Liberty and justice for all; well, maybe not all.

I was in my daughters’ school the other day, and overheard the pledge of allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all.” Unless, of course, you happen to be caught in the Bush administration’s war on terror dragnet. Then, in the name of protecting American values and liberty, you’re pretty much out of luck – it may even cost you your life.

You may be whisked away in secret to a foreign country like Syria to be tortured to give up information you don’t possess, as happened to Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen who fell victim to the CIA practice of extraordinary rendition.

You may be locked up for a month without access to legal counsel through abuses of the material witness statue, as happened to Abdallah Higazy. He is an Egyptian citizen who was staying in a New York city hotel room on 9/11, in whose room the previous occupant left an aviation radio that was deemed suspicious.

Or you may be the taxi-driver Mr. Dilawar, who died in an Afghan prison after being assaulted and tortured – even though investigators had concluded that he was almost certainly innocent of involvement in the attack for which he was being held. Or perhaps you were, until recently, in a secret CIA prison, where the Bush administration wanted to engage in interrogation practices that would not be deemed acceptable by civilized countries around the world.

More likely, you’re one of those still languishing in Guantánamo in legal limbo, not charged with any crime, with no recourse to challenge their detention. Why? Because the right to file for a writ of habeas corpus no longer exists for those deemed to be illegal enemy combatants, thanks to the “new and improved” military tribunals conceived of by the Bush administration (after its first attempt was found to be unconstitutional). Has Bush so terrorized Americans that we don’t think twice about locking somebody up indefinitely, before their guilt has been established?

I don’t consider myself to be soft on terrorists, and I want the U.S. to be aggressive in hunting down and prosecuting them. But I also want our country to be able to look itself in the mirror, and be able to say we are doing so in a manner consistent with our principals. We are not infallible; we do make mistakes, we have already made some egregious ones. Not everybody that we think is a terrorist – even under reasonable assumptions – is. That is why our judicial system is built on a foundation of due process.

Beyond the liberties and lives of innocents that have been lost, the Bush administration policies have cost America’s reputation in the world dearly. As Colin Powell remarked recently, “the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” This, and Bush’s failed strategy in Iraq, have increased the threat from terrorism, as the recent National Intelligence Estimate made clear.

Throughout these past five troubling years, the Republican congress has done virtually nothing to hold Bush accountable for his misguided and incompetent strategies in the war on terror. That is why I’m voting for Ned Lamont for senator and Diane Farrell for representative in next week’s midterm election. It’s time to send legislators to Washington who will alter the disastrous course along which Bush is leading us.

Threatening American values: flag burning and torture

Which do you think is the greater threat to American values: the protester who burns an American flag, or a President who, by all indications, has consistently and flagrantly violated U.S. laws and international treaties? From the righteous speeches by Republican Senators in support of a constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the flag, you would think it was the former.

Would that these same “defenders” of our constitution were equally vigorous in protecting us from the excesses of the Bush administration’s grab for unchecked executive power. Whether it involves warrantless domestic spying, secret investigation of Americans’ phone and banking records, claiming (and exercising) the right to imprison anybody, indefinitely, with no right to due process, or condoning torture, the Republican Congress has acquiesced, even defended, President Bush’s desire to do virtually anything he wants in the war on terror, unchecked by Congressional oversight or judicial review.

To me, that is far more sinister than the individual who chooses to burn the American flag, as unseemly as that is. But the Republican Congress is more intent on finding ways to call its opponents unpatriotic – for anybody who dares to disagree with it – than it is on taking President Bush to task for the enormous damage he has done to our country’s values and reputation.

Impeach Bush? Not yet.

On the one hand, I would welcome the opportunity see President Bush impeached. Through his willful manipulation of intelligence, condoning of torture and violation of constitutional protections of due process and privacy, he has done more to destroy the integrity of the United States than any president since President Nixon. President Clinton may have embarrassed the office, but he did not threaten our institutions.

However, impeachment is a misplaced fantasy at this time, just as is Senator Russell Feingold’s call for censure of President Bush. What Democrats, and Republicans, should be calling for is a vigorous examination of the facts – which the Republican leadership has been thwarting for months.

Congressional energy should be directed towards getting Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to fulfill his promise to investigate administration misuse of intelligence in the war on terror. Roberts has been stalling the conclusion of his investigation for months. He is a disgrace to the principle of an independent legislative branch of government.

Rather than doing deals to legitimize the NSA domestic spying program, the Republican leadership, and Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, should be demanding a full investigation of that program to determine whether Bush has violated constitutional protections, as the current evidence strongly suggests.

Only then can we know whether censure, or more, is the appropriate response.

How much more Bush can we take?

President Clinton was impeached for lying about highly inappropriate personal behavior which had nothing to do with how he governed or protected our nation. Fast forward to today, when nearly three-quarters of Americans believe President Bush was “hiding something” or “mostly lying” about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction, and half of Americans believe he “intentionally misled” us into the war in Iraq (The New York Times/CBS News Poll 12/8/05).

That alone should be enough for the Congress to start asking some tough questions about possible deception by the Bush Administration.

Yet this high level of mistrust was before it was disclosed that President Bush secretly authorized the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps of communications with Americans without court order. There is widespread belief, across the political spectrum, that this program may be illegal. At the very least, Bush has continued to lie to the American people about his conduct of the war on terror. How else to explain a remark he made in Buffalo, NY in 2004 that “a wiretap requires a court order”? That was made more than two years after he authorized the N.S.A. activity.

If that doesn’t send a chill down your back, how about the repeated assertions by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that terrorism detainees are being treated “humanely” – despite case after case of abuse, torture and even death, many too gruesome to mention. The Bush administration claims that this is just the work of a few errant soldiers, yet the ACLU has obtained over 70,000 pages of government documents covering what surely is a much more pervasive problem, for which President Bush is holding no senior officials accountable. In one specific instance, the CIA inspector general found in 2004 that some aspects of his agency’s treatment of detainees might constitute cruel and inhuman treatment as defined by an international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory.

While Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was busy last December trying to convince Europeans that “the United States does not condone torture,” the Administration was doing all it could to keep the Congress from passing an amendment prohibiting torture. What does that tell you about the President’s commitment to human rights and the truth?

On these critical issues of national security and fundamental American values, it is time for Congress to aggressively and tirelessly work to uncover the facts about whether President Bush has lied and broken the law in prosecuting the war on terror.

Indeed, Congress should go a step further and appoint an independent counsel to conduct this inquiry. It tolerated a 10-year, $20 million Independent Counsel investigation of a Clinton cabinet secretary, Henry Cisneros, for lying about payments to his mistress. Surely it can find the wherewithal to investigate an Administration that is quite clearly taking enormous liberties with the truth, and perhaps more.