Multi Medium

Rove Chides Self For Not Lying More Effectively

Poor Dubya – Karl really let him down:

While defending the administration’s handling of Iraq, Rove concedes that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction damaged the administration’s credibility. And he blames himself for failing to set the record straight.

“When the pattern of the Democratic attacks became apparent in July 2003, we should have countered in a forceful and overwhelming way,” he writes. “We should have seen this for what it was: a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency.”

If only he had done more to convince America that Iraq really did have WMDs.  Maybe he should have given Dubya’s little “Where are the WMDs?” sketch a happy ending or something.

Add comment March 4th, 2010 at 07:10am Posted by Eli

Same As The Old Boss

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

A Pomona College student filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that he was abusively interrogated, handcuffed and detained for five hours at Philadelphia International Airport in August because he carried a set of English-Arabic flashcards as part of his college language studies.

(…)

According to the suit, George, a college senior from Montgomery County, Penn., majoring in physics and Middle Eastern studies, was returning to school when TSA screeners saw his flashcards. A supervisor asked him his views on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, whether he knew who carried them out and what language Osama bin Laden spoke, adding, “Do you see why these cards are suspicious?,” the suit alleged.

Apparently “Arabic” still automatically equals “terrorism”.

Add comment February 11th, 2010 at 11:25am Posted by Eli

Environmentalist Of The Year

Osama bin Laden, who is so committed to the cause of preventing climate change that he’s willing to try to bring down the United States to save the Earth.  Awesome.

Of course, if he really wanted to do something constructive for the planet, perhaps he could have refrained from doing everything humanly possible to guarantee George W. Bush a second term…

(Also, there’s the little detail that taking down the US wouldn’t actually stop global warming.)

Add comment January 30th, 2010 at 01:13pm Posted by Eli

Republican Strategy In A Nutshell

Hey, can you hold this flaming bag of shit for me?

Don’t worry, I’ll take it back and refill it when you’re done.

H/T J-Ro.

Add comment January 22nd, 2010 at 11:35am Posted by Eli

Chickens, Meet Roost

Hey, remember all those no-bid contracts to reconstruct Iraq, and all the shoddy work by connected profiteers like Halliburton & KBR?  The Iraqis do.

Iraq’s Baghdad Trade Fair ended Tuesday, six years and a trillion dollars after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and one country was conspicuously absent.

That would be the country that spent a trillion dollars — on the invasion and occupation, but also on training and equipping Iraqi security forces, and on ambitious reconstruction projects in every province aimed at rebuilding the country and restarting the economy.

Yet when the post-Saddam Iraqi government swept out its old commercial fairgrounds and invited companies from around the world, the United States was not much in evidence among the 32 nations represented. Of the 396 companies that exhibited their wares, “there are two or three American participants, but I can’t remember their names,” said Hashem Mohammed Haten, director general of Iraq’s state fair company….

(…)

American companies are not seeing much lasting benefit from their country’s investment in Iraq. Some American businesses have calculated that the high security costs and fear of violence make Iraq a business no-go area. Even those who are interested and want to come are hampered by American companies’ reputation here for overcharging and shoddy workmanship, an outgrowth of the first years of the occupation, and a lasting and widespread anti-Americanism.

Apparently the Iraqis are not stupid.  Who knew?

1 comment November 13th, 2009 at 07:01am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Liz “Sprinkles” Sidoti apparently misses the good old days:

Obama has been a constant presence in the mass media as he expands the bureaucracy’s reach into the private sector…. In doing so, he has created a quandary. Put aside for a moment the question of whether government is actually intruding into people’s lives more than before. The point is that many people feel like it is — in part because Obama doesn’t stop talking about his goals. If President George W. Bush got slapped around for being inarticulate, is Obama obnoxiously articulate?

That was so awesome when Dubya hardly ever talked about his goals at all.  And everyone loved having a president who was an incoherent idiot and having one who is smooth and eloquent totally sucks!

