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Negotiators in the US House and Senate on Friday reached a tentative agreement on a $105.9 billion âemergencyâ war-funding bill for US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through September. The Obama administration paved the way for the agreement by promising Senate Democrats that it would continue to suppress dozens of photographs of US military and intelligence personnel torturing Iraqi prisoners. Full approval should come this week, bringing the total Congressional allocation for the wars to more than $900 billion since 2001.
Democratic Senators had earlier joined their Republican colleagues in adding a measure to the war bill, on Obamaâs request, that would have outlawed the release of the torture photos. This rider had delayed the billâs passage. The House Democratic leadership warned it would no longer have enough support to pass the bill, with House Republicans having already promised to vote no in protest to a separate rider that will guarantee $100 billion in loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In response, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ârushedâ to Capitol Hill and prevailed upon Senate Democrats to remove the torture photo measure in exchange for an explicit White House promise that it would use all means at its disposal to block the photosâ release. Obama also issued a letter to Congress assuring it he would support separate legislation to suppress the photos, if necessary, and imploring it to speed passage of the war-spending bill. The rider would âunnecessarily complicate the essential objective of supporting the troops,â Obama wrote.
The administrationâs position was strengthened Thursday by the US Court of Appeals in New York, which granted Obama a stay on the courtâs earlier order to release the torture photos so that the White House can appeal to the US Supreme Court. Should the US Supreme Court rule in Obamaâs favor, the photos may never be made public.
The episode demonstrates the Democratsâ leading role in carrying forward the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their complicity in covering up the criminality of these operations. Obamaâs intervention in removing the rider that would have suppressed the torture photosâin exchange for his promise to do so himselfâwas specifically aimed at providing political cover to allow 51 âanti-warâ members of the Democratsâ House delegation to support the war funding bill. âMany of them are leadership loyalists who can be counted on to switchâ their vote, the Associated Press notes.
Stripped from the war funding was an appropriation for the closure of the GuantĂĄnamo prison camp. A separate amendment would allow the transfer of GuantĂĄnamo Bay detainees to the US to face trial, but would ban them from being imprisoned in the US. Earlier, on May 20, the Senate voted 90-6 to block funds that could be used to transfer GuantĂĄnamo prisoners to the US. In the face of opposition from top Republicans and within the military-intelligence apparatus against his announced intention to close the GuantĂĄnamo prison camp, Obama has indicated he will resume military tribunal trials at GuantĂĄnamo and perhaps establish a special ânational security courtâ in the US. Both courts would be allowed to review hearsay evidence, a practice forbidden in legitimate courts.
The vast majority of the supplemental spending billâabout $80 billionâhas been allocated for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. For the first time, the cost of military operations in the âAf-Pakâ theater are expected to exceed those in Iraq, with Obama planning to send 20,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in the coming months.
Billions more will be used for separate military purchases and foreign aid, including $1.4 billion for Pakistan, half of which will go to its ongoing military operations against the Taliban. The measure allocates $2.2 billion for eight Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft, in spite of the fact that the Pentagon has announced its intention to terminate purchases of the C-17.
In addition, the bill lays out $7.7 billion to prepare for an influenza pandemic, and $1 billion in incentives for motorists to exchange their old cars for newer, more fuel-efficient models, the so-called âCash for Clunkersâ measure. It also includes $108 billion in loan guarantees to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose reserves have been depleted by the global economic crisis. Republicans have threatened to vote against the war-funding bill over the IMF measure, which they claim could deliver taxpayer money to âenemyâ states. The government outlay for the IMF is expected to cost $5 billion, but the Treasury Department would have to borrow the full price of the loan, $108 billion.
Separately, the Obama administration on Friday petitioned a federal appeals court to hear new arguments that it cannot reveal information about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) âblack siteâ prisons in the case of Mohamed et al. v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit against the air carrier Jeppesen DataPlan, a Boeing subsidiary, on behalf of five men who had been abducted on its flights as part of the âextraordinary renditionâ program. The men were sent to secret CIA prisons where they were tortured. The Bush administration intervened in the case, asking it be dismissed under the âstate secretsâ privilege. The Obama administration has carried on this defense since assuming office, but in April, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the government can only invoke state secrets in regard to specific evidence in a case; that it cannot be used to toss out a case tout court. The ruling allowed the five menâs case to go forward.
In its new filing, the Justice Departments requests that the full Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reconsider the case as one of âexceptional importanceâ for national security. The filing, which came from the âhighest levels of the Justice Department,â claims that âallowing this suit to proceed would pose an unacceptable risk to national security and that the reasoning employed by the panel would dramatically restructure government operations by permitting any district judge to override the executive branchâs judgments in this highly sensitive realm.â
Civil liberties groups expressed dismay at the new filing. âThis is a watershed moment,â said Ben Wizner, a legal representative of the ACLUâs National Security Project. âThereâs no mistake any longer. The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administrationâs shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions.â
In his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama made much of his opposition to torture and President Bushâs invocation of the state secrets privilege. Obamaâs continuation of the imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, however, require that he embrace all the criminal and anti-democratic measures that inexorably arise from them.
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From the outset, the WSWS exposed the lies of the Bush administration that its illegal invasion was an act of self-defense in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.