Psyche, Science, and Society

Daily poll heaven

For those obsessed with the rash of daily polls, there is no better place to get insight than a daily visit to fivethirtyeight.com. Also visit their Tracking Poll Primer for explanations of each of the now eight tracking polls.

October 21st, 2008

Guantanamo forever, Bush decides

Surprise! Bush never seriously considered closing Guantanamo:

Bush Decides to Keep Guantánamo Open
By Steven Lee Myers

WASHINGTON — Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Bush’s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House this summer after a Supreme Court ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American detention center. But Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable, now or any time soon, the officials said.

The administration is proceeding on the assumption that Guantánamo will remain open not only for the rest of Mr. Bush’s presidency but also well beyond, the officials said, as the site for military tribunals of those facing terrorism-related charges and for the long prison sentences that could follow convictions.

The effect of Mr. Bush’s stance is to leave in place a prison that has become a reviled symbol of the administration’s fight against terrorism, and to leave another contentious foreign policy decision for the next president.

Both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, have called for closing Guantánamo and could reverse Mr. Bush’s policy, though probably not quickly since neither has spelled out precisely how to deal with some of the thorniest legal consequences of shutting the prison.

Mr. Bush’s aides insist that the president’s desire is still to close Guantánamo when conditions permit, and the White House has not announced any decision. But administration officials say that even Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the most powerful advocates for closing the prison, have quietly acquiesced to the arguments of more hawkish advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations said it would be much harder to fulfill a campaign promise to close the prison than either candidate has stated. “This may not be the ideal answer, but what we are trying to do is work with the system we’ve got,” the official said.

Mr. Bush’s decision followed a review of the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June that the 250 detainees at Guantánamo have the right to make habeas corpus appeals.

The ruling, Boumediene v. Bush, undercut a core rationale for keeping the prison off American soil, raising expectations that Mr. Bush might at last move to close it, a prospect he first raised in June 2006, when he said, “I’d like to close Guantánamo, but I also recognize that we’re holding some people that are darn dangerous, and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts.”

In August 2007, Mr. Bush said “it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantánamo,” adding, “But it is not as easy a subject as some may think on the surface.”

Mr. Bush has harshly criticized the ruling, including at least twice in fund-raising speeches for Republicans. When he met with his senior security advisers, no options for closing the prison were on the agenda, the administration officials said.

“This is an administration that believes very, very strongly in certain things it has done,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School who served in the Department of Defense overseeing detainee polices, “and Guantánamo is one that some administration officials at high levels believe was right all along.”

Mr. Cheney and his chief of staff, David S. Addington, have made it clear in the internal discussions this year that keeping Guantánamo open under a new president would validate the administration’s decisions dealing with terrorists, the officials said.

Closing Guantánamo would most likely mean abandoning prosecutions against some detainees and risking the release of others who still pose a threat to the United States and its allies.

An administration official who favors closing the prison suggested that the next president might reconsider after having access to the classified evidence that the Bush administration believes justifies the indefinite detention of dozens of detainees.

“The new president will gnash his teeth and beat his head against the wall when he realizes how complicated it is to close Guantánamo,” the official said.

Mr. McCain has suggested moving the detainees to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., home of the Army’s prison. His remarks prompted a letter in June from the two Republican senators from Kansas, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, objecting to the idea on a variety of grounds.

Mr. McCain’s campaign did not respond to requests for comments about Guantánamo. The Obama campaign declined to comment specifically, but in his platform, Mr. Obama promises to abolish military tribunals and conduct a review to determine which prisoners to prosecute, which to hold under the laws of war and which to release. His proposal does not specify where detainees would be held.

Other sites that have been mentioned include the United States Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., and the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as supermax, in Florence, Colo.

Beyond political opposition in those regions, the officials involved in the administration’s discussions said that bringing the detainees to American soil would allow additional legal challenges beyond habeas corpus and raise the prospect that judges could free them in the United States.

