« December 2007 |
Main
| February 2008 »
January 2008 archives
Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance? - Pope John Paul II, 1979 U.N. Speech
Contrary to popular belief, there are some things of which you can never get enough. Helping to satisfy that seemingly insatiable need is something a man like President George Bush does when traveling to foreign countries.
As his mother taught him, there is no better way to make a good impression than to bring a “bread and butter” gift to your host. Of course what to bring can be a bit of a problem since it is not always easy to know what the host might like, especially if he or she is one of those people who seems to have everything, like Saudi King Abdullah.
During Mr. Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East he probably took presents to each person he visited but the one that made the biggest splash was the present he had for King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. Actually, it was not a present so much as an opportunity and for the man who has everything, an opportunity can be more welcome than a present.
When Mr. Bush arrived in the Saudi kingdom he gave the monarch the great news that the U.S. was prepared to sell $20 billion worth of weapons to the Arab nation. Included among the weapons were 900 precision-guided bombs that could be used to attack countries that are within that range - like Israel. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bush would be distressed if that is what the missiles were used for. He’d like for them to be placed on the Saudi's eastern border where they could be used against Iran, a prospect Mr. Bush finds maniacally irresistible.
The king was thrilled to receive the present since it helps Saudi Arabia maintain its lead in the world as an arms importer. According to a Congressional Research Service report issued in September 2006, Saudi Arabia imported $22.5 billion of arms from the United States from 1997 through 2004. Looking at it from a different perspective, a September 2007 Arms Control Association report says that that country’s overall all imports of arms since 1998 came to more than $50 billion making it the largest arms importer in the developing world. Anything Mr. Bush can do for the Saudis that helps them keep that privileged position is greatly appreciated by them more especially when it also adds to the enormous pleasure they get from the pride of ownership.
Although Mr. Bush’s present was a really good opportunity to set before a king, it was not unexpected since i
t had been talked about since the summer. It was also not Mr. Bush’s only arms deal in that part of the world, another having preceded his visit by a few months.
In August 2007 the administration signed a deal with Israel in which it agreed to let Israel acquire $30 billion in arms aid over the next 10 years. At the time that deal was announced it was described by R. Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs as being “an investment in peace, in long-term peace . . . .” Everyone knows that the more heavily armed countries there are in the world, the less likely there is to be a war. It’s the same principle, on a much larger scale, of course, as the principle that the more heavily armed U.S. citizens are, the more the crime rate will decrease since criminals will fear to ply their trade lest they get shot by well-armed peace loving citizens.
Of course, making the world safe through arms’ sales gives the United States a great opportunity to maintain its lead as the biggest arms supplier in the world. The transactions with Israel and Saudi Arabia almost guarantee that the United States can maintain its lead in arms sales.
According to a report from Reuters, at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington at the end of 2006, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said he projected sales for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 of roughly $20 billion. That, according to the report, was double the amount sold in the preceding fiscal year. According to the Congressional Research Services Report entitled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nation, 1999-2006” issued in September 2007, during the 2003-2006 period the United States bested Russia in three out of four years in the value of arms transfer agreements.
With the most recent agreements George Bush will sleep well secure in the knowledge that in his last year in office he outstripped his good friend, Vladimir Putin, in their friendly competition to see who can sell the world the most arms. The rest of us should sleep so well.
Once there was an elephant
Who tried to use the telephant-
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone.
—Laura Elizabeth Richards, Eletelphony
It’s only money. And when most of your effort is devoted to making sure that the country is safe from terrorists it’s easy to see how keeping track of money can be the straw that just breaks the camel’s back. And it’s doubly annoying that whenever there’s the slightest hiccoughing in your financial affairs it becomes national news - as if no one else ever has trouble keeping track of money. So it would not be surprising if the U.S. Department of Justice decided to become secretive about its affairs in order to keep trivia about its finances off the front pages.
In January 2005 the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered that it had made a $170 million mistake on something known as the Virtual Case File that had been in development for five years. The case file was intended to create a system that would let FBI agents share information. Describing the need for a better system, Richard Schmitt of the Los Angeles Times said: “The overhaul of the decrepit [FBI] computer system was identified as a priority both by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and by members of Congress, who found that the FBI’s old system prevented agents from sharing information that could have headed off the [9/11] attacks.” When information about this misfortune became public, the FBI hired an expert for $2 million to tell it what went wrong and to tell it whether it was a total loss or whether part of the system could be salvaged.
