The Legislative Branch has no oversight responsibility over the White House.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Then Who's fault is it? The buck stops at the top. The one that sets the precedent, the one that controls his administration. If you say he doesn't control his administration, then that's another failure that's his fault.

And that is the beat of the mantra of the Left. I don't view the interdependent and complicated relationships of national and international politics in a such a simplistic manner. If it simplifies things for you by all means use "Bush's Fault" as your mantra. Many problems which surfaced in this administrations tenure have festered for more than 7 years including the events on 9/11/01. Congress carries much of the burden for current events either through action or non-action. Individuals in the administration carry responsibility for events, just because the worked for Bush does not mean "Bush did it!". The actions of a few misfit soldiers does not mean the General in charge did it, condoned it, or approved it. I am not absolving Bush of anything. He is an idiot. But he is not always responsible for the idiots under him. Persecute him in the annals of public opinion if it makes you feel better but it does not mean any of the problems are going to go away.

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The actions of a few misfit soldiers does not mean the General in charge did it, condoned it, or approved it.

Just like in Nam when the president openly lied, then massacres and other criminal actions by US soldiers increased - became far more common than is publicly acknowledged. Let's just leave it to many peers who acknowledge actions by 'fellow soldiers'. It was widespread because the president was a liar. So much a liar that mail TO the troops was censored.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

And that is the beat of the mantra of the Left. I don't view the interdependent and complicated relationships of national and international politics in a such a simplistic manner.

No need to simplify. It's Bush's fault and the fault of everyone else involved. It's not coincidence that Bush hired so many bad apples. He intended to spoil the barrel.

Heck, most of the things on warch's list aren't even denied by the administration anymore. They intend it to be the way things are done.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

snip~ But he is not always responsible for the idiots under him.

The fuck he's not. He picked 'em and he's most certainly responsible for their and the rest of his administrations actions. Especially when this shit becomes public knowlege and he does nothing about it.

If a few soldiers go nuts the General is most definitely responsible and if he does not correct the situation, he's going down.... especially if he tries to keep it a secret. That football player that got fragged by his own men is the perfect example of Generals going down.......4, IIRC.

[TheMercenary]

Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth


David Aaronovitch
Tuesday June 10, 2003
The Guardian


Civilians inspect Torah scrolls stored in the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad

When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than 170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed, representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the oil ministry.
Professors wrote articles. Professor Michalowski of Michigan argued that this was "a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop". Professor Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University claimed that, "By April 12 the entire museum had been looted," and added, "Blame must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture unparalleled in modern history." From Edinburgh Professor Trevor Watkins lamented that, "The loss of Iraq's cultural heritage will go down in history - like the burning of the Library at Alexandria - and Britain and the US will be to blame." Others used phrases such as cultural genocide and compared the US in particular to the Mongol invaders of 13th-century Iraq.

Back in Baghdad there was anger. On April 14, Dr Donny George, the museum's director of research, was distraught. The museum had housed the leading collection of the continuous history of mankind, "And it's gone, and it's lost. If Marines had started [protecting the museum] before, none of this would have happened. It's too late. It's no use. It's no use."

A few weeks later - in London to address a meeting at the British Museum - George was interviewed for this newspaper by Neal Ascherson. George, said Ascherson, did not throw blame around, but did remark that most of the looters responsible for the damage were not educated.

On June 1, George was reported in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag as reiterating that witnesses had seen US soldiers enter the museum on April 9, stay inside two hours and leave with some objects. When asked whether he believed that the US military and international art thieves had been acting in concert, George replied that a year earlier, at a meeting in a London restaurant, someone (unnamed) had told him that he couldn't wait till he could go inside the National Museum with US soldiers and give it a good pillage - ie, yes.

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.

