Bloomberg On JFK Plot: "Stop Worrying, Get A Life"

Ethan Korngold says: "Finally, a politician with a reasonable view of the true risk of terrorism relative to all of the other risks in the world. Refreshing, indeed."

"On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said.

That "What, me worry?" attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg's advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn't let it tax their brains.

"You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist," he added."

Link

W.W.G.W.B.D.? flow chart

This chart nicely sums up the Bush presidency. Link (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

Runaway!

This story from Middle East Online is worth a post simply to show the photograph of the British PM scurrying back onto BlairForceOne like he suddenly remembered he left the gas on.

Not only do observers believe the prime minister's stock is damaged at home due to the war in Iraq, they find the conflict and his close alignment with the United States have harmed his reputation in the Middle East. Add to that the lack of specific details about what was discussed to help improve the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the question could be -- and indeed at one point was -- asked: what was the point of the trip? Blair's office repeatedly stressed that the visit to Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories and the United Arab Emirates was for him to assess those countries' views on the Middle East situation.

Can someone buy the Blairs a telephone for Christmas please.

Tony: Hello, is that the Middle East?
Middle East: Yes, who's calling please.
Tony: Ha ha you're so funny. I was wondering how everything was.
Middle East: Well everything's pretty much the same. Fucked.

"Political sources in Jerusalem last night did not attribute any special significance to Blair's visit, and noted that the British leader travels abroad often because of domestic weakness,"

Now you mention it if you look at that photo closely he does seem to have a bit of weakness around the domestics. A telephone and a truss please Santa.

Under Bush's law, guilty until confirmed guilty

When President George W. Bush rammed the bill on military commissions through Congress, the Republicans crowed about creating a process that would be tough on terrorists but preserve essential principles of justice. "America can be proud," said Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the bill's architects.

Unfortunately, Graham was wrong. One of the many problems with the new law is that it will only make it harder than it already is to separate the real terrorists from the far larger group of inmates at the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who were bit players in the Taliban or innocent bystanders.

Graham and other supporters of this dreadful legislation seem to have forgotten that Amerian justice does not merely deliver swift punishment to the guilty. It also protects the innocent.

Bush ignored that fact after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he tried to put the prisoners of the war on terror beyond the reach of American law and the Geneva Conventions. For starters, he dispensed with one of the vital provisions of the conventions: that prisoners must be screened by a "competent tribunal" if there is any doubt about who they are and what role they played in hostilities.

As a result, hundreds of men captured in Afghanistan and other countries were sent to Guantánamo Bay and other prisons, including the network of illegal CIA detention camps, without any attempt to determine whether they were any sort of combatant, legal or illegal.

The Bush administration showed not the slightest interest in fixing this problem until the Supreme Court said in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the president cannot simply lock up anyone - even a foreign citizen - without giving him a real chance to challenge his detention before a "neutral decision maker."

In response, Bush created Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which gave the most cursory possible reviews of the Guantánamo detainees. These reviews took place years after the prisoners were captured. They permitted the use of hearsay evidence, evidence obtained through coercion and even torture, and evidence that was kept secret from the prisoner. The normal burden of proof was reversed: The tribunals presumed prisoners were justifiably detained and the prisoners had the burden of disproving government evidence - presuming they knew what it was in the first place.

The new law makes this mockery of justice stronger. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 makes it virtually impossible to contest a status tribunal's decision. It prohibits claims of habeas corpus - the ancient right of prisoners in just societies to have their detentions reviewed - or any case based directly or indirectly on the Geneva Conventions. Even if an appeal got to the single appeals court now authorized to hear it, the administration would be very likely to argue that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing secrets, as it has done repeatedly.

The new law dangerously expands the definition of illegal enemy combatant and allows Bush - and the secretary of defense - to give to anyone they choose the authority to designate a prisoner as an illegal combatant. It also allows Bush to go on squirreling prisoners away at secret CIA camps where none of the rules apply.

Bush wants Americans to trust him to apply these powers only to truly dangerous men. Even if the American system were based on that sort of personal power and not the rule of law, it would be hard to trust the judgment of a president and an administration whose records are so bad. The United States has yet to acknowledge that it kidnapped an innocent Canadian citizen and sent him to be abused in a Syrian prison. In another case, a German citizen has accused the United States of grabbing him off the streets of Macedonia, drugging him and sending him to Afghanistan, where he was brutally treated. Then there is the Ethiopian living in London who said he was grabbed by American agents and brutalized by Moroccan torturers until he confessed to plotting with Jose Padilla to set off a "dirty bomb." Padilla was never charged with the crime. The Ethiopian remains at Guantánamo Bay.

Republicans who support the new law like to point out that it only covers foreigners. But Americans have never believed that human rights are just for Americans.

The United States is outraged when an authoritarian government jails an American, or one of its own citizens, on trumped-up charges and brings him or her before a phony court. Surely that is not the model that Americans want to follow in their own prisons.

The future of Europe's military

I thought I would recommend, strongly, a read of a bleak, but fascinating new policy paper on the future of the European military.