Add comment October 15th, 2009 at 09:08pm Posted by Eli

Quote Of The Day

The comedic stylings of Dana Perino:

For two years, the Democrats have charged that Republicans are the “party of no,” and that’s grated on many nerves. Republicans have been talking about their proposals so much their faces are nearly blue. They’ve offered ideas to address the challenge of improving health care in America, but because they don’t have the bully pulpit and can’t get a word in edgewise, their ideas get lost.

Ah yes, those poor, poor Republicans, always ignored by the media, completely unable to ever get any coverage or appear on any of the talking head shows.

Special Bonus Quote:

As a good friend from North Carolina used to tell me, “Nobody likes change except a baby.”

That explains why Obama was crushed in a landslide defeat last year.  More than anything else, Americans want to maintain the status quo, because it’s TOTALLY AWESOME.

Add comment September 28th, 2009 at 07:45pm Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Month

Shorter Broderella: Rule of law is too partisan.

First, let me stipulate that I agree on the importance of accountability for illegal acts and for serious breaches of trust by government officials — even at the highest levels. I had no problem with the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, and I called for Bill Clinton to resign when he lied to his Cabinet colleagues and to the country during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

(…)

I am not persuaded by former vice president Dick Cheney’s argument that this is simply political revenge by the now-dominant Democrats against their Republican predecessors. For all the previously stated reasons, there is ample justification for seeking answers apart from any partisan motive.

Nonetheless, I think it is a matter of regret that Holder asked prosecutor John H. Durham to review the cases of the agents accused of abusive tactics toward some captives.

I realize this is a preliminary investigation, not a decision to prosecute anyone. And if it were to stop at that point, no great harm would have been done. But it is the first step on a legal trail that could lead to trials — and that is what gives me pause.

Cheney is not wrong when he asserts that it is a dangerous precedent when a change in power in Washington leads a successor government not just to change the policies of its predecessors but to invoke the criminal justice system against them.

Not investigating or prosecuting war crimes is kind of a dangerous precedent, too…

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

Well yes.

In times like these, the understandable desire to enforce individual accountability must be weighed against the consequences. This country is facing so many huge challenges at home and abroad that the president cannot afford to be drawn into what would undoubtedly be a major, bitter partisan battle over prosecution of Bush-era officials. The cost to the country would simply be too great.

Accountability is just too hard and it’ll make the Republicans upset, so why bother.  Now, a witch hunt against a Democratic president for getting a blow job, that’s okay.

When President Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974, I wrote one of the few columns endorsing his decision, which was made on the basis that it was more important for America to focus on the task of changing the way it would be governed and addressing the current problems. It took a full generation for the decision to be recognized by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and others as the act of courage that it had been.

Awesome.  Can you imagine what kind of mess this country would be in if Nixon had been held accountable instead of getting off scot free and allowed to rehabilitate his image as a statesman?  Why, it might even have discredited anyone who worked in his administration, and I don’t know if our country could afford such a terrible loss.

Add comment September 3rd, 2009 at 07:21am Posted by Eli

Wednesday Why-I-Love-The-Weekly-World-News Blogging

Once again, the Weekly World News gets there first:

Dick Cheney is writing his memoirs. Weekly World News has acquired an advance look at the torrid tale of his relationship with President Bush.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney surprised the world by saying he would publish a memoir. For years he has been famous for his obsession with privacy. Now, turning a new leaf, the former Vice President has been seen walking along the beach handwriting his book while sipping mint juleps. He writes everything down in cursive on parchment, a detail he says his publishers must recreate in the release of the book.

The book is set to focus on his relationship with President Bush, describing first their interdependent closeness which in time turned into a cold distance. He writes “it was a cold day that October morning. I came in for the morning briefing with an extra mocha latte for George. It took an extra twenty minutes out of my morning, but he liked them and I know he’s been under stress. I went to hand it to him, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy reading popularity polls. ‘Here you go Mister President, your favorite.’ All he could be bothered to say was a quick ‘Thanks’ before going back to his paper. I felt so stupid, standing there waiting for his approval. Quickly I excused myself from the Oval Office, went in the bathroom and cried. I was so mad, so hurt, I wanted to shoot a man in the face.”