Although the publicity might have led the casual reader to think the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster, a senior FBI official saw the sunny side. He told reporters that the FBI “had a better understanding of its computer needs and limitations as a result of the project” and described the lessons learned as “invaluable.” The last reference was, of course, a poor choice of words since the value of the lesson learned was exactly $170 million.
The FBI is again in the news, not because it has deterred a savage terrorist attack but because it has misplaced its phone bills and, as a result, some of its phones have been disconnected thus compromising some of its investigations. Here’s how it all happened,
Back in 2006 an employee at the FBI pled guilty to stealing more than $25,000 that was supposed to be used to pay phone bills for undercover telecommunication services. As a result, the Office of the Inspector General began an investigation into how the FBI was keeping track of money it used to pay its phone bills. (It doesn’t call them phone bills. It calls them “confidential case funds intended for undercover telecommunication services.”) The investigation produced a report about non-payment of phone bills that is 87 pages long but much of it is confidential so the only thing the average reader gets to see is an eight-page summary (pdf).
Under the heading “The FBI lacks an Effective Confidential Case Fund Financial Management System” the Inspector General reported that there are no internal controls to make sure the same phone bill isn’t paid twice. It found that “the lack of strong system controls-coupled with interpersonal professional relationships that invariably develop over time-increases the risk that field division confidential case funds can be misused.” They got that right, of course, as the convicted employee would attest.
Another heading is entitled “The FBI Pays Telecommunication Surveillance Expenses Inefficiently and Untimely.” The Inspector General reported that it analyzed 990 telecommunication surveillance payments “made by 5 field divisions and. . . over half of these payment were not made on time.” The report then observes that as a result of that, phone lines were disconnected and evidence was lost. In one case the lost evidence pertained to intercept information that was required by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order. When the phone line went dead there was no more eavesdropping on that line. Another example offered by the report was $66,000 in unpaid telephone bills sent to one of the field divisions examined by the Inspector General.
The Justice Department was embarrassed by these disclosures. I’m sure we can be confident of one thing, however. The Justice Department has just hired John Ashcroft’s firm to monitor a settlement entered into by a firm that settled criminal proceedings without going to court. Mr. Ashcroft’s firm got the job with no public notice and no bidding. His contract is reportedly worth somewhere between $28 million and $52 million.” John Ashcroft is no telephone company. It is safe to assume he will be paid on time.
It hath often been said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible. - Henry Fielding, Amelia
In the United States of America we're slogging through a two-year long marathon to decide who will be the next president of the United States with news of each milestone being covered as though it were the determining factor in establishing the winner. I am happy to report that there is other news. It concerns the death penalty. And it is a subject with which two countries that treasure human rights above all else - the United States and China - are dealing.
In the United States the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on January 5 addressing the important question, simply stated, of whether being executed by a three-drug lethal injection is more likely to hurt than being put to death by an injection of a single drug because of the protocol accompanying the injection. If it is more painful, it may be unconstitutional and if it isn't, it isn’t.
The people who are best able to answer that question are unable to give an opinion. Next best, however, are lawyers and Supreme Court Justices and it is the lawyers who presented the arguments as to why the three-drug injection is apt or not apt to hurt, and the Justices who will decide whom to believe.
Some medical evidence suggests that a single barbiturate is easier to administer and less likely to cause pain than the three-drug approach now commonly used. The one-drug method is used by the humane society in Kentucky and other states when euthanizing animals and is reportedly painless yet effective. According to Adam Liptak of the New York Times, however, one of the objections to switching to the single drug method employed on animals is that it is employed on animals. Death penalty proponents think that human beings are better than animals and should not be put to death the same way animals are put to death. It devalues the entire procedure.
As the Supreme Court case demonstrates, many people in the United States are concerned about the pain inflicted on those being executed despite Justice Antonin Scalia’s sensitive observation during oral argument that there’s no constitutional requirement that executions employ the “least painful method possible.”
While the Supreme Court contemplates the question, China has announced it, too, is trying, to use Chief Justice Roberts’ words from that same court session, to have a procedure that produces a “humane death.” Traditionally China has executed people with one shot to the back of the head. Mindful of the sensitivities of the survivors, those being shot have been asked to open their mouths when the shot is fired so that the bullet can pass through the head and out the mouth without disfiguring the victim.
Early in the New Year, Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court announced that lethal injection was more humane than the shot to the back of the head and that China would eventually replace the latter method of execution. It is already being employed in some places in China, using the the same three-drug formula being scrutinized by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thanks to a relatively new invention, however, death by lethal injection has been made much more pleasant as well as efficient, in China.
