By William Fisher
Despite the enormous challenges facing the United States – education, health care, poverty, church and state, race relations, terrorism, Iraq, prisoner abuse, budget deficits, government corruption and inefficiency, to name but a few – a growing number of authorities are finding it revealing that the nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court appears to have come down to a single issue: abortion.
These authorities say the debate over this issue has become not only a thinly-veiled ‘litmus test’ for membership on the High Court, but a barometer of how sharply divided the U.S. is on social issues and the political clout the religious right has achieved over the last two decades.
Since his nomination by President George W. Bush last month, Alito has been engaged in ‘courtesy visits’ with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct hearings on his confirmation beginning in early January.
In these meetings, the word abortion has been studiously avoided by most, with the issue shrouded in such euphemisms as the right to privacy. But the question really being asked by senators on both the right and the left is: Can Judge Alito be counted on to vote to overturn the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision that established a women’s right to have an abortion?
The centrality of this issue was seen a month earlier in the withdrawal of Pres. Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, White House Counsel Harriett Miers. Ms. Miers was the subject of an aggressive revolt by religious right-wingers – Mr. Bush’s base – who raised doubts that Ms. Miers commitment to reversing Roe v. Wade was strong enough to gain their support.
The basis of the intense interest in Alito’s nomination is that, if confirmed by the Senate, he would replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a “pragmatic conservative” who has often represented the swing vote in 5-4 court decisions.
Today, when conservative Republican senators emerge from their private meetings with Judge Alito, they can barely contain their glee. Sen. Sam
Brownback, the conservative Kansas Republican and staunch opponent of abortion rights, said, "This is the type of nominee I've been asking for," adding that he was convinced that Judge Alito was "open to a review of cases." Brownback is one of the senators who led the successful anti-Miers campaign.
Senators in the ideological center have largely shown a cautiously positive attitude on the nomination. Typical is Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the centrist Connecticut Democrat who backs a woman's right to abortion. Lieberman said he was encouraged by what he heard from Judge Alito.
Recounting their conversation, Sen. Lieberman said Alito’s view is that
“Roe was precedent on which people, a lot of people relied, that it had been precedent for decades and therefore deserves great respect."
Other Senate Democrats have apparently been at least provisionally satisfied that Alito’s respect for legal precedent and “settled law” and would make him unlikely to reverse Roe.
Waiting in the wings is a phalanx of left- and right-leaning special interest groups, geared up – some say eager -- for a media and lobbying battle to move the public and the Senate to their different viewpoints. Some have already spoken out.
For example, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice opposes Alito’s nomination. The advocacy group says, “Influential segments of the radical right torpedoed the nomination of Harriet Miers because she didn’t have a proven record of being a 'movement’ conservative, dedicated to carrying out their political agenda on the bench. The right is now giddy about the nomination of Samuel Alito – undoubtedly because he has such a record. Judge Alito would fundamentally change the balance of the Supreme Court, tipping it in a direction that could jeopardize our most cherished rights and freedoms,” stated AJ president Nan Aron.
On the religious right, Focus on the Family Action founder and chairman James C. Dobson, said, "Perhaps the most encouraging early indication that Judge Alito will make a great justice is that liberal senators such as Harry Reid and Charles Schumer and leftist pressure groups such as People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood have been lining up all day to scream that the sky is falling. Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration.”
But that position is not unanimous among religious groups. For example, the newly-formed progressive organization, The Christian Alliance, told IPS, “It is hard to imagine how someone whose vision of justice concludes that a woman has to get her husband's permission to make a decision about her own reproductive health, or that women in the workforce are not unfavorably affected by pregnancy, can effectively sit as a judge on the nation's highest court.”
Rev. Tim Simpson of the Alliance added, “I cannot see how any of the things that he is currently telling Senators during his ‘moderating makeover’ can be taken seriously.”
Observers say that if Alito has managed to convince the right and at least neutralize the left on where he would like come down on the abortion issue, one side or the other is wrong. “They can’t both be right”, said a prominent constitutional law professor who declined to be named.
One reason for the apparent confusion over Alito’s position is his limited but mixed record on this issue.
The best known of Judge Alito's abortion opinions is his dissent in Planned
Parenthood v. Casey, the case the Supreme Court later used to reaffirm and
modify the Roe holding. In Casey, Judge Alito's court reviewed a number of Pennsylvania abortion restrictions and unanimously upheld all but one -- a provision requiring notification of husbands before married women received an abortion.
The provision provided an exception for women who feared physical abuse, but the court majority said it could still constitute an undue burden to women concerned about psychological or economic coercion, harm to their children, or sharing with other relatives what they intended to keep secret.
Judge Alito dissented, reasoning that married women were a minority of those seeking abortions and married women who didn't tell their husbands were a very small minority of those. He concluded that because only a small percentage of women overall would be affected, the provision did not constitute an undue burden to the right of abortion in general.
In at least one case, Judge Alito voted on the pro-choice side of litigation
that split his court. In 1995 he agreed that Medicaid rules that required funding for certain abortions in cases of rape or incest or when the mother's life was at stake, despite contrary Pennsylvania legal restrictions. A judge committed to stop abortions could easily have found a way to an opposite conclusion.
It is unlikely that Alito’s confirmation hearings will shed much more light on how he will rule on abortion-related cases; he is virtually certain to decline to respond to such questions because the issue may well come before the Supreme Court.
So the senate and the special-interest lobbying groups will have to content themselves with trying to read the tea leaves, with the abortion issue seemingly eclipsing all others.
Friday, November 11, 2005
ROSA PARKS: WHY ONE PERSON MATTERS
By William Fisher
Ask any non-American to name three leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and chances are they’ll stop after one: Martin Luther King.
But in fact the movement had many leaders.
Malcolm X went from being a street-wise Boston hoodlum to one of America’s most influential black nationalist leaders, advocating black pride, economic self-reliance, and identity politics. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965.