Later in the book he writes “Things had been so different between us, I didn’t know who he was anymore. It was like those days on the ranch had never happened. Where was the warm cowboy who never cared what people thought and would laugh with me while starting a war. Standing in front of me was a Washington apologist who lived and died by his approval polls. Had that man even existed? Was it all just a beautiful dream? No. It was real. I knew because I still had the flower in my breast pocket. The one he gave me.”

It’s a sad, touching, beautiful story.

Add comment August 19th, 2009 at 11:31am Posted by Eli

What. I’ve. Been. Saying. (Again)

Almost four years ago, I observed that “Bush’s claim that he had to take extraordinary measures to fight terror is at odds with his resolute unwillingness to take ordinary measures against terror.”  Apparently the intel inspectors general agree with me:

We’ve known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke the law repeatedly in the name of national security. It is now clear that many of those programs could have been conducted just as easily within the law — perhaps more effectively and certainly with far less damage to the justice system and to Americans’ faith in their government.

That is the inescapable conclusion from a devastating report by the inspectors general of the intelligence and law-enforcement community on President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. The report shows that the longstanding requirement that the government obtain a warrant was not hindering efforts to gather intelligence on terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the argument that the law was an impediment was concocted by White House and Justice Department lawyers after Mr. Bush authorized spying on Americans’ international communications.

(…)

So why break the law, again and again? Two things seem disturbingly clear. First, President Bush and his top aides panicked after the Sept. 11 attacks. And second, Mr. Cheney and his ideologues, who had long chafed at any legal constraints on executive power, preyed on that panic to advance their agenda.

It is absolutely criminal that these people are not being treated as criminals.

Add comment July 17th, 2009 at 09:35am Posted by Eli

Tell Me Again Why I Voted For Obama

This is just horrrible:

The Obama administration has objected to a provision in the 2010 defense funding bill currently before the Senate that would bar the military’s use of contractors to interrogate detainees.

The provision, strongly backed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), describes interrogations as an “inherently governmental function” that “cannot be transferred to contractor personnel.” It would give the Defense Department one year from the bill’s enactment to ensure that the military had the resources to comply with it.

(…)

Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates “are as serious as a heart attack on this,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Fantastic.  Because that whole contract interrogators idea worked out sooo well.

This moment, in which the Attorney General of the United States claims to be considering the possibility of allowing our laws against torture to be enforced seems a good one in which to reveal that I have seen over 1,200 torture photos and a dozen videos that are in the possession of the United States military. These are photographs depicting torture, the victims of torture, and other inhuman and degrading treatment. Several videos show a prisoner intentionally slamming his head face-first very hard into a metal door. Guards filmed this from several angles rather than stopping it.

(…)

Were these Abu Ghraib photos all made public, but those from other times and places kept hidden, and were we unaware of the executive orders, Justice Department memos, presidential signing statements, congressional reports, Red Cross reports, presidential and vice presidential televised confessions, and so forth, the military could still claim this was the isolated work of a few “bad apples”. But we would have a better understanding of what that work was. And making these images available to the public, or merely to a special prosecutor, would suggest an interest in seeking accountability for those responsible but not present in the photographs. On the other hand, hiding the evidence while prosecuting the soldiers who posed in some of the photos looks increasingly like scapegoating for the benefit of the Military Intelligence, CIA, and contractors who instructed the soldiers, as well as the commanders all the way up to the Secretary of Defense who encouraged torture, the lawyers who sought to provide immunity, and the president and vice president who gave the authorizations….

I very much hope that AG Holder is allowed to pursue his investigation into this, but given the administration’s stance on contractors, it’s pretty hard to imagine that he won’t find some excuse to avoid it, or else just quietly drop it or turn it into a whitewash.