The prospect of that became more acute on Oct. 7, when a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Uighurs from China who were swept up in 2002 and held in Guantánamo. The administration had already dropped efforts to declare the men as enemy combatants, but refused to return them to China because of concerns about the treatment they would receive there, trying unsuccessfully to find a third country to accept them.

The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered the detainees brought to his court in Washington to free them, but the Justice Department appealed and won a stay.

One official said that the Justice Department’s arguments — that the 17 men remained dangerous — complicated diplomatic efforts to find a country other than China willing to accept them.

The government’s lawyers filed the arguments for a continued stay on Thursday, and on Monday a federal appeals court refused to allow the Uighurs’ immediate release into the United States to give it time to hear the government’s full appeal.

Since the Supreme Court decision in June, Mr. Bush and his aides have remained focused on legal strategies for coping with the wave of habeas corpus appeals now flooding the federal court system and seeking new legislation that would allow the government to continue to hold foreign terrorists without charge.

A version of that legislation was introduced by Senators Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, two of Mr. McCain’s closest friends and advisers. But the legislation stalled and appears unlikely to be adopted during the current session of Congress.

The senior administration official involved in the deliberations said that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not grant judges the authority to release detainees in the United States, comparing it to allowing an illegal immigrant to live in the country legally without legal standing.

That official and others said that officials from the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Justice Department, have argued most vigorously for keeping Guantánamo open, largely because a ruling like the Uighur case could result in foreign fighters being freed into American communities.

“The federal courts have an absolute right to release these people, but the court didn’t say where, and what does that mean, to release them,” the senior official said.

“And in our view, the Supreme Court didn’t say, and the district courts don’t have the power, to order the United States to bring somebody from a foreign country — a foreigner — into the United States in complete disregard for our immigration law.”

Advocates for closing Guantánamo argued that Mr. Bush is still following the same flawed logic that has made it a reviled symbol, especially abroad.

Mr. Waxman, the former defense official, acknowledged the difficulties of closing the prison and the risks involved, but he argued that after seven years, a radical change was required.

“Whatever consequence they’re worried about,” he said of the administration’s concerns, “has to be weighed against the damage we continue to incur by keeping the status quo.”

October 21st, 2008

McCain supported death squads

John McCain supported the terrorists who killed tens of thousands in Nicaragua in the 1980’s, AP reports. Imagine what death squads he might create should he become President:

McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra affair

By Pete Yost
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. John McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America in the 1980s.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom also aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization’s tax exemption.

The council created by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub was the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. After setting up the U.S. council, Singlaub served as the international league’s chairman.

McCain’s tie to Singlaub’s council is undergoing renewed scrutiny after his presidential campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to William Ayers, a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago. Over the weekend, Democratic operative Paul Begala said on ABC’s “This Week” that this “guilt by association” tactic could backfire on the McCain campaign by renewing discussion of McCain’s service on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, “an ultraconservative right-wing group.”

In two interviews with The Associated Press in August and September, Singlaub said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain launched his political career. McCain was elected to the House in 1982.

Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member.

“McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes,” Singlaub said. “I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn’t left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

“I don’t recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group,” Singlaub said.

McCain has said he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group’s letterhead.

“I didn’t know whether (the group’s activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn’t think I wanted to be associated with them,” McCain said in a 1986 newspaper interview.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group’s day-to-day activities.

“That’s a surprise to me,” Singlaub said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office.”

“I don’t ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn’t worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing,” said Singlaub. “If he didn’t want to be on the board that’s OK. It wasn’t as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us.”

A news article and two documents tie McCain to the council in 1985, a year after he says he resigned. The group’s Internal Revenue Service filing in 1985, covering the previous year, lists McCain as a member of the council’s advisory board. In October 1985, a States News Service report placed McCain, Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Texas, and an Arizona congressman at a Washington awards ceremony staged by the council.