Stokely Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, and was critical of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, who called for integration of African Americans into the existing institutions of white middle class culture.
Medgar Evers, the first field officer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi, was involved in a boycott against white merchants in the city of Jackson and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi in 1962. Evers was assassinated by white supremacists in 1963.
John Lewis, now a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, led the first march across the now-famous bridge in Selma, Alabama, to confront police armed with riot gear, water cannons and dogs. A few days later, he was joined by Rev. King and their actions led to the passage of historic civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.
There were many others who played key roles in the civil rights struggle. One of them was Rosa Parks, and despite the recent spate of well-publicized events surrounding her death last month at age 92, non-Americans are unlikely to place her in this pantheon of civil rights leaders. Indeed, millions of Americans are among those to whom Mrs. Parks was unknown.
The mythology is that Rosa Parks was just an ‘ordinary black seamstress’, quiet, soft-spoken and retiring, tired after a day’s work, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December, 1955.
But the reality is that Mrs. Parks was an activist long before her arrest on the bus. She had refused to give up her bus seat several times before her well-photographed arrest, and had joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when this simple act alone was potentially life-threatening in the racist atmosphere of America’s deep south in the 1950s.
Parks joined the NAACP at a time when membership could result in murder. She married Ray Parks, a longtime NAACP activist who carried a gun to challenge racial injustice in Alabama.
But December 1, 1955 was not the first time a black person had refused to obey the segregation laws of public transportation. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
According to Prof. William Jelani Cobb of the traditionally black Spelman College, “During one twelve-month period in the 1940s, the city of Birmingham witnessed some 88 cases of blacks who refused to obey the segregation laws on public transportation. Five months prior to Parks, fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin had refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. She had been ejected and arrested and the local NAACP considered bringing a suit that would challenge segregation on the city's buses, but Colvin was pregnant and unmarried… activists thought she would not be a sympathetic example. Another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested shortly after Colvin; but (NAACP leaders) thought her dilapidated home and alcoholic father would be a public relations liability”
Prof. Cobb writes in America Online’s Black Voices, “A combination of factors made (Mrs. Parks’s) refusal a powder-keg moment in civil rights history. Just a year earlier, the Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the segregationist politicians had responded with the "Southern Manifesto," in which they declared their intent to resist integration at all costs. …And contrary to the popular retellings, her actions that day were not staged -- though they did come at the time when a coalition of activists and local lawyers were planning an assault on the structures of segregation in Montgomery. In the early hours, the local civil rights community found itself scrambling to respond to her arrest and imprisonment.
“Nor was the idea of boycotting segregated buses, which grew from Parks' arrest, unique. The 26 year-old Martin Luther King Jr., and the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), called upon the Rev.T.J. Jemison for advice. Jemison had organized a two-week boycott of the buses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1953. Together they formulated a plan by which people would pay the MIA, (which) would then dispense funds for travel to the drivers in the carpools -- in order to avoid tickets for operating unlicensed taxi cabs.”
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then
little-known Baptist minister, Rev. Martin Luther King, who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The boycott eventually led to a landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in all taxpayer-funded public services.
Mrs. Parks’s death last month at age 92 triggered an outpouring of admiration, love and ceremony. She became the first woman to lie in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where her casket was viewed by thousands. Speeches by civil rights leaders, senators and congresspersons hailed her as “the mother of the civil rights movement”. Her memorial services in Washington, D.C. and in her adopted home state, Michigan, attracted tens of thousands of mourners, the singing of Aretha Franklin, and eulogies by former President Bill Clinton, both Michigan senators, the governor of the state, NAACP president Julian Bond, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others.
Clinton said, "Let us never forget that in that simple act and a lifetime of grace and dignity, she showed us every single day what it means to be free. She made us see and agree that everyone should be free. God Bless you Rosa Parks."
President Bush said Mrs. Parks' 1955 refusal to give up her seat "was an act of personal courage." Bush described her as "one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century" and said that she would always have a "special place" in American history. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Now a number of efforts are being made to carry on Rosa’s legacy and to link it to the anti-Iraq-war peace movement.
The Boston City Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting Dec. 1 – the 50th anniversary of her arrest – as a nationwide “Day of Absence and Protest Against Poverty, Racism & War”. In New York, a dozen members of the City Council announced the introduction of a resolution declaring December 1 as Rosa Parks Day and called on businesses and schools to close or allow people to attend protest events.
Organizers of the national day have declared, “a relative handful of people who either own, control or profit from the economy must know that we consider the right to live free of war and the right to a job, to be as much of a civil right as the right to sit in the front of the bus. It is time to declare that poor and working people will not sit in the back of the economic bus that only runs to make the rich richer… (This) is the legacy that Rosa Parks has left us”.
Ask any non-American to name three leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and chances are they’ll stop after one: Martin Luther King.
But in fact the movement had many leaders.
Malcolm X went from being a street-wise Boston hoodlum to one of America’s most influential black nationalist leaders, advocating black pride, economic self-reliance, and identity politics. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965.
Stokely Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, and was critical of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, who called for integration of African Americans into the existing institutions of white middle class culture.
Medgar Evers, the first field officer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi, was involved in a boycott against white merchants in the city of Jackson and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi in 1962. Evers was assassinated by white supremacists in 1963.
John Lewis, now a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, led the first march across the now-famous bridge in Selma, Alabama, to confront police armed with riot gear, water cannons and dogs. A few days later, he was joined by Rev. King and their actions led to the passage of historic civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.
There were many others who played key roles in the civil rights struggle. One of them was Rosa Parks, and despite the recent spate of well-publicized events surrounding her death last month at age 92, non-Americans are unlikely to place her in this pantheon of civil rights leaders. Indeed, millions of Americans are among those to whom Mrs. Parks was unknown.
The mythology is that Rosa Parks was just an ‘ordinary black seamstress’, quiet, soft-spoken and retiring, tired after a day’s work, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December, 1955.
