Recently in Stifling Dissent Category

I agree with Digby, and thank Richard Clarke for pointing out that the trauma of September 11, 2001, is no excuse for bad decisions made by government leaders. As Clarke writes:

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote -- which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission -- and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

There should be no excusing this. Nor forgiving it. And as the evidence suggests, more investigations are in order.

We must come to terms with what happened if we hope to restore our national honor.

Over on Hullabaloo, poputonian makes an excellent guest post, sending us to Boston in 1761 to remind us that securing our civil liberties against government intrusion is a long and constant struggle.

JenR sent me an e-mail about this yesterday, but I didn't have the opportunity to write about it.

The Capitol Police's decision to eject (and arrest) Cindy Sheehan and (just eject) the wife of Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.) from the House gallery prior to the State of the Union message deserves every patriotic American's condemnation.

Such police state tactics are unacceptable -- especially in the people's house of our Congress. Can the State of the Union really be strong when a t-shirt can get you roughed up by a police force, as happened to Sheehan?

No, an apology is not enough. If Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer really wants to take responsibility for this outrageous and extremely troubling incident, he should at least have the decency to resign.

That would be a start towards taking responsibility. Words, in this case, really mean nothing.