Obama is doing a really piss-poor job of earning my trust.  In fact, at this point it would be more accurate to say that he’s earning my distrust.

Add comment July 16th, 2009 at 10:19am Posted by Eli

Obama Administration Continues The Real “Bush Doctrine”

No, not the Bush Doctrine about how invading countries for no good reason is Teh Awesome, I’m talking about the one that’s like the Peter Principle on steroids, where incompetence and criminality are rewarded with money and advancement instead of scorn, unemployment, or jail time.  Chris Bowers spells it out:

The past year has revealed a comprehensive philosophy of government championed by conservatives and moderates when they oppose major progressive economic reforms. I call it “crime and reward.” The philosophy is summed up as follows:

The flaw in progressive legislative proposals is that they don’t give enough money to the corporations that caused the problem(s) which overall legislative effort is supposedly trying to solve.

It applies in all major cases. Check it out:

1. The way to lower health care costs is to give companies that have increased health care costs even more money….

2. The way to fix climate change is to give the companies that are the main cause of climate change even more money….

3. The way to fix the financial crisis is to give the financial institutions that caused the financial crisis even more money….

On the three major areas of public policy that were addressed by the federal government over the last twelve months–health care, climate change, financial crisis–the “moderate” solution has consistently been to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the corporations that caused climate change, the financial crisis, and skyrocketing health care costs. It is a crime and reward ideology. When powerful private sector companies cause major national and global problems, the “moderate” solution is to give those who caused the problem hundreds of billions of dollars.

Crime and reward. Through a conservative-moderate alliance, it is the system of government under which we live, even in the era of the Democratic trifecta.

On the other hand, maybe it only looks like a “reward.”  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that this is just another demonstration of the criminals’ continuing ability to call the shots, just as they have for the previous eight years, and probably much longer.

Regardless of the cause, it’s a compelling illustration of just how broken and corrupt our political system has become when placing the public good over the corporate good becomes impossible, if not unthinkable.

Add comment July 2nd, 2009 at 06:56pm Posted by Eli

Role Model Fail

I’m okay with Obama wanting to emulate a former president, but why not FDR instead of The Worst And Most Unpopular President Ever?

President Obama offered a wonkish defense of his embattled health-care reform effort during an hour-long town hall meeting in Northern Virginia yesterday that featured seven questions, including one sent via Twitter and several from a handpicked audience of supporters.

(…)

In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for “tweets.”

So we have handpicked questions from a handpicked audience.  Well gee, that doesn’t sound bogus or familiar at all.  I didn’t have a problem with the Nico Pitney pseudoscandal; the WH had no idea what the question would be, and it was fair and tough, but this is just way too reminiscent of Bush and his bubble.  Couple that with Obama’s similarly cavalier approach to the Constitution, secrecy, detainees, and executive powers, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s changed.

I can forgive a lot (but not the secrecy and unitary executive stuff) if Obama pushes through a strong healthcare reform package, but this is at least his second recent appearance where (as far as I can tell from the reporting) he didn’t say anything about the public option.  I find that very, very worrisome – mandatory insurance without a public option would actually be far, far worse than the status quo for everyone except the insurance and healthcare industries.

UPDATE: I just got a look at an actual transcript, and Obama did talk about the public option. So chalk that up to bad reporting on the town hall.

He definitely didn’t say anything about it in his not-the-Rose-Garden press conference, though. And I still have serious doubts about the depth of his commitment to it.

1 comment July 2nd, 2009 at 07:27am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Shorter Fred Hiatt: One-party rule is a terrible thing… now.

Apparently the Republicans have never controlled all three branches of government, at least not within recent memory.  Or maybe it just worked out so well that it wasn’t a problem.

Add comment June 8th, 2009 at 06:07am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Turns out Dubya spent billions of taxpayer dollars to make sure that Obama was the one left holding the General Motors bag.  Nice.