But the reality is that Mrs. Parks was an activist long before her arrest on the bus. She had refused to give up her bus seat several times before her well-photographed arrest, and had joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when this simple act alone was potentially life-threatening in the racist atmosphere of America’s deep south in the 1950s.
Parks joined the NAACP at a time when membership could result in murder. She married Ray Parks, a longtime NAACP activist who carried a gun to challenge racial injustice in Alabama.
But December 1, 1955 was not the first time a black person had refused to obey the segregation laws of public transportation. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
According to Prof. William Jelani Cobb of the traditionally black Spelman College, “During one twelve-month period in the 1940s, the city of Birmingham witnessed some 88 cases of blacks who refused to obey the segregation laws on public transportation. Five months prior to Parks, fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin had refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. She had been ejected and arrested and the local NAACP considered bringing a suit that would challenge segregation on the city's buses, but Colvin was pregnant and unmarried… activists thought she would not be a sympathetic example. Another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested shortly after Colvin; but (NAACP leaders) thought her dilapidated home and alcoholic father would be a public relations liability”
Prof. Cobb writes in America Online’s Black Voices, “A combination of factors made (Mrs. Parks’s) refusal a powder-keg moment in civil rights history. Just a year earlier, the Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the segregationist politicians had responded with the "Southern Manifesto," in which they declared their intent to resist integration at all costs. …And contrary to the popular retellings, her actions that day were not staged -- though they did come at the time when a coalition of activists and local lawyers were planning an assault on the structures of segregation in Montgomery. In the early hours, the local civil rights community found itself scrambling to respond to her arrest and imprisonment.
“Nor was the idea of boycotting segregated buses, which grew from Parks' arrest, unique. The 26 year-old Martin Luther King Jr., and the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), called upon the Rev.T.J. Jemison for advice. Jemison had organized a two-week boycott of the buses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1953. Together they formulated a plan by which people would pay the MIA, (which) would then dispense funds for travel to the drivers in the carpools -- in order to avoid tickets for operating unlicensed taxi cabs.”
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then
little-known Baptist minister, Rev. Martin Luther King, who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The boycott eventually led to a landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in all taxpayer-funded public services.
Mrs. Parks’s death last month at age 92 triggered an outpouring of admiration, love and ceremony. She became the first woman to lie in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where her casket was viewed by thousands. Speeches by civil rights leaders, senators and congresspersons hailed her as “the mother of the civil rights movement”. Her memorial services in Washington, D.C. and in her adopted home state, Michigan, attracted tens of thousands of mourners, the singing of Aretha Franklin, and eulogies by former President Bill Clinton, both Michigan senators, the governor of the state, NAACP president Julian Bond, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others.
Clinton said, "Let us never forget that in that simple act and a lifetime of grace and dignity, she showed us every single day what it means to be free. She made us see and agree that everyone should be free. God Bless you Rosa Parks."
President Bush said Mrs. Parks' 1955 refusal to give up her seat "was an act of personal courage." Bush described her as "one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century" and said that she would always have a "special place" in American history. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Now a number of efforts are being made to carry on Rosa’s legacy and to link it to the anti-Iraq-war peace movement.
The Boston City Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting Dec. 1 – the 50th anniversary of her arrest – as a nationwide “Day of Absence and Protest Against Poverty, Racism & War”. In New York, a dozen members of the City Council announced the introduction of a resolution declaring December 1 as Rosa Parks Day and called on businesses and schools to close or allow people to attend protest events.
Organizers of the national day have declared, “a relative handful of people who either own, control or profit from the economy must know that we consider the right to live free of war and the right to a job, to be as much of a civil right as the right to sit in the front of the bus. It is time to declare that poor and working people will not sit in the back of the economic bus that only runs to make the rich richer… (This) is the legacy that Rosa Parks has left us”.
Friday, September 23, 2005
The GOP’s Fiscal Policies Turned a Natural Disaster into a Man-Made Catastrophe
By Jason Leopold
Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.
If anything, Bush’s tenure as president proves that the Republican tax cuts (which everyone knows truly benefits the wealthiest one percent), drastically slashing funds in the federal budget for much needed improvements to the country’s aging infrastructure (a perfect example being the outdated power grid), and trying to get away with launching wars on the cheap, have cost taxpayers and their unborn grandchildren more money than anyone could have ever imagined.
Simply put, since he became president, Bush has not invested the funds to fix the cracks in the country’s façade, despite repeated warnings from experts and intense lobbying efforts by state officials that ignoring the problem will make it worse in the long run. Instead, the president pumped tens of billions of dollars into an unnecessary war that, when it became evident that attaining victory was tougher than the war planners imagined, required tens of billions of dollars more just to continue the fighting.
Only when devastation and catastrophe struck the nation did the federal government cough up the funds, but by then there wasn’t much of choice and as such a $1 billion restoration project before a devastating hurricane touched down in the Gulf Coast has turned into a $200 billion reconstruction effort and has now saddled taxpayers with economic woes that no tax cut can relieve.
You don’t have to look too far than New Orleans, a city wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, as evidence of the Bush administration’s and Congress’ fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a direct result of Washington’s financial incompetence that the cost for rebuilding The Big Easy is estimated to top $200 billion.
Flooding is the most destructive and costly natural disaster in the United States, accounting for approximately 75 percent of all disasters declared by the President annually. Approximately 160 million acres, or 7 percent of the United States are estimated to be floodplains and urban expansion into floodplains continues at an increasing rate, according to the Public Entity Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank that that aims to educate the public and government on disaster management.
Sadly, no one was becoming any smarter. Instead of funding flood control projects, the Bush administration cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget, forcing the city of New Orleans to loan the agency $1 million back in December of 2003 to keep one crucial flood control project from shutting down entirely.