Not all of it, of course. There was some looting and damage to a small number of galleries and storerooms, and that is grievous enough. But over the past six weeks it has gradually become clear that most of the objects which had been on display in the museum galleries were removed before the war. Some of the most valuable went into bank vaults, where they were discovered last week. Eight thousand more have been found in 179 boxes hidden "in a secret vault". And several of the larger and most remarked items seem to have been spirited away long before the Americans arrived in Baghdad.

George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent "a small percentage" of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the exaggeration.

"There was a mistake," he said. "Someone asked us what is the number of pieces in the whole collection. We said over 170,000, and they took that as the number lost. Reporters came in and saw empty shelves and reached the conclusion that all was gone. But before the war we evacuated all of the small pieces and emptied the showcases except for fragile or heavy material that was difficult to move."

This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny George himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his] knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.

On Sunday night, in a remarkable programme on BBC2, the architectural historian Dan Cruikshank both sought and found. Cruikshank had been to the museum in Baghdad, had inspected the collection, the storerooms, the outbuildings, and had interviewed people who had been present around the time of the looting, including George and some US troops. And Cruikshank was present when, for the first time, US personnel along with Iraqi museum staff broke into the storerooms.

One, which had clearly been used as a sniper point by Ba'ath forces, had also been looted of its best items, although they had been stacked in a far corner. The room had been opened with a key. Another storeroom looked as though the looters had just departed with broken artefacts all over the floor. But this, Cruikshank learned, was the way it had been left by the museum staff. No wonder, he told the viewers - the staff hadn't wanted anyone inside this room. Overall, he concluded, most of the serious looting "was an inside job".

Cruikshank also tackled George directly on events leading up to the looting. The Americans had said that the museum was a substantial point of Iraqi resistance, and this explained their reticence in occupying it. Not true, said George, a few militia-men had fired from the grounds and that was all. This, as Cruikshank heavily implied, was a lie. Not only were there firing positions in the grounds, but at the back of the museum there was a room that seemed to have been used as a military command post. And it was hardly credible that senior staff at the museum would not have known that. Cruikshank's closing thought was to wonder whether the museum's senior staff - all Ba'ath party appointees - could safely be left in post.

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,974193,00.html

[TheMercenary]

More facts on the Iraqi looting which dispell TW's statement that 60% of the artifacts were looted:

http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/ne...dadmuseum.html

I could go on but it is pretty clear that the number of 60% is total BS.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

More facts on the Iraqi looting which dispell TW's statement that 60% of the artifacts were looted:

http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/ne...dadmuseum.html

I could go on but it is pretty clear that the number of 60% is total BS.

That link shows pretty clearly what the most likely scenario of what actually happened is. Plus believable numbers. Good find.

[Undertoad]

In May 03 I posted a NY Times story that thoroughly debunked the museum looting but it didn't suit tw's imagination of events so he ignored it.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

In May 03 I posted a NY Times story that thoroughly debunked the museum looting but it didn't suit tw's imagination of events so he ignored it.

I ignored what was not true. Museum has recently summarized its situation. They lost about 60% of their treasures. Of that, only 20% have been recovered. But back then, UT was posting anything to deny realities in Iraq - even the looting. Rumsfeld was denying looting. Amazed me back in 2003 were the number of otherwise responsible people who believed outright Rumsfeld lies.

That museum looting was massive in direct contradiction to what UT believes. They lost about 60% which numbers tens of thousands of artifacts. But Rumsfeld said looting did not exist. Therefore it must have been true? If Rumsfeld said it, then it is probably a lie until proven otherwise.

Iraqi curators believe they will never find most of what was looted (but is still there according to UT). Facts posted about looting then are still accurate today. Why did I cite that museum looting from 2003? Because the BBC reported on it again last night – complete with numbers.

[Undertoad]

I couldn't find any such recent BBC story on the BBC website.