On the other hand, the thought of the Bush administration being the one to shepherd GM through bankruptcy is pretty damn terrifying.

Add comment June 3rd, 2009 at 08:53pm Posted by Eli

So Is That, Like, $1 Million Per Electrocution?

Well, this is disgusting yet unsurprising:

The U.S. Army paid “tens of millions of dollars in bonuses” to KBR Inc, its biggest contractor in Iraq, even after it concluded the firm’s electrical work had put U.S. soldiers at risk, according to a source close to a U.S. congressional investigation.

The Senate Democratic Policy Committee plans to hold a hearing on Wednesday to examine KBR’s operations in Iraq, and question why the Army rewarded the Houston-based company.

The panel says KBR has been linked to at least two, and as many as five, electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq due to “shoddy work.”

Investigators believe hundreds of other soldiers may have received electrical shocks, the source added. The Army is investigating.

(…)

Military reports have criticized KBR’s work in Iraq in recent years. Yet afterward, the company received “tens of millions of dollars in bonuses,” said the source, who declined to be identified.

“We want to know why,” the source said.

Um… bonuses are supposed to be a reward for exemplary work, right?  Perhaps the military has adopted the same standards as the corporate world applies to executives.  Electrocute some troops, run a company into the ground, good job, here’s your bonus.

I hope the committee invites some family members of troops who were electrocuted – I’m sure they’ll be very interested in hearing why that warranted a financial reward.

1 comment May 20th, 2009 at 11:54am Posted by Eli

Don’t Bogart That Suffering

And all this time, I thought suffering was a bad thing:

Suffering is a gift, not a problem.  It’s temporal happiness that’s a curse. When life is easy and unthreatened, the cancer of self-centered contentment can take over our spiritual life.  When that happens, suffering is the greatest gift that God can impart to us.

(…)

Isn’t it ironic that our happiness-seeking American culture is doing all in its power to avoid suffering–the true source of blessing?  We even do it through bailouts, and printing endless streams of fiat money. We want happiness without difficulty, the good life without pain.  But that pursuit will also mean life without God, character, heaven, or true peace. Self-centered worldly avoidance of pain is killing our spiritual and corporate life.  Only the gift of suffering can awaken us and point us to the true source of blessedness.

Okay, I’m sold: Suffering is Teh Awesome.  But why should its benefits be limited to ordinary citizens and those lucky duckies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Hellraiser movies?  Shouldn’t the upper classes be allowed to share in its blessings too?  Surely we owe them some tax increases at the very least.  True, it might deprive the lower and middle classes of some of their suffering, but they’ve had so much that they can afford to sacrifice a little for the sake of fairness.

And what about those noble heroes who have selflessly spread so much suffering to so many?  They’re entitled to a better reward than the curse of wealth, power, and permanent comfort.  Surely we can give the Masters Of The Universe who crashed the economy the gift of unemployment or at least steep pay cuts – maybe even jail time for the truly worthy.  And it would be churlish not to offer the torturers and war architects of the Bush administration prolonged prison sentences as a token of appreciation for all the concentrated suffering they’ve bestowed upon the world.

Of course, their natural modesty and humility will require them to protest this largesse as simply too generous, but we really must insist.  It’s the least we can do for them after all they’ve done for us.

It’s their due.

Add comment May 16th, 2009 at 01:39pm Posted by Eli

A Tincture Of Hypocrisy

No Republican who was not calling for Bush’s resignation or impeachment over the last three years of his term has any right to say this:

The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.

George Will is kidding, right?  Please tell me he’s kidding and didn’t just rediscover his hunger for “constitutional values” and the rule of law when Obama put his hand on Abe Lincoln’s Bible.

Add comment May 14th, 2009 at 11:34pm Posted by Eli

Oh Noes!

President Obama has been possessed by his predecessor!

