23 October 19
EXCERPT:
Rather than denying the facts that Taylor reported, the White House last night dismissed the impeachment inquiry as “a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats”. But to any reasonable person, Taylor is impossible to dismiss as a partisan hack. A former infantry officer who served in Vietnam, he has worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and was first appointed as ambassador to Ukraine by George W Bush. Taylor was critical of aspects of Barack Obama’s policy towards Ukraine, including his administration’s decision not to provide lethal military aid – the same military aid that Trump later announced he would supply and then corruptly withheld.
Taylor’s testimony removes any last plausible line of defense of Trump’s conduct. Trump clearly perverted US official diplomacy in pursuit of his own private interests. The “investigations” he pressured Ukraine to open into his political opponents were based on conspiracy theories, meaning the investigations themselves could only be shams. Trump was not asking for an honest investigation of wrongdoing. Instead, he wanted Kyiv to make up dirt on his political enemies to substantiate the conspiracy theories he had heard about on TV – or to lose the military aid it needed to survive. It is hard to think of a more shocking misuse of presidential power in foreign affairs.
The most disturbing fact of this whole mess is how close the plot Taylor described came to succeeding. If it hadn’t been for the media, government whistleblowers and Congress, then the first words the American people heard on the matter might have been Zelenskiy appearing on CNN to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden. Instead, these forces came together to provide a vital check on a lawless president, just as they did during Watergate.
The work isn’t yet done. Republicans will probably invent new excuses to protect the president. But support for removing Trump from office continues to rise, portending a difficult 2020 election both for the president and the Republican senators who continue to defend him. The idea that impeaching Trump was a political mistake, fashionable just weeks ago, looks misplaced in light of everything we have learned since. Impeachment, if pursued wisely, can actually be used to build a case for removing Trump and his protectors at the ballot box.
America deserves a president who doesn’t use his office for personal enrichment and gain at the expense of the public good. It also deserves a president who has enough historical and moral sensibility not to describe his own richly deserved problems as a “lynching”. Thanks in part to the unfolding impeachment inquiry, it might soon have one.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy. (photo: AP)
Trump nominated his fifth judge rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association this week. She's never tried a case. (photo: Paul Bradbury)
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
House Republicans Literally Storm the Impeachment Hearings
Sam Brodey and Sam Stein, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "House Republicans took their impeachment grievances to a more confrontational level on Wednesday, barging in to a secure facility during a closed-door witness deposition and refusing to leave until Democrats held open hearings."
EXCERPTS:
The gambit—cooked up by the pro-Trump brawler Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and endorsed by House GOP leadership—derailed the closed-door deposition of Laura Cooper, a Pentagon official with jurisdiction over Ukraine policy, before it even started. And it left Democrats indignant that their colleagues had violated long standing rules about interviewing witnesses in classified settings.
Cell phones, for example, are not allowed in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (also known as SCIFs). But the Republican members who barged into those facilities had taken their phones with them inside the room. Lawmakers and aides said that, as of noon on Wednesday, the SCIF was being swept for electronic surveillance devices because the Republicans brought in their phones, delaying the start of Cooper’s deposition. Democrats were also contemplating whether to bring in the U.S. Capitol Police in order to drag out the protesting members.
Close to two hours after they first went in, a core group of Republicans remained there, according to a tweet from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). The number two House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), was with them. Three hours into the standoff, the Republican crew remained—and they had ordered pizza from We The Pizza, a Capital Hill joint.
A spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee declined to comment on what exactly is happening in the SCIF. But a prior Gaetz ploy to enter the secure facility during an impeachment hearing ended with him being kicked out after a House parliamentarian ruled that he had no standing to be there.
House Republicans have held—and even supported—the use of closed door hearings for past congressional investigations, including the select committee that they spearheaded to investigate the 2011 consulate attack in Benghazi. That larger inconsistency and the timing on Wednesday’s gambit struck some Democrats as telling about the direction that the impeachment proceeding is heading.
“When you don't have the law or the facts you attack and disrupt the process,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA). “And you may wonder why is it happening now? Because Bill Taylor gave a devastating opening statement yesterday. They're freaked out. They're trying to stop this investigation.”
Attorney General William Barr speaks at an event in Washington earlier this month. On Monday, he issued a proposed rule seeking to allow the federal government to collect DNA samples from more than 740,000 immigrants every year. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi met with US Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday. (photo: Khalid al-Mousily)
Iraqi PM Says US Troops Do Not Have Permission to Stay in Country
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has said United States troops pulling out of northeast Syria do not have permission to stay in Iraq, adding that his government is taking "all international legal measures" in response to their recent entry."
EXCERPT:
"We have [already] issued an official statement saying that and are taking all international legal measures. We ask the international community and the United Nations to perform their roles in this matter," he said.
His comments came a day after US and Iraqi officials offered apparently conflicting accounts of the fate of the US troops in the region, who have been leaving Syria as part of a withdrawal announced by President Donald Trump earlier this month.
The Iraqi military said on Tuesday that the US forces do not have permission to stay in Iraq, in a response to Esper's previous comments that the approximately 700 troops leaving Syria would continue operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) armed group from Iraq to prevent its resurgence in the region.
The US already has more than 5,000 troops in Iraq under an agreement between Washington and Baghdad forged when ISIL began taking large portions of the country in 2014.
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said Baghdad's reaction appeared to have stemmed from "the language that the US used".
"The US said that the forces will come back to Ain al-Assad in western Iraq and mount operations against ISIL from there - and that seems to have angered the Iraqis," Khan said.
Four-week timetable
After meeting Esper earlier on Wednesday, Iraq's Defence Minister Najah al-Shammari said US forces withdrawing from Syria into neighbouring Iraq would depart the country within four weeks.
Shammari told The Associated Press news agency that the US troops were "transiting" in Iraq and would then head either to Kuwait or Qatar, or back to the US.
Critics have charged that the US withdrawal from Syria effectively deserted the Kurdish-spearheaded Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington's main ally in the war against ISIL.
The move cleared the way for Turkey to launch a cross-border military operation against the SDF, which is led by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), in the northeast region of the country. Ankara considers the YPG a "terrorist organisation".
Sunset with crepuscular rays over downtown Miami as seen from Miami Beach, Florida. (photo: Diana Robinson/FLickr)
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