According to USA Today, in 2004 authorities began acquiring "death vans" designed by Kang Zhongwen in which executions by lethal injection take place. Mr. Kang says that the van's introduction shows that China “promotes human rights" by among other things enabling executions to take place in the communities where the condemned lived thus making it more convenient for family members who want to attend, a truly thoughtful touch. Mr. Kang was quoted in USA Today as saying of the van: “I’m most proud of the bed. It’s very humane, like an ambulance.” He then shows how the bed in the van slides out so the victim can lie down and when secure, be powered into the van.
All in all, it seems like a highly civilized approach to state-sponsored death. Whether China will be influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion of three drugs vs. one drug only time will tell.
[Ezra Pound] was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
— Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Things are not as they as they seem. Especially not when George Bush is the explainer. Consider the proffered reasons for his end-of-year pocket veto of the National Defense Authorization Act.
That bill was sent to Mr. Bush just before Congress went off for its long-awaited Christmas vacation. The bill provided increased pay for the troops and lots of other important things that had been agreed upon by Congress and Mr. Bush. One of the things that Mr. Bush had overlooked, however, was section 1083 entitled “Terrorism Exception to Immunity.” It creates an exception to the jurisdictional immunity of a foreign state that is granted by federal law. Since the bill is 1300 pages long and contains dozens of sections it is not surprising that section 1083 of the bill was overlooked by Mr. Bush.
The opening operational clause of the bill provides that “A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of courts of the United States . . . in which money damages are sought . . . for personal injury or death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing, [a phrase that seems to exclude a judicially imposed death penalty such as those enjoyed by U.S. citizens but not by citizens of most other civilized countries]. . . if engaged in by an official, employee, or agent of such foreign state while acting within the scope of his or her . . . employment. . . .” The bill goes on to say courts shall hear claims filed against foreign states if they were “designated as a state sponsor of terrorism at the time the act described [above] . . . (1) occurred, or was so designated as a result of such act . . . .”
Mr. Bush would have no objection to section 1083 if Saddam Hussein were still in office since the bill would permit suits to be brought against Iraq for damages individuals suffered at the his hands. Since Mr. Bush has overthrown Mr. Hussein and Iraq is now our friend, however, he doesn’t want Iraq to suffer financial harm today for what it did to our citizens when Mr. Hussein was in charge. Accordingly Mr. Bush prepared a Memorandum of Disapproval explaining why he was exercising a pocket veto over the bill.
The opening paragraph of the memorandum says section 1083 “would imperil billions of dollars of Iraqi assets at a crucial juncture in that nation’s reconstruction efforts” and the first six paragraphs of the memorandum focus on the reasons that permitting lawsuits against Iraq would be harmful to Iraq. Included among them is that section 1083 runs afoul of Mr. Bush’s executive orders that are designed to “remove obstacles to the orderly reconstruction of Iraq.”
But the real reason for the memorandum, the cynic might believe is found in the second clause of the section's opening paragraph and the 7th paragraph of the memorandum. The second clause of the opening paragraph says that section 1083 “would undermine the foreign policy and commercial interests of the United States.” Embellishing on that thought in the 7th paragraph Mr. Bush says he is concerned about the effect section 1083 will have on the United States and its economy. He says that: “By potentially forcing a close U.S. ally to withdraw significant funds from the U.S. financial system, section 1083 would cast doubt on whether the United States remains a safe place to invest and to hold financial assets.” Putting aside the diving dollar and the doubt it has inspired in the minds of foreign investors on whether the United States “remains a safe place to invest and to hold financial assets,” the answer to that concern is that it remains a safe place to invest and hold financial assets if the country doing so is not a “foreign state. . . designated as a state sponsor of terrorism at the time the act . . . occurred.”
Mr. Bush goes on to say that: “Iraqi entities would be deterred from engaging in commercial partnerships with U.S. businesses for fear of entangling assets in lawsuits. Section 1083 would be viewed with alarm by the international community and would invite reciprocal action against United States assets abroad.” The only members of the international community who would be alarmed or might reciprocate are those members designated as terrorist states about whom Mr. Bush need not be solicitous. Nonetheless, as explainer-in-chief he also believes he is forgiver-in-chief. In that capacity he believes formerly terrorist states should not be punished financially for the transgressions of their predecessors. Given the physical punishment he has inflicted on the Iraqis because of Mr. Hussein’s transgressions, he may be right.