(From Superpoop)

Add comment May 10th, 2009 at 07:02pm Posted by Eli

When The Nazis Do It, It’s Not Illegal

Wow, Condi sure had an eventful Monday at Stanford…

• Called al Qaeda a bigger threat than the Nazis because “Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States.”

• Said that “if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture”  In other words, when the president does it, it’s not illegal.

• Speaking of which, she apparently fingered Dubya for authorizing torture.

Awesome.  A few more visits back to Stanford and she’ll have a legacy to rival Dick Cheney’s, and her “husband” will be in prison.

1 comment April 30th, 2009 at 09:30pm Posted by Eli

No! Really?

This can only be good for Republicans!

The AP obtained partial results from a GOP poll that showed Republicans “are widely viewed by the public as less competent than Democrats to handle issue ranging from health care to education and energy.”

“Democrats were favored by a margin of 61% to 29% on education; 59% to 30% on health care and 59% to 31% on energy. Congress is expected to consider major legislation later this year in all three areas.”

“Democats were also viewed with more confidence in handling taxes, long a Republican strong suit. The only issue among nine in the survey where the two parties were rated as even was in the war on terror.”

Wow, no-one could have anticipated that FUCKING UP EVERY SINGLE THING YOU TOUCH might have an adverse effect on perceptions of your competence.

And while that last sentence may sound like a bit of a silver lining, remember that terrorism is supposed to be the one issue that the GOP totally owns, and they’re tied with the Democrats?  The Republicans are so screwed right now, and they have no-one but themselves to blame.  Not only was their flagship administration criminal and incompetent, but they chose to completely abdicate their responsibility to rein in that criminality and incompetence.

Chickens, meet roost.

(h/t Phoenix Woman)

Add comment April 30th, 2009 at 07:59pm Posted by Eli

The Law And The Government Are Supposed To Be On The Same Side

Yet another example of why the Bush administration was morally and ethically repulsive:

Karen Greenberg’s book, Least Worst Place, gives us a very compelling answer. It’s found in a passage in which Will Taft (who emerges from all of this as a minor hero who genuinely believes the values that he articulates) relays a discussion he had with John Yoo. He didn’t understand why there was such ferocious pushback against the Geneva Conventions–why not just accept and live with these standards? America had done so for fifty years. The room got quiet, and Yoo said, “We have an Article 17 problem.”

That was a key point. Article 17 says, “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war,” and John Yoo and the others did not want to have to agree to that. Taft understood what was going on, and he fought back. The State Department team wrote a memo calling Yoo’s opinion “seriously flawed” and “fundamentally inaccurate.” They were saying that John Yoo’s lawyering was incompetent.

But we learn from Greenberg’s book that there was a point to all of this. Yoo’s analysis of the law was dishonest. It was driven by a need to get a certain result–to introduce a system of torture of the prisoners. He was intent on twisting the law to get all the restrictions out of the way.

Good-faith opinion writing? I think not.

The whole purpose of the OLC is to tell the administration what it legally can and cannot do, not act like a mob lawyer finding loopholes or concocting bogus rationales for whatever sordid things the boss wants to do.  If (I repeat, IF) we still had functioning mechanisms for accountability, Yoo and Bybee’s legal malpractice would have exposed Bush and his inner circle to the risk of some serious jailtime.

The OLC is supposed to rein in the administration’s criminal impulses, not enable them.

Add comment April 30th, 2009 at 05:53pm Posted by Eli

Poll Of The Day

Shorter American people: How can we miss you when you won’t go to jail?

That George W. Bush Presidential Library is going to need one hell of a theme park attached to it.

Add comment April 29th, 2009 at 08:23pm Posted by Eli

Catch Of The Day

Turns out even Ronald Reagan’s DOJ thought waterboarding was illegal.

During the Reagan Administration, the Department of Justice prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three deputies for waterboarding suspects to obtain confessions, and won convictions. The sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and the deputies to 4 years.

So, conservatives… if Ronald Reagan is infallible… and he was anti-waterboarding…

You can’t even argue that waterboarding is okay for obtaining intel but not confessions.