I did find that according to the BBC,

Only the museum staff knows what was in the galleries when the war started. The claim that 170,000 items were destroyed or looted has long been abandoned, and reduced considerably. Also, many items have been recovered. Museum staff say that only 33 major items, and around 2,100 minor items, are missing, while 15 major items in the galleries were seriously damaged. These include the famous 4,500-year-old-harp from Ur, with its fabulous golden bull's head.
...
The storerooms tell a different story again. For many weeks outside observers were kept from seeing them. Dr Jabir would only say they had been looted. Even Matthew Bogdanos, the New York District Attorney and US Marine colonel based at the museum, and heading an investigation into its looting, had trouble gaining access, as US policy was to co-operate with the Iraqi museum authorities, and not to behave in too heavy-handed a manner. Bogdanos operated with admirable restraint, considering the US Army was being increasingly held responsible for what had happened at the museum, but it was clearly in his interest to establish how much had been destroyed, who had conducted the thefts, and how to track down and recover stolen items.

Having persuaded museum staff to allow me access to the five on-site storerooms, we all had something of a surprise. Three were still locked, and looked untouched. The remaining two had been entered, with one not even having been locked. These storerooms were generally not ransacked, but clearly some items had been stolen. It seems that the thieves knew where the most precious objects were, and had made straight for them.

BBC November 03

Artefacts looted from the Baghdad museum following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime have been recovered in London, police have confirmed for the first time.

The discovery of the items follows enduring images from the museum of smashed display cases, empty vaults and crying staff, when reporters gained access for the first time.

First estimates of the looting suggesting that more than 150,000 items were missing were wildly inaccurate.

The most recent figures indicate all but 10,000 have been recovered.

The Cellar awaits your cites.

[Beestie]

Luckily we now have The Patriot Act which fixed some of those problems.

What problem? The problem the government has when rights granted us under the Constitution and Bill of Rights impedes their ability to do police work even a moron could do within the parameters of our civil rights?

Fine. Effective immediately, judicial approval of search warrants is no longer required. Warrants will be issued by and executed by local law enforcement without judicial review therefore the entire legal principal of illegal search and seizure has been nullified - no searches can be characterized as illegal since searches are now conducted at the discretion of the police force. Seized property cannot be deemed illegally seized since seizures are conducted at the discretion of local law enforecement.

Now with that pesky requirement out of the way, LET'S GO GET US SOME CRIMINALS!!! WOOOHOOOO!!!!

"Pardon me, miss but I'm going to need to search your house."
"Why?"
"There might be something illegal going on in there which, under the new 'Patriot Act' is a supposition which cannot be legally challenged since there is no threshold for making such a determination."

Tell you what, Mercenary, I'll be in charge of deciding who to apply the provisions of the Patriot Act to. Since the requirement for judicial approval has been voided and since there is no recourse to citizens because their rights against search, seizure and habeus corpus can be suspended at the sole discretion of the government then technically your rights haven't been violated (the right itself has been revoked).

I'll decide who is spied upon. I'll decided who's records are requested without a warrant and I'll prohibit the parties providing the records from acknowledging that they were provided. I'll review them in secret and decide what police action shall be taken against you and I am accountable to no judicial authority.

Is this the world you want to live in? That's what the Patriot Act provides for. And as if that weren't bad enough, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and other agencies are acting in flagrant violation of it and no one can do anything about it except tell them to stop.

That's not America and anyone who foolishly supports such unchecked revocation of rights afforded us under the Constitution is no American.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Beestie

That's not America and anyone who foolishly supports such unchecked revocation of rights afforded us under the Constitution is no American.

I don't buy that hype. It is not unchecked.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I don't buy that hype. It is not unchecked.

The current "check" appears to be "congressional investigation if and only if Democrats are in power" (this morning). Something more systematic is called for.

Like, for example, warrants.

[TheMercenary]

.C. Dispatch | April 19, 2005

Legal Affairs | by Stuart Taylor Jr.

Patriot Act Hysteria Meets Reality


The emerging expert consensus contradicts the hype: for the most part, the Patriot Act is a good law
.....

When the Bush administration says it wants to make permanent the freedom-stealing provisions of the PATRIOT Act, they're telling those of us who believe in privacy, due process, and the right to dissent that it's time to surrender our freedom."

