It’s interesting how what was once lambasted as “Constitution-shredding” under George Bush is now nothing more than:  Obama’s “civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted.”  Also, the premise implicitly embedded in Matt’s argument is the standard Beltway dogma that there would be serious political costs from reversing the Bush/Cheney abuses of the Constitution and civil liberties.  The success of Obama’s campaign — which emphatically and repeatedly vowed to do exactly that  — ought to have permanently retired that excuse. 

Even more important, Matt seems to be implying that he knew all along that Obama never really intended to fulfill his multiple campaign promises to restore civil liberties and dismantle the Bush/Cheney war on the Constitution.  So all of those righteous speeches and commitments and campaign positions were nothing more than dishonest instruments for manipulating and placating  the people who supported his campaign?  I don’t necessarily disagree with that assessment.  I neither believed nor disbelieved what Obama said during the campaign, but instead intended to wait for the evidence before deciding.  And particularly once I watched Obama — once his party’s nomination was secure — flagrantly violate his pledge to filibuster any bill containing telecom immunity, I had no expectations that he’d feel at all compelled to adhere to his other promises.

But is it really that surprising that many people did believe that Obama actually meant what he said, given that the entire campaign was predicated on his self-proclaimed uniqueness as a candidate and his over-arching intent to rid our political culture of corroding cynicism and to restore hope and faith in the political process?  If Obama ran a campaign which purposely elevated the hopes of so many people — particularly younger and new voters — while secretly harboring the knowledge that he did not feel at all bound by what he was promising, isn’t that a fairly serious indictment of his character, as well as a dangerous game to play for the Democratic Party?  And during the time he was vigorously supporting Obama’s candidacy last year, did Matt ever point out that Obama didn’t really mean what he was saying when he spoke about these matters — a fairly significant point to make when commenting on the election?  If Obama had no intention of “reducing the power of the executive branch,” why did he repeatedly proclaim that he would?

But what strikes me as the most significant aspect of Matt’s commentary is that this mitigating analysis was rarely, if ever, applied to Bush.  I’ve been reading many arguments from Obama supporters over the last couple of weeks insisting that Obama can’t possibly give civilian trials to all Terrorism suspects because having to free detainees whom they can’t convict in court would be politically catastrophic; but doesn’t that same reasoning justify Bush’s decision to open Guantanamo and hold terrorist suspects without charges?  After all, how could Bush afford to risk acquittals any more than Obama?  

Similarly, if Matt’s argument is true that it’s natural and inevitable that Presidents will try to maximize their own power — and that it’s Congress’ responsibility to check that –  doesn’t that mean that Bush and Cheney got a bad rap all these years for their so-called “Constitution-shredding,” and that the ultimate responsibility for their abuses lies not with Bush, Cheney David Addington and John Yoo, but rather with Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi?   If it’s the responsibility of Congress to check presidential abuses — since, as Matt argues, no rational person would ever expect the President to voluntarily impose or even accept limits on his own power — then the real controversy should be about why Nancy Pelosi and company didn’t do more to publicize Bush/Cheney extremism and impose limits on what they were doing.  Matt, however, seemed to argue the opposite in the past — as he when he insisted that the controversy over what Pelosi knew about torture was irrelevant because she was just a “bit player” in the whole affair.  If complaints about Obama’s civil liberties abuses are overheated because it’s unreasonable to expect him to do anything different, shouldn’t the same be said of Bush and Cheney?

I agree with Matt’s explicit point that Congress has an important role to play in checking presidential abuses — a role they’ve clearly abdicated no matter which party was in control.  He’s also right that Presidents don’t easily relinquish power.  But it’s hardly unreasonable to object when someone runs for high political office based on clear and repeated promises that they have squarely violated.  Whatever else is true, watching Obama embrace extremist policies can still be “disappointing” even if one isn’t surprised that he’s doing it.  I could understand and accept a lot more easily this blithe acquiescence to Obama’s record if it weren’t for the fact that progressives and Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush’s use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy — policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own.  One can’t help but wonder, at least in some cases, how genuine those objections were, as opposed to their just having been effective tools to discredit a Republican president for partisan and political gain.

Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein. . . .

On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in “no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation” . . . It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy, argued for retaliation to include Iraq, Meyer said. . . .

But the anthrax scare had “steamed up” policy makers in Bush’s administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam, who the administration believed had been the last person to use anthrax.

I’ve written many times before about how the anthrax attack played at least as large of a role as the 9/11 attack itself, if not larger, in creating the general climate of fear that prevailed for years in the U.S. and specifically how the anthrax episode was exploited by leading media and political figures to gin up intense hostility towards Iraq (a few others have argued the same).  That’s why it’s so striking how we’ve collectively flushed this terrorist attack down the memory hole as though it doesn’t exist.  When Dana Perino boasted this week on Fox News that “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term,” most of the resulting derision focused on the 9/11 attack while ignoring – as always — the anthrax attack.

What makes this particularly significant is that the anthrax attack is unresolved and uninvestigated.  The FBI claimed last year that it had identified the sole perpetrator, Bruce Ivins, but because Ivins is dead, they never had the opportunity — or the obligation — to prove their accusations in any meaningful tribunal.  The case against Ivins is so riddled with logical and evidentiary holes that it has generated extreme doubts not merely from typical government skeptics but from the most mainstream, establishment-revering, and ideologically disparate sources.  Just consider some of the outlets and individuals who have stated unequivocally that the FBI’s case against Ivinis is unpersausive and requires a meaningful investigation:  The Washington Post Editorial Page; The New York Times Editorial Page; The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page; the science journal Nature; Senators Pat Leahy, Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley; physicist and Congressman Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was where the anthrax letters were sent; Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; and a vast array of scientific and legal experts in the field.

Here we have one of the most consequential political events of the last decade at least — a lethal biological terrorist attack aimed at key U.S. Senators and media figures, which even the FBI claims originated from a U.S. military lab.  The then-British Ambassador to the U.S. is now testifying what has long been clear:  that this episode played a huge role in enabling the attack on Iraq.  Even our leading mainstream, establishment-serving media outlets — and countless bio-weapons experts — believe that we do not have real answers about who perpetrated this attack and how.  And there is little apparent interest in investigating in order to find out.  Evidently, this is just another one of those things that we’ll relegate to “the irrelevant past,” and therefore deem it unworthy of attention from our future-gazing, always-distracted minds.

UPDATE:  Marcy Wheeler notes that the FBI has become increasingly defiant towards requests that its claims be reviewed by an independent panel; of course, that couldn’t happen unless the White House and Congress permitted it to.