Add comment April 27th, 2009 at 08:18pm Posted by Eli

So What?

So Gallup is doing another poll on whether or not the American public supports criminal investigations of the Bush administration’s justification and use of torture.

But should it really matter?  I mean, since when should public opinion determine whether the rule of law gets upheld, whether criminals get held accountable?

And conversely, how dare conservatives and concern trolls like Broder proclaim that any investigations or prosecutions would be politically motivated?  If they’re so confident that the Bush administration did nothing illegal, shouldn’t they welcome the chance to clear their names?  And if they’re not so confident, are they once again admitting that they place partisan loyalty above respect for the law?

Add comment April 26th, 2009 at 02:26pm Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Shorter David Frum: Prosecuting criminal politicians = criminalizing politics.

Apparently it is inconceivable to conservatives that:

A) The Bush administration’s activities were illegal, and

B) That illegal (Republican) activities should ever be investigated or prosecuted.

I especially liked the part where he warned about the possibility of reprisals by Republicans.  Because Republicans never indulge in trumped-up politically-motivated prosecutions.

(h/t Phoenix Woman)

Add comment April 24th, 2009 at 07:21am Posted by Eli

Democracy 101

Accountability = Democracy.  Impunity = Not Democracy.

So, stories over the last few years, all coming together over the last few days, unambiguously tell us that the highest officials of the US Government ordered the commission of war crimes, in order to obtain false information to justify an even more egregious crime of waging an unnecessary, aggressive war in which innocent people are still being killed. But when the opposition party takes over, the official response is that the US government cannot hold a single person legally accountable.

At the same time, Wall Street banksters have just devastated the US economy and world economy, causing billions of people untold economic suffering that will last (even worsen) for years, and not a single bankster has been held legally accountable. Most are still in their enriched executive positions, demanding the terms under which the government will continue to prop them up, as they successfully lobby Congress to weaken every piece of consumer protection or meaningful oversight.

You stand back and look at this, and it’s hard not to see it as a massive “systemic” failure of the US governance system. The principle of accountability, notions of fairness and justice, and the simple concept that no one is about the law — sorry, but these are all in freefall, and almost none of our “democratic” leaders seem to give a damn.

If laws are not enforced, or are only enforced for the little people, then they have no value, and the people who control our government have no incentive to obey the law or look out for anyone’s interests but their own.

It looks like we’re officially there.

Add comment April 23rd, 2009 at 09:03pm Posted by Eli

It’s Not A Bug, It’s A Feature

As I’ve said before, the fact that torture does not provide actionable intelligence was never a deterrent for the Bush administration, since they were a lot more interested in propagandizable intelligence.  False confessions are what torture gets you, and that’s just exactly what BushCo. wanted:

“There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,” the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

“The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubeida at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

Jim White actually speculated about this on Sunday, and now it’s confirmed.

Amazingly enough, Zubeida and KSM were able to resist – possibly because they had no idea what their torturers were talking about.  And in the end, it didn’t really matter, since we ended up invading Iraq anyway.

Add comment April 22nd, 2009 at 06:12am Posted by Eli

Co-Wanker Of The Day, Part I

Shorter John McCain: Torture is wrong and only helps our enemies… so we must never admit we use it.

Add comment April 20th, 2009 at 05:20pm Posted by Eli

Tinfoil Vindication?

To me, one of the least convincing explanations for the Democrats’ fecklessness during the past 7 years was that the Bush administration was using NSA wiretaps to blackmail them.  I always thought that sounded farfetched and paranoid, but now I’m not so sure:

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

(…)

[C]ontrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

Holy crap.  That sure sounds like blackmail to me – unless it means Harman was already in the tank for the Bush administration and they were just trying to protect one of their own.  Which is not exactly encouraging either.

Either way, this damn well better cost Harman her seat.

Add comment April 20th, 2009 at 07:17am Posted by Eli