Behaving Badly

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral
principles:

Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease.
Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick
a pedestrian who has already been hit.
From which it followed, of course,
that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of
Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican
--Barabara Ehrenreich

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions,
a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit
--Freda Adler

________

USA Today writer Jonathan Turley speculated yesterday on the "Bush J.D. Curse" (The Bush J.D. Curse: Be very afraid.)

Turley says "bad things happen to attorneys who go to work for this administration," but maybe bad things happen to them because they do bad things.

Like previous Attorney General Ashcroft, Gonzales "gamed the system: misleading or lying to Congress, continually changing positions in the courts, [and] moving around detainees and defendants to avoid judicial review." He says, "I have been thinking about the curse and how a lawyer can both serve and survive the Bush administration." But one cannot serve both God and Mammon.

"Gonzales promoted aides such as Goodling who lacked any substantive credential beyond a type of Baathist Party-like loyalty. Experienced U.S. attorneys were replaced by political cronies with little experience, such as Tim Griffin, an aide to Karl Rove."

Interesting point. Taking the analogy literally, it is possible that GWB was so violently opposed to Saddam because he was jealous of his effective control of his country. Though he has effected his own Stalin-esque purges, neither the country, nor the Republican party nor the Congress are under Bush's control now. That is how it goes grafting totalitarianism onto a true democracy. It is an ugly beast.

Turley suggests the way to avoid the curse is to stop being a crony or a sycophant. Of this behavior he gives the example of former acting A.G. James Comey, a man of integrity who refused to sign off on the on the unconstitutional domestic surveillance program and later testified before Congress.

On the basis of his decency and honesty, Comey is an American hero. Why not consider him for the AG post?

Ranger disagrees with Turley's weak approval of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, (He "showed a modicum of independence in his brief stint as a federal judge.") Chertoff deserves no approval -- he is as much a toady as any of them.

As head of the Justice Department's criminal division overseeing the department's terrorism prosecutions following 9-11, he coerced John Walker Lindh ("The American Taliban") into signing a statement swearing he had "not been intentionally mistreated" by his US captors and waiving any future right to claim mistreatment or torture.

"Further, Chertoff attached a 'special administrative measure,' essentially a gag order, barring Lindh from talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence (Chertoff and Torture)," effectively silencing exposure of early Defense Department forays into the policy of torture of Afghan and Iraqi captures held at Bagram Air Base.

This Department of Justice representative railroaded a U.S. citizen into prison, sans the niceties of a federal court trial. Lindh was tortured, never properly Miranda'd, and there was little proof of any of his actions. Does this sound like the actions of a viable nominee for the post of Attorney General?

Ranger reckons in today's corrupt corporate culture, this will be a bragging point.

Blabbermouth

WW II-era poster promoting OPSEC

OPSEC (Operational Security) is generally defined as denying an adversary or enemy intel/info that will hurt your operations OR will be beneficial to their planning of operations.

Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by adversary intelligence systems, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information.

OPSEC is a methodology that denies critical information to an adversary. Unlike security programs that seek to protect classified information, OPSEC measures identify, control, and protect generally unclassified evidence that is associated with sensitive operations and activities.

OPSEC is generally regarded as not only a methodology, but also a mindset, and has its roots in the Vietnam Conflict. Concerned with intelligence leaks to the enemy, Admiral Ulysses Sharp created the "purple dragon" team, which created the OPSEC process that is used today (Wikipedia, OPSEC)

"U.S. airports and mass transit systems are tightening security ahead of the Fourth of July holiday and more air marshals will travel on overseas flights."

"Those checks would include watch lists such as the no-fly list; any clue that the suspects had shared an address with people in the U.S.; intelligence indicating the suspects made calls into the U.S.; and other similar types of investigative work" (More Air Marshals on Flights to Europe and Britain, Chertoff says.)

U. S. policy is to keep everything secret that pertains to "detainees." Everything is so secret that secret trials, secret prisons and secret courts are required.

But in the realm of OPSEC, where things really should be secret, what happens? The czar of homeland security gives out U.S. operational plans in a newspaper article! Does this make any sense? Why provide this info to any potential criminals targeting U.S. transportations systems?

Does anyone in Homeland Security have a clue? Do they color-code their ties appropriately to each day's color alert? I wonder how the average American changes tack, depending on the color of the alert that day? No trips to the shopping mall on Orange Days? Or is that Yellow Days?

Myself--I'm not a very good sentry for the czar, I'm afraid. I don't even know the threat level for fire in our neighboring forest, and it's Summer.

--Lisa