vary greatly. Some reports detail payments for extra security for the royal family, sports cars, and intel gathering.

Panama

Manuel Noriega, former US friend and military ruler of Panama, was on the agency payroll during his epic streak of racketeering, drug running, and money-laundering, as he turned Panama into his own private piggy bank. Shortly before Christmas 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion that got rid of him.

This is the kind of thing that "ghost money" buys you.

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Corn on Hardball: The All-Too-Familiar Call for War in Syria

Mon Apr. 29, 2013 5:46 PM PDT

The arguments for American intervention in Syria are, in many ways, the same arguments that politicians made for intervention in Iraq—and are still making for Iran. "All the military options are really difficult, they might not be effective," says DC bureau chief David Corn, "but they don't care as long as we're in it." Listen to Corn and Time's Bobby Ghosh discuss the need for caution in Syria on MSNBC's Hardball:

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.

Senators Take Another Swing at Dark Money Disclosure

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| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 2:52 PM PDT
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Late last year, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) penned a Washington Post op-ed taking aim at Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that helped open the floodgates for political nonprofits spending cash in the dark to influence elections. "At minimum, the American people deserve to know before they cast their ballots who is behind massive spending, who is funding people and organizations, and what their agendas are," the senators wrote.

Now Murkowski and Wyden have followed up by introducing a bill that would require any group that spends at least $10,000 on an election to disclose all of its donors who donated $1,000 or more. Currently, tax-exempt 501(c) groups that engage in political spending have no legal obligation to reveal their donors. (That's not the case with super-PACs, as the AP erroneously reported, although many super-PACs skirt disclosure by accepting donations funneled through affiliated nonprofits.) Super-PACs and dark-money groups spent more than $1 billion during the 2012 election.

Murkowski first hinted she supported shining more sunlight on dark-money groups last summer when the Senate was debating the DISCLOSE Act, which is similar to her new bill. (She voted against DISCLOSE for not being strong or bipartisan enough.) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filibustered DISCLOSE twice, deriding it as "nothing more than member and donor harassment and intimidation." His continued opposition to campaign finance reform means that the Wyden-Murkowski bill will also face a GOP filibuster.

If it managed to defy McConnell's opposition and pass the Republican-led House, the Wyden-Murkowski bill would also enact some smaller campaign finance reforms: It would require Senate candidates to file disclosure reports directly with the Federal Election Commission so they can be posted online more quickly and replace the FEC's quarterly reports with a real-time reporting system. And while it would require greater transparency for big donors, it would ease requirements for small donors by lifting the disclosure threshold for gifts to candidates from $200 to $1,000.

Treasury Department: Lew Remains Opposed To Bills That Would Weaken Wall Street Reform

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| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 2:03 PM PDT
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

Last week, Mother Jones reported that some financial reform advocates were worrying that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was not taking a sufficiently fierce stance against a group of House bills that would weaken Wall Street reform. Similar measures died last year, and with some Democrats and Republicans in the process of reviving them, reform advocates have become nervous, especially since Lew has not yet echoed the strong opposition to these proposals that was voiced last year by his predecessor, Timothy Geithner.

Treasury Department officials, though, say there is nothing to fear. Last week, a Treasury Department spokesman told Mother Jones, "Of course the Treasury secretary would oppose any effort to weaken Wall Street reform," known as the Dodd-Frank law. She pointed to Lew's recent comments on Bloomberg television. "The purpose of Dodd-Frank was to make sure the American taxpayer would never again be in the position where they had to step in when banks failed," he told the news channel. "We are committed to that purpose." Treasury is not condemning these measures yet because, as a Treasury spokeswoman told Mother Jones last week, the bills have not even won approval at the committee level. A Treasury Department official this week reiterated Lew's opposition to the crusade to water down Wall Street reform, but the official noted that the department doesn't want to get into the habit of denouncing all the various bills that are thrown into the hopper on Capitol Hill. The official emphasized that Lew's previous public statements opposing efforts to undermine Dodd-Frank or delay its implementation do indeed cover the set of bills that have been re-introduced in the House. The word at Treasury: if these bills do gain traction, Lew will not hesitate to slam them.

Carolyn McCarthy Says Congress Will Act Again on Guns Before 2014 Elections

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| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 1:29 PM PDT

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), one of the House's leading advocates of gun control, said Friday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has assured her that gun reform legislation will be reintroduced before the 2014 midterm elections. But for a bill to pass, it would almost certainly have to offer more concessions to the gun lobby than Sens. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey's (R-Pa.) failed compromise on background checks that already ceded a lot of ground.

As Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told the Hill, that could include a measure similar to the rejected amendment introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to force states to allow concealed carry permit holders from other states to carry there. Speier said she would consider that a deal-breaker. But according to the New York Times, current talks among senators are focused on finding broader bipartisan ground on proposals like Manchin-Toomey (which only four Republicans voted for) and a less contentious measure to crack down on gun trafficking.

Before the Senate rejected the Manchin-Toomey compromise, McCarthy told Mother Jones that the gun violence task force she co-chairs had been in touch with Republicans receptive to gun reform but declined to name names or say how many were involved in the talks. Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) have introduced a Manchin-Toomey companion bill in the House that a spokesman for Thompson said last week that the congressman was "pushing forward with." But the House's Republican leadership doesn't plan to act on any proposals unless the Senate manages to pass one first.

Meanwhile, groups like Occupy the NRA and Mayors Against Illegal Guns are focused on a longer game. The former has targeted gun lobbyists and corporations that have retained them; the latter is taking aim at senators up for reelection in 2014 who voted against background checks. Already, those votes appear to have affected some senators' approval ratings.

Democratic leaders are looking to have it both ways. On one hand, they're discussing how to reintroduce gun legislation in the Senate. On the other, they're reaching out to potential pro-gun Senate candidates in red states to see if they'll run in 2014.

One of the potential candidates is Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who would run to replace retiring Sen. Max Baucus. Baucus was one of four Democrats to vote against the Manchin-Toomey compromise. Schweitzer has expressed support for expanded background checks in the past but also has an 'A' rating from the National Rifle Association and recently told the National Journal that he had "more [guns] than I need and less than I want."

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