So screams the first sentence of a recent fundraising letter from the American Civil Liberties Union. This and countless other overheated attacks—from conservative libertarians and gun-rights activists as well as liberal groups—have scared some 375 local governments and five states into passing anti-PATRIOT Act measures, while sending earnest librarians into a panic about Big Brother snooping into library borrowers' reading habits.

But consider what the ACLU says when it is seeking to be taken seriously by people who know something about the issues: "Most of the voluminous PATRIOT Act is actually unobjectionable from a civil-liberties point of view, and ... the law makes important changes that give law enforcement agents the tools they need to protect against terrorist attacks."

That's right: That was the ACLU talking, in an April 5 press release. To be sure, the release goes on to stress that "a few provisions ... unnecessarily trample civil liberties, and must be revised." Well, perhaps. And with 16 provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act scheduled to sunset on December 31, it is surely time to give the entire 342-page, 156-section law the careful scrutiny that it has not received from most of the legislators who passed it in October 2001.

This is not to deny that the Bush administration has engaged in grave abuses, both at home and abroad, beginning with its unduly prolonged post-9/11 detention and (in many cases) abuse of hundreds of visitors from the Muslim world. Most alarming have been the administration's claims of near-dictatorial wartime powers to seize and interrogate—even to the point of torture—anyone in the world whom the president labels an "enemy combatant."

But contrary to many a newspaper account, these abuses and overreaching claims of power had nothing to with the PATRIOT Act, about which so many people have cried wolf that the real wolves have received less attention than they deserve.

The good news is that with the December 31 sunset approaching, serious thinking has penetrated the previously shallow debate. Anyone interested in reading the best arguments for and against the more controversial provisions can find them at www.PatriotDebates.com, a collection of mini-debates among an ideologically diverse group of 17 experts. The "sourceblog" was put together by Stewart Baker, chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

"In several cases, the civil libertarians we recruited to find fault with particular provisions have ended up proposing modification rather than repeal," writes Baker. And amid numerous suggestions for modest tinkering, it turns out that only about six provisions have provoked very spirited debate. This should not be surprising: Much of the act consists of long-overdue amendments—which were on the Clinton Justice Department's wish list well before 9/11—to give government agents pursuing terrorists and spies the same investigative tools that are available to those pursuing ordinary criminals, and to counteract the bad guys' use of new technologies such as e-mail and disposable cellphones.

The most widely denounced provision is Section 215, one of the 16 that will sunset unless re-enacted. It is commonly known as the "library" provision because it might someday be used to obtain library records—even though, as the Justice Department reported on April 5, it never has been so used and does not even contain the word "library." Section 215 authorizes the FBI to obtain an order from a special court, established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to require any business or other entity to surrender any records or other "tangible things" that the FBI claims to be relevant to an intelligence investigation.

This power is undeniably sweeping. But it is almost certainly constitutional under Supreme Court rulings that allow, for example, the government to see your credit card records. And it is far less invasive of privacy than, say, a wiretap. What many critics ignore is that for decades, prosecutors have had even more-sweeping powers to issue subpoenas requiring businesses and organizations, including libraries and medical facilities, to hand over any records that are arguably relevant to ordinary criminal investigations. Such subpoenas have been routinely issued without prior judicial scrutiny for many years.

Critics complain that a Section 215 order can apply to records pertaining to people not suspected of being foreign agents. (The same is true of an ordinary subpoena.) But this is as it should be. A key technique for catching terrorists is to trace their activities through those of associates who are not themselves engaged, or known to be engaged, in terrorist activities.

This is not to say that Section 215 is flawless. Most obviously, it fails to specify any way for a recipient of an unwarranted or overly broad order to ask a court to reject or narrow the order. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has conceded that this is a defect that should be cured.

Gonzales, in this and other ways, including his April 13 meeting with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, has responded to critics far more constructively than his predecessor, John Ashcroft, ever did.