“It's not every day that New Orleans has to bail out the federal government,” said the Times-Picayune in a January 2, 2004 story. “But that's exactly what happened last month, when the Orleans Levee Board voted to advance the Army Corps of Engineers $1 million to prevent a vital flood control project from shutting down.”
Al Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps told the Picayune that federal funding has all but dried up threatening to put hurricane protection plans that were already underway on hold indefinitely.
Naomi said the corps has been strained for money, as the federal government's priorities have shifted to other concerns, such as homeland security, which prior to Hurricane Katrina meant protection from terrorist threats, and the war in Iraq.
Before Bush delivered his better-late-than-never speech to the nation earlier this month in front of Andrew Jackson’s statue in New Orleans, he personally shot down repeated requests for federal assistance made by Louisiana officials over the past four years to help repair New Orleans’ eroding coastline, the most recent of which was turned down by the president in June. Even prior hurricanes, such as Ivan, which just missed New Orleans last September still wreaked havoc on the city similar to that of Katrina, forcing local officials to evacuate the city and calling on the federal government for help, was not enough to sway President Bush to focus on domestic threats instead of pouring all of his energy into terrorism and the war in Iraq.
So, to hear the president in a televised speech promise to spend whatever it takes to rebuild one of the nation’s great cities is not a sign of progress, rather it’s a symbol of the total breakdown of his administration and an attempt to conceal what could arguably have been a man-made disaster because of Bush’s policies.
The final blow, however, came in June. Louisiana state officials had been hoping that a provision included in the Senate energy bill that called for $500 million in offshore energy revenue from the federal government would finally provide Louisiana and four other coastal states with the funds it desperately needed to repair its damaged wetlands to protect itself, among other things, against possible future weather-related disasters.
But the White House adamantly refused to part ways with the $5 billion it gets from drilling in the Gulf Coast, its second biggest source of revenue (after income the Internal Revenue Service brings in) choosing to use most of those funds to finance the Iraq war.
To ensure that the message came across crystal clear, Bush personally ordered White House aides to take the unusual step of sending a letter to House and Senate negotiators advising them to kill the revenue-sharing plan in the final version of the energy bill.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget released a policy statement paper in June that said the Bush administration opposes “the significant new funding authorizations and diversion” of Outer Continental Shelf revenue included in a national energy bill being discussed in Congress.
"Currently the federal government does share royalties with coastal states -- more than $3 trillion to date, in fact. Changing this amount only increases the budget deficit and diminishes the benefit the rest of the nation receives from these national resources," Scott Milburn, press secretary for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told The Associated Press in June.
“Disheartening,” “frustrating,” “upsetting” and “just another nail in my coffin” is how Louisiana senators, community leaders and coastal advocates responded to the news in June that the White House intervened and advised the Senate to defeat the revenue provision, according to June 16 report in the Houma, La., Courier.
Ironically the erosion to the state’s coastline—which became considerably worse over the past five years—is due, in part, to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, much of which takes place right in New Orleans. Although the state is responsible for repairing its coastline to support its oil and gas infrastructure it barely benefits financially from the drilling that takes place right in its own backyard.
“While inland states enjoy 50 percent of the tax revenue from drilling on their federal lands, Louisiana gets back a mere $35 million of the $5 billion it contributes to the federal treasury each year from offshore drilling, or less than one percent,” the Courier said.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., condemned the White House position. Landrieu said the Bush administration simply can’t comprehend why the state of Louisiana needs compensation for producing a bulk of the nation’s energy supply. It’s a fact that coastal oil-and-gas-producing states account for 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas and 30 percent of oil.
“The president’s statement indicates a failure to appreciate the burdens borne by the people of Louisiana and other coastal oil-and-gas-producing states,” Landrieu said.
It wasn’t long after the White House issued its statement on the revenue sharing concept that Louisiana lawmakers predicted an apocalyptic end to the city of New Orleans.
Clifford Smith, a Houma, La., civil engineer and coastal advocate who is also a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi River Commission, told The Courier in June that without federal assistance New Orleans could very well drown if it took a direct hit from a hurricane.
"We’re not going to get the kind of recognition and concern we deserve until we have a disaster," he said.
Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.
If anything, Bush’s tenure as president proves that the Republican tax cuts (which everyone knows truly benefits the wealthiest one percent), drastically slashing funds in the federal budget for much needed improvements to the country’s aging infrastructure (a perfect example being the outdated power grid), and trying to get away with launching wars on the cheap, have cost taxpayers and their unborn grandchildren more money than anyone could have ever imagined.
Simply put, since he became president, Bush has not invested the funds to fix the cracks in the country’s façade, despite repeated warnings from experts and intense lobbying efforts by state officials that ignoring the problem will make it worse in the long run. Instead, the president pumped tens of billions of dollars into an unnecessary war that, when it became evident that attaining victory was tougher than the war planners imagined, required tens of billions of dollars more just to continue the fighting.
Only when devastation and catastrophe struck the nation did the federal government cough up the funds, but by then there wasn’t much of choice and as such a $1 billion restoration project before a devastating hurricane touched down in the Gulf Coast has turned into a $200 billion reconstruction effort and has now saddled taxpayers with economic woes that no tax cut can relieve.
You don’t have to look too far than New Orleans, a city wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, as evidence of the Bush administration’s and Congress’ fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a direct result of Washington’s financial incompetence that the cost for rebuilding The Big Easy is estimated to top $200 billion.
Flooding is the most destructive and costly natural disaster in the United States, accounting for approximately 75 percent of all disasters declared by the President annually. Approximately 160 million acres, or 7 percent of the United States are estimated to be floodplains and urban expansion into floodplains continues at an increasing rate, according to the Public Entity Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank that that aims to educate the public and government on disaster management.
Sadly, no one was becoming any smarter. Instead of funding flood control projects, the Bush administration cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget, forcing the city of New Orleans to loan the agency $1 million back in December of 2003 to keep one crucial flood control project from shutting down entirely.
