December 6, 2007 by lonbud

In The Belly Of The Whale

‘Tis the season for reflection, retrospection, and reminiscing, I suppose, and worth therefore, considering: “how did we get here?”

How did we get to the place where lawbreaking at the highest levels of government will not divert our attention from everyday trauma, tragedy, and spectacle?

By what road did we arrive at a juncture pouring $500,000 per minute into the sands of Arabia, while children in our own land go uninsured?

What wrong turn led to our collective unwillingness (inability?) to hold our leaders to account for their mendacity, ineptitude, and corruption?

I have neither time nor funding to set out the detailed topography of such a map right now; as I mentioned, the moment seems merely ripe for pondering the dimensions of our Trail of Tears.

However, I can point to an example of the terrain in which we’re presently mired, which is indisputable proof we have indeed gone astray.

A not altogether widely-known part of the Bush administration’s grand scheme for protecting the Homeland hinges on an effort to sheath the entire planet in a web of surveillance, a system not subject to any form of oversight or restriction, in service of a perceived need to detain any person chosen by the Unitary Executive — without charge — and to hold in unlimited secret detention any person it believes to threaten our way of life.

It’s more complicated than that, of course, but there’s the gist of it.

An impediment to the execution of such a plan was enacted by the Congress of the United States in 1978, the provisions of which are codified in federal statute 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1811, 1821-1829, 1841-1846, 1861-62, otherwise known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Some readers may be aware the Bush administration has admitted to violating this law since at least, and perhaps since prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Though insufficient control of congress is today vested in members with the courage to employ constitution tools designed to purge the executive branch of criminals in its chain of command, other, smaller cogs in the great machinery of American democracy turn ever-onward.

Heedless perhaps, of the degree to which the country is no longer on a heading toward liberty and justice for all, but also not bereft of the power to delay our arrival past the point of no return.

A crucial destination on this road to total security and/or utter tyranny (depending on your perspective) involves reform of FISA to account for present understandings not considered by the drafters of the original legislation.

In the eyes of the Bush administration, a key marker on this journey demands retroactive absolution of private corporations for their complicity in the present government’s admitted violations of the law, something known in the debate over whether and how FISA might be reformed as Telecom Immunity.

Last month, after under-reported debate in both houses of congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives approved their own versions of the new bill, with the effect of sending the entire matter to what they call conference, where a committee comprised of members of each house will hash out a hybridized version of something both houses might approve.

Comes now Joe Klein, a columnist for Time Magazine, who wrote a story published in the November 21, 2007 issue asserting the House version of the bill would give to foreign-based terror suspects the same constitutional protections to which American citizens are entitled, branding the Democrats who wrote and passed the legislation “just plain stupid.”

Of course, Mr. Klein’s “reporting” was false , and on that same day, Glenn Greenwald called Mr. Klein out for his mendacity and sloppy journalism.

He also called out Time‘s editors for their own malfeasance, but as of today, neither Mr. Klein nor the editors of the magazine have admitted errors or ineptitude, nor have they acted to correct falsehoods published for Time‘s 4 million readers.

We find in addition, two sitting members of Congress, both of whom are members of the Intelligence Committees and have played a central role in drafting the pending FISA legislation, sought to respond to Mr. Klein’s original piece and were denied the bully pulpit of Time‘s letters section.

That one of the nation’s most venerable media organs published falsehoods it refuses to acknowledge or apologize for is only surpassed in its sadness by our understanding the offending piece was ghostwritten by the Telecom industry’s ranking Republican advocate!

We have carved our way through the forests of time to a place where all is spin. Facts, truth, and justice are incidental to the reality we’re forced to live.

Why, just this week, the intelligence professionals of our own government maintained our greatest enemy in the Mideast quit work on production of nuclear weaponry four years ago.

Go figure.