Critics, including Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who is the Section 215 critic on PatriotDebates.com, also make a strong case that a gag-order provision in Section 215 is unduly sweeping. This provision automatically bars recipients from disclosing Section 215 orders to the media or to anyone else, ever. The purpose is to prevent terrorists from learning that the government is on their trail. But the absolute and perpetual nature of the gag orders eliminates a key check on possible abuse. Swire proposes several limitations. At least one seems worthy of adoption: The gag orders should expire after six months unless extended by the FISA court.

he other major target of civil libertarians is Section 213, which authorizes so-called "sneak-and-peek" warrants for what the government calls "delayed-notice" searches. Ordinarily, search warrants must be served on the subjects at the time of a search. Section 213, which is not among the provisions scheduled to sunset, recognizes several exceptions, allowing judges to delay notice of a search until after a search is already completed, when the government shows that delay may be necessary to avoid: 1) endangering life or physical safety, 2) flight from prosecution, 3) tampering with evidence, 4) intimidation of witnesses, or 5) "otherwise seriously jeopardizing an investigation or unduly delaying a trial." This last is the so-called catch-all provision.

Amid a deluge of misleading scare rhetoric about FBI agents rummaging through bedrooms and covering their tracks, most critics have ignored the fact that Section 213's main impact is to codify what courts have done for decades when necessary to avoid blowing the secrecy that is critical to some investigations.

Critics complain that Section 213 was enacted under a false flag, because sneak and-peek searches in terrorism investigations had already been authorized by FISA. The provision's main impact, they say, has been to make it easier for agents to obtain sneak-and-peek warrants in ordinary criminal investigations. This is true. It's also true that a strong case can be made for revising Section 213 to require notice of an ordinary criminal-investigation search within, say, seven days unless the court authorizes further delay. And it's arguable that the catchall provision makes it too easy to get a sneak-and peek warrant.

But on the scale of threats to liberty, Section 213 ranks far, far below such widely ignored laws as, for example, the five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for possessing five grams of crack cocaine.

The debates over the other four most controversial provisions—which cover three subject areas: "roving wiretaps," information-sharing between criminal and intelligence investigators, and prosecutions of people for providing terrorists with "material support"—also boil down to plausible arguments for and against relatively modest adjustments in the liberty-security balance.

Many libertarians have united behind the proposed SAFE Act, a package of revisions that would probably be of no great harm to the war on terrorism and no great benefit to civil liberties. But at a time of domestic security threats more dire than in any period since the Civil War—threats posed by jihadists who have a chillingly realistic hope of buying or making doomsday weapons that could kill us by the millions—most of these proposals strike me as small steps in the wrong direction.

But even if I'm incorrect about that, the big news is that for all the Sturm und Drang, we may be seeing the emergence of a remarkable expert consensus: For the most part, the USA PATRIOT Act is a good law.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/20050...lor_2005-04-19

[BigV]

So, it was

"a few provisions ... unnecessarily trample civil liberties, and must be revised."

overreaching,

Critics complain that Section 213 was enacted under a false flag, because sneak and-peek searches in terrorism investigations had already been authorized by FISA. The provision's main impact, they say, has been to make it easier for agents to obtain sneak-and-peek warrants in ordinary criminal investigations. This is true.

redundant,

Amid a deluge of misleading scare rhetoric ( --sorry, couldn't help myself) about FBI agents rummaging through bedrooms and covering their tracks,

ripe for abuse,

April 19, 2005

TWO YEARS AGO, and yet you're still straining and failing to justify its usefulness and benevolence?! Are you incapable of learning? My God, man, use your head. Look around you. Read a little more.

The strength of our systems, governmental and judicial, among others, is drawn largely from the twin virtues of checks and balances and openness. These two pillars of our national heritage are squarely in the crosshairs of the misleadingly titled "PATRIOT" Act. How can we say we've protected America by becoming what America is not--secretive, closed, arbitrary?