“It's not every day that New Orleans has to bail out the federal government,” said the Times-Picayune in a January 2, 2004 story. “But that's exactly what happened last month, when the Orleans Levee Board voted to advance the Army Corps of Engineers $1 million to prevent a vital flood control project from shutting down.”
Al Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps told the Picayune that federal funding has all but dried up threatening to put hurricane protection plans that were already underway on hold indefinitely.
Naomi said the corps has been strained for money, as the federal government's priorities have shifted to other concerns, such as homeland security, which prior to Hurricane Katrina meant protection from terrorist threats, and the war in Iraq.
Before Bush delivered his better-late-than-never speech to the nation earlier this month in front of Andrew Jackson’s statue in New Orleans, he personally shot down repeated requests for federal assistance made by Louisiana officials over the past four years to help repair New Orleans’ eroding coastline, the most recent of which was turned down by the president in June. Even prior hurricanes, such as Ivan, which just missed New Orleans last September still wreaked havoc on the city similar to that of Katrina, forcing local officials to evacuate the city and calling on the federal government for help, was not enough to sway President Bush to focus on domestic threats instead of pouring all of his energy into terrorism and the war in Iraq.
So, to hear the president in a televised speech promise to spend whatever it takes to rebuild one of the nation’s great cities is not a sign of progress, rather it’s a symbol of the total breakdown of his administration and an attempt to conceal what could arguably have been a man-made disaster because of Bush’s policies.
The final blow, however, came in June. Louisiana state officials had been hoping that a provision included in the Senate energy bill that called for $500 million in offshore energy revenue from the federal government would finally provide Louisiana and four other coastal states with the funds it desperately needed to repair its damaged wetlands to protect itself, among other things, against possible future weather-related disasters.
But the White House adamantly refused to part ways with the $5 billion it gets from drilling in the Gulf Coast, its second biggest source of revenue (after income the Internal Revenue Service brings in) choosing to use most of those funds to finance the Iraq war.
To ensure that the message came across crystal clear, Bush personally ordered White House aides to take the unusual step of sending a letter to House and Senate negotiators advising them to kill the revenue-sharing plan in the final version of the energy bill.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget released a policy statement paper in June that said the Bush administration opposes “the significant new funding authorizations and diversion” of Outer Continental Shelf revenue included in a national energy bill being discussed in Congress.
"Currently the federal government does share royalties with coastal states -- more than $3 trillion to date, in fact. Changing this amount only increases the budget deficit and diminishes the benefit the rest of the nation receives from these national resources," Scott Milburn, press secretary for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told The Associated Press in June.
“Disheartening,” “frustrating,” “upsetting” and “just another nail in my coffin” is how Louisiana senators, community leaders and coastal advocates responded to the news in June that the White House intervened and advised the Senate to defeat the revenue provision, according to June 16 report in the Houma, La., Courier.
Ironically the erosion to the state’s coastline—which became considerably worse over the past five years—is due, in part, to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, much of which takes place right in New Orleans. Although the state is responsible for repairing its coastline to support its oil and gas infrastructure it barely benefits financially from the drilling that takes place right in its own backyard.
“While inland states enjoy 50 percent of the tax revenue from drilling on their federal lands, Louisiana gets back a mere $35 million of the $5 billion it contributes to the federal treasury each year from offshore drilling, or less than one percent,” the Courier said.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., condemned the White House position. Landrieu said the Bush administration simply can’t comprehend why the state of Louisiana needs compensation for producing a bulk of the nation’s energy supply. It’s a fact that coastal oil-and-gas-producing states account for 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas and 30 percent of oil.
“The president’s statement indicates a failure to appreciate the burdens borne by the people of Louisiana and other coastal oil-and-gas-producing states,” Landrieu said.
It wasn’t long after the White House issued its statement on the revenue sharing concept that Louisiana lawmakers predicted an apocalyptic end to the city of New Orleans.
Clifford Smith, a Houma, La., civil engineer and coastal advocate who is also a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi River Commission, told The Courier in June that without federal assistance New Orleans could very well drown if it took a direct hit from a hurricane.
"We’re not going to get the kind of recognition and concern we deserve until we have a disaster," he said.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
THE FOX AT THE HENHOUSE
By William Fisher
Either President Bush just doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care, or he thinks the people he serves are all gullible morons.
He’s appointed his own Homeland Security Advisor, Ms. Frances Townsend, to lead the White House investigation into how the government screwed up with Hurricane Katrina – and what to do about it.
Does the president really believe the American people will find such an investigation credible?
I’m sure Ms. Townsend is a very smart lady. She has a reputation for being tough-minded and independent. Maybe she’ll really try to do a thorough investigation.
But the appearance of independence is as important as the fact of independence. And it simply stretches credulity to think Ms. Townsend is likely to get away with being independent of her boss, the President, even if she wants to. Can anyone imagine Karl Rove approving any report that might embarrass the president or actually hold anyone accountable, bar Brownie?
Second, Ms. Townsend is a career prosecutor with no experience in natural disaster preparedness or response. Her homeland security experience has been limited to terrorism-related intelligence.
Ms. Townsend chairs the Homeland Security Council and reports to the President on Homeland Security policy and Combating Terrorism matters. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. She came to the White House from the U.S. Coast Guard, where she served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence. Prior to that, she spent 13 years at the Department of Justice in a variety of senior positions, her last assignment as Counsel to the Attorney General for Intelligence Policy. She began her prosecutorial career in 1985, serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988, she joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York where she focused on international organized crime and white-collar crime cases.
A pretty distinguished record, but where is the natural disaster piece? Investigative skills are simply not enough. You need to know the subject matter.
Third, her track record leading investigations does not exactly inspire confidence. When former Senator Chuck Robb and Judge Laurence Silberman completed their highly limited White House-commissioned report on pre-Iraq intelligence failures last April, the president ordered her to cull through the recommendations, most of which could be enacted by executive action. The investigation was limited because the commission was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the flawed information.