Britain is balancing between the EU and Nato

The thing is the work of a newish defence procurement agency for the EU – the European Defence Agency – and you may be less than surprised to learn that having decided the future looks very bleak, the EDA’s solution is lots of harmonised defence procurement and research spending, to be channeled through the, um, EDA.

Leaving aside that fairly typical piece of Brussels self-actualisation (to use the psychiatrists’ term), the paper itself is amazingly blunt about how weak Europe may be in the future.

Its most dramatic prediction is that traditional ideas of “victory” have to be jettisoned in favour of limited, multi-national campaigns to restore “stability” to conflict zones, with the grudging consent of an ageing, ever more casualty-averse European population.

The paper, entitled: “An Initial Long-Term Vision for European Defence Capability and Capacity Needs”, paints a vision of Europe in 20 years time, in which plunging fertility rates leave militaries struggling to recruit young men and women of fighting age, at a time when national budgets will be under unprecedented strain to pay for greying populations.

At the same time, increasingly cautious voters and politicians may be unwilling to contemplate casualties, or “potentially controversial interventions abroad - in particular interventions in regions from where large numbers of immigrants have come.”

Voters will also be insistent on having UN backing for operations, and on crafting large coalitions of EU member states with a heavy involvement of civilian agencies, and not just fighting units, the paper suggests. They will also want military operations to be environmentally friendly, where possible.

All these changes may drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, creating a “characteristically European approach”, which is “different in ambition and character” from a US vision of war-fighting, with for example, a stronger emphasis on “civil-military interoperability”.

This European approach can be “nested within NATO conceptual frameworks and standards”, the paper says, in a nod to the trans-Atlantic alliance which has underpinned European security for decades.

The tone could not be more different from the Bush administration’s talk of fighting for victory in a global war on terror. The paper predicts future European defence and security operations “will be expeditionary, multinational and multi-dimensional, directed at achieving security and stability more than “victory”.”

It gives warning that militaries will have to cope, even more than today, with round the clock media attention.

“In the conduct of war, ever greater attention will be paid to proportion and justification in the application of force, with an increasing tendency to hold individuals responsible for their actions not just at head of state or military commander level but down the command chain. Attention to collateral damage will be ever more acute,” it says.

The paper was drawn up at the invitation of ministers by the EDA, an EU body which exists to push for more common spending and research by different EU defence ministries and industries. Accordingly, the paper’s favoured solution is steady harmonisation of European militaries, ideally using the same equipment, and using intelligence from pooled spy agencies.

“The best form of interoperability for equipments and systems is commonality – using the same kit. This operational perspective matches the defence economic imperative to consolidate the demand side of the European defence equipment market,” the paper says.

It calls for radical cuts to the standing armies of Europe, which currently number two million men and women, though a far smaller number of combat troops. “Approaches include out-sourcing; increased automation (from warships to robots); and reducing superfluous capability (do Europeans between them really need nearly 10.000 main battle tanks, and nearly 3.000 combat aircraft?).”

The overwhelming tone is unremittingly bleak. “The global context is sobering,” it says, predicting a future of demographic and economic decline for Europe, in which EU citizens will have an average age of 45, and will find themselves utterly dependent on the outside world for energy. At the same time, the populations of Africa and the Middle East will be young, crowded into ever larger cities, and bitterly aware of their exclusion from the fruits of globalisation.

America may lose interest in Europe, as well, the paper predicts. “Relatively poorer, older, and more anxious about its security, Europe may also find itself increasingly alone in confronting the problems of a difficult neighbourhood, as the focus of US foreign policy, following economic and geopolitical developments, shifts towards Asia.”

The paper was presented at an informal meeting in Lapland, hosted by Finland, holder of the EU rotating presidency. Ministers endorsed it, but that does not mean they sign up to everything in it. Here is a press release on the ministerial meeting.

Does Britain sign up to this kind of thing? Well, we are happy, I am told, maintaining a balancing act between the EU and the US-led world of Nato. It is too crude a generalization to say Nato is for the wars where people need bombing, and the EU is for the cuddly, hearts and minds stuff, but not by much.

In more formal terms, a Ministry of Defence spokesman told me about the paper: “We see this as a pragmatic view of the future, and an important part of a long term strategic planning process. The UK is comfortable with our position of working with both Nato and the EU.”

Greasing of Wheels Halts LA Traffic

Well, as if we didn't have enough to be pissed at President Bush for, we come to find him responsible for the hours-long traffic nightmare that's virtually shut down the Westside this evening.

Yes, the most unpopular president since Herbert Hoover, who's treated California as virtually a foreign country for the past six years, came to town to get a little grease poured on his wheels by a few wealthy constituents (the fundraising dinner being at the house of venture capitalist Elliott Broidy, appointed early this year to Homeland Security's Advisory Council).

Broidy's house being in Holmby Hills, naturally the entire 405 is shut down in rolling strips this evening, in both directions, while Sunset Blvd. is completely closed from 4-8 PM from Westwood to the freeway. So as hundreds of thousands sit in gridlock, burning precious gasoline at $3.00 per gallon, it's worth remembering who really owns this country.

We'll breathe a lot easier when the ape has taken his circus and left town. And so will the Governator, who's been running from the freakshow all day.