Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1988 Editor's Choice: 19
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Why do you persist in spreading this sentence?
[Read the article: Inside Bush's prosecutor purge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Earlier this month, the administration withdrew Griffin's name from consideration for a permanent appointment, though he remains in office indefinitely.
Why does each person reporting on the firings insist on blathering the sentence above? Everybody rambles at length over the change to the Patriot Act that Mr. "Blind Justice" Judiciary Chair Arlen Specter's office put in the bill, and how it allows permanent interim appointments, but then acts as if the Administration has really withdrawn Griffin. They haven't, they have merely applied the clause you are all worried about them applying. The Republicans blocked getting rid of the clause, do you think they don't think it is important? How about habeas corpus? The last group of people that had to battle a unitary executive to restore habeas corpus had to cut off King Charles' head to get it back.
Secondly, has it occurred to no one that these people are possibly facing investigations on their behavior over the last 6 years, and that if a prosecutor has to be appointed to run one, then like Patrick Fitzgerald, it will be chosen from among the ranks of the U.S. District Attorneys? Rewarding their political friends, tightening up policy? How about avoiding having the whole lot of them end up like Scooter? Some of these people have been indicted by the German courts on possible war crimes violations. War crimes are federal crimes in this country. Does that look like a scenario under which you want excellent, independent federal prosecutors, or federalists who believe in the unitary executive?
Sometimes, just sometimes, when you vote your rights away, you do so permanently, just like the losing of wars, and the decline of nations. That's why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, not eternal hindsight.
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Explanation, Voice of Reason
[Read the article: Inside Bush's prosecutor purge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The previous process was that the prosecutors were appointed by the Administration, and confirmed by the Senate. If they were dismissed, the new appointments needed to be announced and confirmed by the Senate within 120 days. If not, the federal judiciary appointed the new prosecutors to fill the slots.
The new process gets rid of the restrictions on interim appointments, they may serve indefinitely, and do not have to seek prompt (or any) Senate approval, and the federal judges do not appoint anybody.
In other words, in the old process, the Administration could fire, but there were checks and balances to keep the prosecutors independent, and to prevent Saturday Night Massacres. In the new process, there are no checks, no balances, they are accountable only to the Administration, and no one else. That's not a rhetorical change.
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Almost right.
[Read the article: How Cheney bombed in Afghanistan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Musharraf, a former army chief of staff who took power in a military coup in 1999, has been a rival of ISI influence and has never succeeded in securing control over it.
"Rival" has to be taken in context. Musharraf came to power by accusing the government of Nawaz Sharif of being too dovish with respect to India, specifically about the Kargil confrontation, where he was the commander in chief. The Pakistani military is much closer to the ISI than the civilian governments were, and even the civilian governments found the ISI policies with regards to the Taliban and Al Qaeda to be convenient ways to prosecute the war with India, since they trained the infiltrators from Jaish-e-Muhammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba that Pakistan sends into Kashmir.
Combine that with the fact that the Pakistani government openly complained about the Kabul government set up by the U.S. as not sufficiently Pashtun, and not sufficiently pro-Pakistan, and it seems genuinely hard to find the rift between what the ISI does and what Musharraf wants. The rivalry for power does exist. But any assertion by the U.S. or its journalistic critics like Mr. Blumenthal that there is anything we can exploit here, that is, that we can somehow get Musharraf to back us and not the ISI is ludicrous.
It's also a repeat mistake, since the State Department and the CIA spent the better part of 10 years looking for "moderate Taliban" to forge alliances, and went so far in accepting what the Pakistani government and the ISI told them as to bankroll absolutely dispicable characters like Hekmatyar, while short-changing the more Tajik and less pro-Pakistani Massoud.
If we truly believe that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are operating with impunity out of Pakistan, we should do the straightforward thing: Put Pakistan on the list of State Sponsors of Terror, cut off their aid, and begin bombing the strongholds in Waziristan and the NWFT, and tell them they are risking all out war. Any other strategy amounts to being played the fool by Musharraf, and his ISI.