Ms. Townsend directed Cabinet secretaries to report back to her quickly. "You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," Townsend said from the White House podium. Maybe I missed something, but I think we’re still waiting.
Finally, if Ms. Townsend were really on top of her current job, wouldn’t the president have known that his Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucratic nightmare, a pastiche of more than 70 unmanaged – and perhaps unmanageable – agencies stitched together with a focus so obsessed with terrorism that natural disasters are all but forgotten?
Wouldn’t he have known that Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast and could have unimaginably devastating consequences?
Evidently, no one – not Mr. Chertoff, not the hapless, unqualified and now-departed Mr. Brown, and not Frances Townsend – wanted to be the bearer of such dire tidings. In Washington, it’s the messenger who too often takes the hit.
So Ms. Townsend may indeed be a very smart fox, but she’s a fox nevertheless. The hens should run for cover right away!
People with serious government experience know that the minute you hear that the boss is organizing an inter-agency task force, the spin machine is about to kick into high gear. Why else would the president give Karl Rove, the “architect”, such a prominent role in the rebuilding effort? He would seem to be a tad light on emergency preparedness experience.
The bottom line is that the White House can investigate itself about as thoroughly as the Defense Department investigated its lapses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
That’s why we have Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office. And that’s why, in the end, despite the president’s resistance, we ended up with a 9/11 Commission and some conclusions we could believe.
We need nothing less if we really want to know what went wrong during Katrina and what we have to do to fix it.
Either President Bush just doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care, or he thinks the people he serves are all gullible morons.
He’s appointed his own Homeland Security Advisor, Ms. Frances Townsend, to lead the White House investigation into how the government screwed up with Hurricane Katrina – and what to do about it.
Does the president really believe the American people will find such an investigation credible?
I’m sure Ms. Townsend is a very smart lady. She has a reputation for being tough-minded and independent. Maybe she’ll really try to do a thorough investigation.
But the appearance of independence is as important as the fact of independence. And it simply stretches credulity to think Ms. Townsend is likely to get away with being independent of her boss, the President, even if she wants to. Can anyone imagine Karl Rove approving any report that might embarrass the president or actually hold anyone accountable, bar Brownie?
Second, Ms. Townsend is a career prosecutor with no experience in natural disaster preparedness or response. Her homeland security experience has been limited to terrorism-related intelligence.
Ms. Townsend chairs the Homeland Security Council and reports to the President on Homeland Security policy and Combating Terrorism matters. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. She came to the White House from the U.S. Coast Guard, where she served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence. Prior to that, she spent 13 years at the Department of Justice in a variety of senior positions, her last assignment as Counsel to the Attorney General for Intelligence Policy. She began her prosecutorial career in 1985, serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988, she joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York where she focused on international organized crime and white-collar crime cases.
A pretty distinguished record, but where is the natural disaster piece? Investigative skills are simply not enough. You need to know the subject matter.
Third, her track record leading investigations does not exactly inspire confidence. When former Senator Chuck Robb and Judge Laurence Silberman completed their highly limited White House-commissioned report on pre-Iraq intelligence failures last April, the president ordered her to cull through the recommendations, most of which could be enacted by executive action. The investigation was limited because the commission was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the flawed information.
Ms. Townsend directed Cabinet secretaries to report back to her quickly. "You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," Townsend said from the White House podium. Maybe I missed something, but I think we’re still waiting.
Finally, if Ms. Townsend were really on top of her current job, wouldn’t the president have known that his Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucratic nightmare, a pastiche of more than 70 unmanaged – and perhaps unmanageable – agencies stitched together with a focus so obsessed with terrorism that natural disasters are all but forgotten?
Wouldn’t he have known that Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast and could have unimaginably devastating consequences?
Evidently, no one – not Mr. Chertoff, not the hapless, unqualified and now-departed Mr. Brown, and not Frances Townsend – wanted to be the bearer of such dire tidings. In Washington, it’s the messenger who too often takes the hit.
So Ms. Townsend may indeed be a very smart fox, but she’s a fox nevertheless. The hens should run for cover right away!
People with serious government experience know that the minute you hear that the boss is organizing an inter-agency task force, the spin machine is about to kick into high gear. Why else would the president give Karl Rove, the “architect”, such a prominent role in the rebuilding effort? He would seem to be a tad light on emergency preparedness experience.
The bottom line is that the White House can investigate itself about as thoroughly as the Defense Department investigated its lapses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
That’s why we have Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office. And that’s why, in the end, despite the president’s resistance, we ended up with a 9/11 Commission and some conclusions we could believe.
We need nothing less if we really want to know what went wrong during Katrina and what we have to do to fix it.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
PAYING FOR KATRINA
By William Fisher
Advertising gurus Gerald Rafshoon and Doug Bailey, who were on opposing sides during the Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford campaign in 1976, have come up with a pretty good alternative to financing Katrina reconstruction with taxpayer money.
They propose a 90-day moratorium on fundraising by political parties and members of Congress. That would free up more than enough money to pay for
Katrina.
Here’s another:
Instead of closing 22 major military bases and ‘realigning’ 33 others, we should keep those facilities open so that no one has to flee to anything like the New Orleans Astrodome or the Convention Center ever again.
Think about it: Military bases have barracks and apartments, with beds, blankets, drinking water and plumbing that works. They have medical facilities with doctors and nurses, lawyers, PXs, even supermarkets. They have trucks and cars and ships and helicopters and airplanes. And they are located all over the country, within easy reach of just about any site of a natural disaster.
The Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC) says doing away with these assets will save the taxpayers $4.2 billion a year.
But there’s another way to save that money, and a lot more: Stop the unconscionable waste at the Department of Defense.
So vast is the Pentagon’s waste, fraud and abuse that the government’s accountants tell us every year that the place simply cannot be audited. If Donald Rumsfeld ran Wal-Mart that way, he’d have been fired long ago.
