No Second Acts, Except in Iraq
Controversial Bushite heads Office of Legislative Statecraft in Baghdad
OAKLAND, California, Nov 26 (IPS) - Earlier this decade, Manuel Miranda spent a good deal of time figuring out how to
pilfer documents related to the Democratic Party's strategy for dealing with President George W. Bush's judicial
appointments.
He helped convince Republican Party senators to threaten the use of the so-called "nuclear option", a procedure that
would have ended the minority's right to filibuster judicial nominations. He later led the effort to put the kibosh on
President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, whom the right considered to be insufficiently hard-core on certain
issues, to the Supreme Court.
Less than a year ago, he was the spokesperson for Families First on Immigration, a newly formed conservative Christian
evangelical group that was aiming to advance what it was calling "religiously grounded positions on immigration".
Out of the spotlight for a while, in mid-November he re-surfaced, shepherding a delegation of Iraqi lawyers and
lawmakers around the capital.
Given the Bush administration's penchant for cronyism -- rewarding partisan political operatives with political
appointments -- it was not surprising to see Manuel Miranda reappear. What was surprising -- particularly to several
Democratic senators -- is that despite his unsavoury record regarding democratic practices, and once having been
characterised as having "one foot in the political graveyard", Miranda is now the director of the Office of Legislative
Statecraft at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq
His work includes giving instruction on democratic principles to Iraqi lawyers and lawmakers.
Miranda's current placement would have likely continued to go relatively unnoticed had he not shown up on Capital Hill
last week escorting a group of troubled Iraqi lawyers and lawmakers.
Led by Aswad al-Minshidi, the president of the Iraqi bar association, the delegation was in town to hand-deliver a
letter to House Minority Whip Roy Blunt and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Arlen Specter calling for
better treatment of detainees in Iraq and criticising the U.S. government for not doing enough to build Iraq's legal
system.
According to The Hill, The delegation was mainly "concerned about the length of time -- ranging from three months to two
years -- Iraqis rounded up in broad security sweeps must wait behind bars before seeing authorities with power to
adjudicate their cases, said a State Department source familiar with their views."
Quite often these suspects "rounded up on suspicion of having ties to insurgents are let go, but they often have to wait
months to trickle through the legal process. In many cases, their families have little idea of what happened to them."
According to a State Department official, in Iraq, 15,000 people are incarcerated at Camp Bucca, and 5,000 are held at
Camp Cropper
"We all have an interest in justice and as American lawyers tell us, justice delayed is justice denied," wrote
al-Minshidi, the Shiite president of the bar association. "Moreover, a people's respect for the rule of law, which is
the keystone of a lawful society, is also affected by the mere appearance of injustice."
In the letter, which expressed thanks to the U.S. for helping rebuild his country, al-Minshidi wrote that they were
"ask[ing] that more resources be made available to expedite the investigation and trial of all prisoners held by
multinational forces in Iraq."
"[O]ur legal culture is in need of assistance and America's millions of dollars have done little to assist our
institutions," wrote the head of Iraq's bar association. "For example, you have established 18 benchmarks for Iraqi
progress, seven are legislative, yet not one American dollar has been spent to assist the State Council, the oldest,
most legitimate and respected legislative institution in our country. Our 36 law schools graduate over 1,000 lawyers
every year, yet your embassy has done nothing to assist them to set their sights on the future."
Hisham al-Fityan, a Sunni and vice president of the Iraqi bar association, and Wrea Ahmad, president of the Kurdish bar
association, also attended the meetings with Blunt and other lawmakers. The lawyers also met with Rep. Steve Chabot, a
Republican member of the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees.
In the Senate they met with a handful of Judiciary Committee members including Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham and Tom
Coburn. The delegation also had a private meeting with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and later met with Emmet
Flood, special counsel to the president.
Last winter, Miranda was an enthusiastic spokesperson for Families First on Immigration, a coalition of long-time
Christian conservative leaders including former Republican Party presidential hopeful Gary Bauer, who heads American
Values; former Bush advisor on Catholic matters, Deal Hudson of the Morley Institute for Church & Culture; and David Keene of the American Conservative Union.
"Our position really is consistent with Christian teachings and with the rule of law," Miranda, chair of the Third
Branch Conference, a coalition of over 150 leaders that brought together more than 30 top conservatives on this issue,
told the Washington Times. "Out of concern for keeping families together, the religious leaders propose granting
citizenship to any illegal aliens in the country who are related to U.S. citizens. This would include anyone who has had
a child born here, often referred to as an 'anchor baby'."
"In return, the federal government would end birthright citizenship, which automatically grants U.S. citizenship to
anyone born here, regardless of his parents' legal status. The 14th Amendment says 'all persons born or naturalised in
the United States..are citizens of the United States'."
"This is a real compromise," Miranda claimed. "On the one hand, there is legalisation of a large number of people, but
conservatives get the settlement of the thorniest issue for them in the immigration debate."
Unlike Miranda, Families First on Immigration appears to have faded from the political scene
Miranda, who worked as judicial-nominations counsel for then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, was "forced from his job
in early 2004 after an internal Senate investigation determined he and a junior aide had swiped 4,670 documents, memos
and e-mails" from Democratic Party staffers, the Washington Post recently reported.
While acknowledging the operation, Miranda insisted that he had broken no laws because the committee had no internal
password protection at the time when he looked through and printed out other aides' electronic files.
That Manuel Miranda has earned his conservative stripes was apparent in February 2006, when David Keene, head of the
American Conservative Union, presented him with the organisation's Reagan Award, saying, "[Democrats] no doubt thought
that it would all end with that, that Manny Miranda would slink off into the darkness and never be heard from
again...But it turns out that he's more than just a principled conservative: he's a man who doesn't know the meaning of
surrender."
Although Miranda's charge in Iraq appears rather nebulous, he has in the past shown a well-honed disregard for
democratic principles and practices. A veteran of the Karl Rove school of slash and burn politics, Miranda's back-story
doesn't bode well for Iraq's troubled legal system.
*************
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column "Conservative Watch" documents the
strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.