The law is meant to protect the powerful from embarassment

George Bush and Alberto Gonzales will likely never be made accountable for violating the FISA law. But the whistleblower who exposed their program - that's a different story:

[T]he raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")

Don't expect many tearful editorials bemoaning the fate of the leaker if he is caught in this case. Those laments are saved for members of the dinner party set.

It's the sign of a completely corrupt government when we struggle to retroactively legalize official wrongdoing while the perpetrators have the gall to prosecute those who expose their actions. State secrets are meant to protect the nation, not its ruling class.


h/t John Cole

Dick Cheney's official duties

A federal judge agrees that outing covert CIA agents is part of Dick Cheney's job description:

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory, " Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

Of course, "speaking with the press" wasn't the problem. Revealing state secrets was.

Stop poking the hornet's nest

Proving that Homeland Security doesn't even understand basic pest control:

Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush's homeland security adviser, took issue with the suggestion that the president had ignored warnings from the intelligence community that attacking Iraq would stimulate al-Qaeda's drive for recruits and influence.

"You're assuming it's a zero-sum game, which is what I don't understand," Townsend said. "The fact is, we were harassing them in Afghanistan, we're harassing them in Iraq, we're harassing them in other ways, non-militarily, around the world. And the answer is, every time you poke the hornet's nest, they are bound to come back and push back on you. That doesn't suggest to me that we shouldn't be doing it."

Actually, that's exactly why you aren't supposed to poke hornet's nests. You're supposed to fumigate and destroy them:

Do not disturb the nest in anyway.

Do not make any loud noises.

Treating hornets should be done at night, without shaking the nest.

Simply removing the nest will not resolve the problem, because surviving wasps will reconstruct a new one.

Putin decides the Cold War isn't over after all

While George Bush has been obsessesing about small actors like Iran and Syria, he's been completely blind to the threat of a resurgent adversary in Russia.

He saw the Berlin wall fall and the Soviet Union disintegrate. "Reagan won the cold war". Put a check mark in the win column. It's time to move on to the threat of militant Islam.

So he complains that decades old treaties which have helped keep the peace between the two nuclear giants are "outdated", launches wars of preemption, and decides to build a missile shield right on the border of our old nemesis.

The Russians, of course, remember that the original purpose of the "missile shield" was to counter their military power, not Iran's. They see the Vice-President declaring that the United States is the world's sole superpower which won't permit any rival, and they see NATO expanding into old Soviet block nations while hostile forces build up along their borders, first in Afghanistan, then Iraq and soon possibly Iran and Syria.

Vladimir Putin very much sees a growing threat. And he doesn't think it comes from Iran.

Unfortunately, George Bush appears to sincerely believe that "the Cold War is over" and that Russia and the United States have become fast friends. This despite Putin's rollback of democratic reforms in Russia, his assertion of dominance over former Soviet states and his repeated declarations that the Americans have become like the Nazis of old.

And now Putin has taken a page from Bush's playbook and begun declaring treaties outdated himself:

Russia engaged the West in a new round of brinkmanship yesterday when Vladimir Putin effectively tore up a vital treaty designed to end the threat of war in Europe.

In a chilling message to his adversaries, the Russian president signed a decree suspending Moscow's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, a move that will allow Russia to mass tanks on its border with Europe for the first time in 15 years.

Limiting the number of troops that could be stationed on Cold War front lines by both sides, the treaty required Russia to move the bulk of its military hardware east of the Ural Mountains, the geographical divide between Europe and Asia. With the treaty's demise, Mr Putin seems to be declaring a return to adversarial Cold War politics.

"I'm looking for Jack Bauer"

Since so many senior Republican officials dream of styling their national security strategy on FOX's 24 ; it should be remembered that in Jack Bauer's universe the United States has had two presidents assassinated, lost possession of a stealth fighter and a nuclear weapon, seen several reactors melt down, experienced multiple suicide bombings and had at least one city nuked.

This despite the frequent use of enhanced interrogation methods in the national defense.

That's because the fictitious Counter Terrorist Unit is completely inept and disfunctional. Jack Bauer tortures people because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

The most insidious of traitors

Matt Yglesias thinks Bush took the honorable path in freeing Scooter Libby.

I didn't think he would do it, but it's really the only honorable course of action available to him. It would be silly for Bush to pretend to believe that people deserve to be punished for breaking the law to help cover up his administration's crimes when he clearly believes no such thing.

But, there are those who get absolved for doing Bush's dirty work, and there are those who don't:

Eleven U.S. soldiers _ all from the enlisted ranks _ have been convicted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, with former Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. receiving the harshest sentence, a 10-year prison term.

Bill Kristol is an idiot

From ThinkProgress:

Kristol said the exemptions for the president and vice president were “reasonable enough.” He called it “a pain in the neck” to have “some bureaucrat” from the National Archives “come and inspect your safe to see whether you’re locking it up properly each night.”

I'm pretty sure that's what Wen Ho Lee thought too.

Bush wants to end program to dismantle Soviet nukes

The Bush administration hates treaties, even when they're profoundly in our national security interests. The latest target is the 1991 START treaty, and they hope to replace a rigorous verification regime with an informal handshake.

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, co-creator of the program that’s helped Russia dismantle and secure large portions of its Soviet-era nuclear forces, strongly urged the Bush administration on Thursday to reconsider plans to end the treaty based system that allows Moscow and Washington to monitor each other’s nuclear arsenals.

“The predictability and confidence provided by treaty verification reduces the chances of misinterpretation, miscalculation and error.” He said that Russian-American relations were “complicated enough without introducing more elements of uncertainty into the nuclear relationship.”

Describing the 16 year old system as "outdated" and chafing under restrictions preventing him from designing bunker buster nuclear weapons, George Bush wants to replace on-site verification with increased intelligence operations. (The type that failed spectacularly in the lead up to the Iraq war.)

Preferring to focus on enemies who don't have nuclear missile capabilities, like Iran and al Qaeda, he's forgotten that the only true existential threat to America comes from Moscow.

The intelligence community isn't happy with the idea:

Alarmed by the stress on the limited fleet of U.S. spy satellites, however, U.S. intelligence agencies oppose weakening the on-site inspections and other means that give U.S. officials a window into the only nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the United States.

Most disturbingly, George Bush literally believes that Russia no longer poses a threat to the United States. He thinks "the Cold War is over" and doesn't understand why the Russians oppose a missile defense system in Poland.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has rolled back democratic reforms, arrested political rivals, assassinated journalists and compares the U.S. to Nazi Germany. He sees us at his doorstep and very much believes we're a threat.