Just think of it: The DOD, whose profligate and dysfunctional systems allowed it to buy toilet seats for $640 each, is now unable to account for more than a trillion – that’s trillion with a ‘T’ -- dollars in financial transactions. That’s in addition to the dozens of tanks, missiles and planes that have simply ‘gone missing’.
Congress gave our military $10 billion for Iraq Reconstruction. A good chunk of that money has simply vanished – it’s been lost. And there is virtually no reconstruction to show for it.
And, in one more of a long litany of incompetence and malfeasance, the General Accountability Office (GAO) informed us recently that millions of dollars worth of new equipment was being sold as ‘surplus’ for pennies on the dollar. That equipment included Kevlar flak jackets needed by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, so of course the Pentagon ordered more.
If President Bush is looking for ‘offsets’ to pay for Katrina, he shouldn’t be thinking about cutting back on Medicaid, No Child Left Behind, Social Security, and other programs that directly benefit those most devastated by Katrina.
He should take a look at the ‘offsets’ already in the Pentagon’s appropriations – if he can find them.
And if, by some miracle, he succeeds there where all others have failed, he should start rummaging through the pork barrel that was used to deliver the Highway and Transportation Bill to the White House for him to sign. The one with the millions earmarked for Alaska to build that bridge to nowhere.
Advertising gurus Gerald Rafshoon and Doug Bailey, who were on opposing sides during the Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford campaign in 1976, have come up with a pretty good alternative to financing Katrina reconstruction with taxpayer money.
They propose a 90-day moratorium on fundraising by political parties and members of Congress. That would free up more than enough money to pay for
Katrina.
Here’s another:
Instead of closing 22 major military bases and ‘realigning’ 33 others, we should keep those facilities open so that no one has to flee to anything like the New Orleans Astrodome or the Convention Center ever again.
Think about it: Military bases have barracks and apartments, with beds, blankets, drinking water and plumbing that works. They have medical facilities with doctors and nurses, lawyers, PXs, even supermarkets. They have trucks and cars and ships and helicopters and airplanes. And they are located all over the country, within easy reach of just about any site of a natural disaster.
The Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC) says doing away with these assets will save the taxpayers $4.2 billion a year.
But there’s another way to save that money, and a lot more: Stop the unconscionable waste at the Department of Defense.
So vast is the Pentagon’s waste, fraud and abuse that the government’s accountants tell us every year that the place simply cannot be audited. If Donald Rumsfeld ran Wal-Mart that way, he’d have been fired long ago.
Just think of it: The DOD, whose profligate and dysfunctional systems allowed it to buy toilet seats for $640 each, is now unable to account for more than a trillion – that’s trillion with a ‘T’ -- dollars in financial transactions. That’s in addition to the dozens of tanks, missiles and planes that have simply ‘gone missing’.
Congress gave our military $10 billion for Iraq Reconstruction. A good chunk of that money has simply vanished – it’s been lost. And there is virtually no reconstruction to show for it.
And, in one more of a long litany of incompetence and malfeasance, the General Accountability Office (GAO) informed us recently that millions of dollars worth of new equipment was being sold as ‘surplus’ for pennies on the dollar. That equipment included Kevlar flak jackets needed by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, so of course the Pentagon ordered more.
If President Bush is looking for ‘offsets’ to pay for Katrina, he shouldn’t be thinking about cutting back on Medicaid, No Child Left Behind, Social Security, and other programs that directly benefit those most devastated by Katrina.
He should take a look at the ‘offsets’ already in the Pentagon’s appropriations – if he can find them.
And if, by some miracle, he succeeds there where all others have failed, he should start rummaging through the pork barrel that was used to deliver the Highway and Transportation Bill to the White House for him to sign. The one with the millions earmarked for Alaska to build that bridge to nowhere.
MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED
The editorial below is from the Jordan Times in Amman.
The world's leaders last week got as close as they could to outlawing terrorism, but still steered clear of defining it. This came about when the UN Security Council met on Wednesday at the head-of-state level to adopt a resolution calling on states to outlaw any incitement or encouragement to terrorism, but skirted around the contentious subject of stating precisely what qualifies as terrorism.
Unfortunately, UN member states still cannot agree on something that should have been relatively easy to define, ostensibly because of the political implication and ramifications associated with drawing a crystal clear line between terrorism and acts of liberation. Yet, all nations know very well what terrorism is all about, although they are not quite ready to commit themselves to clearly defined boundaries that separate terrorism from lawful resort to arms.
The definition of terrorism has defied the international community for decades. There was a determined effort to give terrorism a legal expression at the Rome Conference that adopted the Final Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), at Turkey's initiative, in a bid to include it on the list of international crimes that would come within the jurisdiction of the ICC. Ankara's initiative failed to win wide support for the very same reasons that prevented the international community and the UN Security Council to come up with an internationally recognised definition of terrorism. Despite this apparent failure, there are already sufficient “legal hints” on what constitutes terrorism. The Geneva humanitarian law prohibits the killing of non-combatants or targeting civilians, especially children, women and the elderly.
This alone should have been enough to provide a legal basis for a definition of terrorism. Yet the international community could not see the obvious! The UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also came close to outlawing terrorism when it stipulated, in Article 20, that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence [and] shall be prohibited by law.” It goes without saying that terrorism as we know it entails all elements of incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence.
Why the world leaders' summit could not come up with a definition of terrorism defies logic and common sense. By confining themselves to outlawing any incitement, encouragement or promotion of terrorism without giving the phenomenon a workable definition, the leaders who represented their nations at the UN Security Council have obviously failed in one of their most important missions.
The world's leaders last week got as close as they could to outlawing terrorism, but still steered clear of defining it. This came about when the UN Security Council met on Wednesday at the head-of-state level to adopt a resolution calling on states to outlaw any incitement or encouragement to terrorism, but skirted around the contentious subject of stating precisely what qualifies as terrorism.