On Tuesday, the McCain campaign addressed the resignation by saying the candidate disassociated himself from “one Arizona-based group when questions were raised about its activities.”

Taking an opportunity to attack the Obama-Biden ticket, the McCain campaign added that as a House member and later as a senator, McCain fought against communist influence in Central America while Sen. Joe Biden tried to cut off money for anti-communist forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The renewed attention over McCain’s association with Singlaub’s group comes as his campaign steps up criticism of Obama’s dealings with Ayers, now a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground in the 1960s and years later worked with Obama on the board of an education reform group in Chicago. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

In McCain’s case, he was a House member and a board member of Singlaub’s council when, as a new congressman, he voted for military assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force. In 1984, Congress cut off military assistance to the rebels.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network run by national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter. The operation’s day-to-day activities were handled by National Security Council aide Oliver North, who relied on retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to carry out the operation. The goal was to keep the Contras operating until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub’s private group became the public front for the secret White House activity.

“It was noted that they were trying to act as suppliers. It was pretty good cover for us,” Secord, the field operations chief for the secret effort, said Tuesday in an interview.

The White House-directed network’s covert arms shipments, financed in part by the Reagan administration’s secret arms sales to Iran, exploded into the Iran-Contra affair in November 1986. The scandal proved to be the undoing of Singlaub’s council.

In 1987, the IRS withdrew tax-exempt status from Singlaub’s group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Peter Kornbluh, co-author of “The Iran-Contra Scandal: A Declassified History,” said the Council on World Freedom was crucial to diverting public attention from the Reagan White House’s fundraising for the Contras.

Singlaub and the council publicly urged private support for the Contras, providing what Singlaub later called “a lightning rod” to explain how the rebels sustained themselves despite Congress’ cutoff.

In October 1986, the secrecy of North’s network unraveled after one of its planes was shot down over Nicaragua. One American crewman, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured by the Nicaraguan government. At first, Reagan administration officials lied by saying that the plane had no connection to the U.S. government and was part of Singlaub’s operation.

“I resented it that reporters thought it was my plane. I don’t run a sloppy operation,” Singlaub told The AP.

In an interview last month, Downey, the full-time employee of Singlaub’s council, said she has a clear memory of McCain resigning in 1986, but not earlier.

“It was during the time when the U.S. Council had been wrongly accused of being owners of the Hasenfus plane downed in Nicaragua,” said Downey. “A couple of days after that, I was in Washington and called home to get messages from my mother. I returned that call and a staff person wanted to ask for the resignation of Congressman McCain.”

When Hasenfus was shot down, McCain was in the final month of his first campaign for the Senate seat he still holds.

McCain’s office responded quickly. McCain said he had resigned from the council in 1984. Further, McCain said that in May 1986 he asked the group to remove his name from the letterhead. McCain’s office produced two letters from 1984 and 1986 to back his account.

The dates on the resignation letters in 1984 and May 1986 coincided with McCain election campaigns and increasingly critical public scrutiny of the World Anti-Communist League, the umbrella group Singlaub chaired.

In 1983 and 1984 for example, columnist Jack Anderson linked the league’s Latin American affiliate to death squad political assassinations.

The Latin American affiliate was kicked out of the league. At the time, Singlaub told the columnist the Latin American affiliate had “knowingly promoted pro-Nazi groups” and was “virulently anti-Semitic.”

“That was putting it mildly,” Anderson wrote in a Sept. 11, 1984, column on alleged death squad murders, an article that appeared two months before the U.S. election day.

Two weeks after Anderson’s column, a letter from McCain addressed to Singlaub asks that the congressman’s name be taken off the board because he didn’t have time for the council.

Singlaub told AP that “certainly by 1984,” he had purged the World Anti-Communist League of extremists. Singlaub complains that American news media wrote that the league hadn’t gotten rid of extremist elements and tried to tarnish the league’s credibility, “making something evil out of fighting communism.”

October 21st, 2008