Unfortunately, UN member states still cannot agree on something that should have been relatively easy to define, ostensibly because of the political implication and ramifications associated with drawing a crystal clear line between terrorism and acts of liberation. Yet, all nations know very well what terrorism is all about, although they are not quite ready to commit themselves to clearly defined boundaries that separate terrorism from lawful resort to arms.
The definition of terrorism has defied the international community for decades. There was a determined effort to give terrorism a legal expression at the Rome Conference that adopted the Final Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), at Turkey's initiative, in a bid to include it on the list of international crimes that would come within the jurisdiction of the ICC. Ankara's initiative failed to win wide support for the very same reasons that prevented the international community and the UN Security Council to come up with an internationally recognised definition of terrorism. Despite this apparent failure, there are already sufficient “legal hints” on what constitutes terrorism. The Geneva humanitarian law prohibits the killing of non-combatants or targeting civilians, especially children, women and the elderly.
This alone should have been enough to provide a legal basis for a definition of terrorism. Yet the international community could not see the obvious! The UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also came close to outlawing terrorism when it stipulated, in Article 20, that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence [and] shall be prohibited by law.” It goes without saying that terrorism as we know it entails all elements of incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence.
Why the world leaders' summit could not come up with a definition of terrorism defies logic and common sense. By confining themselves to outlawing any incitement, encouragement or promotion of terrorism without giving the phenomenon a workable definition, the leaders who represented their nations at the UN Security Council have obviously failed in one of their most important missions.
A Man is Tortured, and the U.S. Shrugs?
The editorial below was published on Monday, September 20 by the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Regrets? Over the torture of one measly Canadian? No sir. Not the United States of America.
David Wilkins, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, was eye-poppingly cavalier when asked about the Maher Arar affair. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported by the United States to Syria, his birthplace, where he was held for 10 months in a cell three feet wide, six feet long and seven feet high. He is now back, and the Canadian government has been holding a lacerating public inquiry into its role, however limited, in his nightmare. The U.S. government has refused (under Mr. Wilkins's predecessor, Paul Cellucci) to participate in the inquiry.
As described by Canadian Press reporter Jim Brown, Mr. Wilkins "seemed puzzled" when asked if his government had regrets about the Arar affair. "You talking about regrets by the United States? The United States made that decision [to deport Arar] based on the facts it had, in the best interests of the people of the United States, and we stand behind it."
He said that the United States has to make "tough decisions," that the war on terror means "you don't get second chances," that there would probably be more deportations and that Canadians who hold dual citizenship should consider themselves forewarned they could find themselves in Mr. Arar's shoes some day.
About that "tough decision" to deport Mr. Arar to Syria: Mr. Arar was taken out in the middle of the night under police guard and put on an airplane. There had been an administrative hearing late on that Sunday night, but he had no lawyer present. He had no opportunity to make his case before a judge responsible both for screening the evidence against him (the United States suspected him of being an al-Qaeda agent) and weighing any risk he might have posed against the possibility that he would face torture in Syria. He had no chance for due process. Some decision.
Mr. Wilkins, who speaks on behalf of President George W. Bush, was criticized in this space yesterday for his comments dismissing concerns about U.S. guns finding their way to the streets of Toronto. Now he is similarly dismissive of the fate of a Canadian citizen shipped to a known torture state by his government. (If Mr. Arar is an al-Qaeda member, nothing that has emerged publicly has provided convincing evidence.) Mr. Wilkins evidently feels it is pointless to fret about due process in a dangerous time. What, us worry?
The Arar affair was a test case of civil liberties in a time of crisis. The usual safeguards of a democracy were tossed out the window, and an innocent man was crushed. In the world according to Mr. Wilkins, no one should despair if there are more Arars.
Regrets? Over the torture of one measly Canadian? No sir. Not the United States of America.
David Wilkins, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, was eye-poppingly cavalier when asked about the Maher Arar affair. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported by the United States to Syria, his birthplace, where he was held for 10 months in a cell three feet wide, six feet long and seven feet high. He is now back, and the Canadian government has been holding a lacerating public inquiry into its role, however limited, in his nightmare. The U.S. government has refused (under Mr. Wilkins's predecessor, Paul Cellucci) to participate in the inquiry.
As described by Canadian Press reporter Jim Brown, Mr. Wilkins "seemed puzzled" when asked if his government had regrets about the Arar affair. "You talking about regrets by the United States? The United States made that decision [to deport Arar] based on the facts it had, in the best interests of the people of the United States, and we stand behind it."
He said that the United States has to make "tough decisions," that the war on terror means "you don't get second chances," that there would probably be more deportations and that Canadians who hold dual citizenship should consider themselves forewarned they could find themselves in Mr. Arar's shoes some day.
About that "tough decision" to deport Mr. Arar to Syria: Mr. Arar was taken out in the middle of the night under police guard and put on an airplane. There had been an administrative hearing late on that Sunday night, but he had no lawyer present. He had no opportunity to make his case before a judge responsible both for screening the evidence against him (the United States suspected him of being an al-Qaeda agent) and weighing any risk he might have posed against the possibility that he would face torture in Syria. He had no chance for due process. Some decision.
Mr. Wilkins, who speaks on behalf of President George W. Bush, was criticized in this space yesterday for his comments dismissing concerns about U.S. guns finding their way to the streets of Toronto. Now he is similarly dismissive of the fate of a Canadian citizen shipped to a known torture state by his government. (If Mr. Arar is an al-Qaeda member, nothing that has emerged publicly has provided convincing evidence.) Mr. Wilkins evidently feels it is pointless to fret about due process in a dangerous time. What, us worry?
The Arar affair was a test case of civil liberties in a time of crisis. The usual safeguards of a democracy were tossed out the window, and an innocent man was crushed. In the world according to Mr. Wilkins, no one should despair if there are more Arars.
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