Dead Not Alive

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... to be honest with you." — George W. Bush, March 13, 2002.

"Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that has killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children." — Barack Obama, May 1, 2011.

So it's been nearly a decade. When the news started rolling in tonight that Osama bin Laden was dead, I half expected that he died of old age. But no, the CIA got him. It's a victory for certain, but not the kind that will put to end any of our wars.

Fireworks are going off in my neighborhood.

How long until Trump demands to see a death certificate?

His Legacy Continues

Former President George W. Bush planned to speak at a big charity event in Switzerland later this week, but apparently his plans have been scrapped due to the threat of "massive protests."

The organizers of the protests are calling for Bush and his administration to be held accountable for war crimes. Good. Somebody has to do it if the U.S. won't.

Bush's recent book is basically a signed confession. And more importantly, two victims of torture in U.S. detention have recently prepared a criminal complaint against Bush.

So it's not just the protests and rioting Bush and his buddies fear -- it's falling into the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Whether anybody in charge would be brave enough to prosecute a former U.S. president, I don't know. But many free people in democratic and civil nations view Bush as a third-world tyrant -- like Pinochet. And just like a cowardly despot, Bush is safest traveling to authoritarian countries like China and Saudi Arabia.

And that grim reality reflects on our nation. I'm not sure how the world can ever take us seriously on the issues of democracy, human rights, or basic decency with Bush still jaunting about.

And finally, a friendly note to European countries: if Bush gets a little forgetful again and plans a visit to your country, don't announce your plans to arrest him ahead of time!

When the Sun Never Sets

The USA Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001. A big opportunistic anti-terrorist bill, it was proposed after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and of course, we were told the legislation would keep us safe.

Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the bill. The rest of them, well, I doubt they even read it. It was called "The Patriot Act" after all. But here is what they were approving:

The Act dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eased restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and broadened the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
...
Opponents of the law have criticized its authorization of indefinite detentions of immigrants; searches through which law enforcement officers search a home or business without the owner’s or the occupant’s permission or knowledge; the expanded use of National Security Letters, which allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order; and the expanded access of law enforcement agencies to business records, including library and financial records. Since its passage, several legal challenges have been brought against the act, and Federal courts have ruled that a number of provisions are unconstitutional.

The concerns were well founded. It has since been revealed that the NSA, under the direction of George W. Bush, spied on everyone, specifically targeting journalists. Under President Obama, there hasn't been any change. Now we know that the FBI has even circumvented the minimal checks on their power when demanding telephone records.

Of course, we weren't to worry. The surveillance state was only temporary. There were "sunset provisions" in the Patriot Act. Many of the provisions were set to expire in 2005. The war on terror would be over by then, right? LOL.

The USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005 was passed in July of that year. It was reauthorized again in 2006, and then, well, quite a history of reauthorizations follows, sometimes adding new measures for fighting terrorism or new powers for the Secret Service.

For some reason I was lead to believe that there would be no torture and no warrantless wiretapping under President Obama. But apparently executives rarely give up executive power.

In 2010 (you may have missed this), the Patriot Act with no reforms was extended again. You can find the final vote on the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives site. Yes, that is the correct link to the vote. It was weaseled into a bill titled "Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act." I'm not shitting you. The bill passed by Unanimous Consent.

The extension was only for a year though. Just one more year, yeah, right. Anyway, as you would guess, though hardly notice, the Patriot Act is up for renewal again. I don't expect anybody to make a fuss. Most people probably feel it doesn't apply to them. You don't need civil liberties until -- you know -- you actually have something unpopular to say.

The Patriot Act is anything but patriotic. Let the sun set.

The Deciderer

Oh, so it's out? Decision Points by George W. Bush is not only on the shelves but also a best seller on Amazon.com. Bush's memoir is described as a "candid and gripping account" of the "critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life." That's funny because when I first heard the title, I assumed it would explain who the hell decided to make him president.

But whatever. I don't think I'm going to read it -- not even the free Kindle sample. I've had enough of this guy, so I will settle for scathing reviews, video mashups, and exclusive interviews (if they include a handy transcript I can easily skim):

LAUER: Did you ever ask yourself the question, "What more could I have done," to prevent this from happening?

BUSH: Well, we just didn't have any solid intelligence that gave us a warning on this. We didn't have any clear intelligence that said you know, "Get ready. They're gonna fly airplanes into New York buildings."

Wow. He's still spreading that horseshit that there was just no way he could have known? Despite the fact that he had been presented with 36 Presidential Daily Briefs that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and that 36th one was actually titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' What more did he want? Bin Ladin to personally pencil in the attack date in his day planner?

But wait, there's more crazy:

LAUER: Here's something else from the book: “I could never forget what happened to America that day. I would pour my heart and soul into protecting this country, whatever it took." It took two wars. It took thousands of lives, American lives. Billions of dollars. You could say it taking Guantanamo and Abu Gharib and government eavesdropping and waterboarding. Did it take too much?

BUSH: We didn't have an attack. 3,000 people died on September the 11th and I vowed that I would do my duty to protect the American people.

We didn't have an attack? WTF? The Republicans are trying to rewrite history again and nobody is objecting?

Finally, here is the heart of the interview, but it's no surprise. In fact, it's Bush's most famous talking point -- you know, the one where he claims he kept us safe:

BUSH: We believe America's going to be attacked again. There's all kinds of intelligence comin' in. And-- and-- one of the high value al Qaeda operatives was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the chief operating officer of al Qaeda… ordered the attack on 9/11. And they say, "He's got information." I said, "Find out what he knows.” And so I said to our team, "Are the techniques legal?" He says, "Yes, they are." And I said, "Use 'em."

LAUER: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

BUSH: Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer., but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do.

LAUER: You say it's legal. "And the lawyers told me."

BUSH: Yeah.

LAUER: Critics say that you got the Justice Department to give you the legal guidance and the legal memos that you wanted.

BUSH: Well—

LAUER: Tom Kean, who a former Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people.

BUSH: He obviously doesn't know. I hope Mr. Kean reads the book. That's why I've written the book. He can, they can draw whatever conclusion they want. But I will tell you this. Using those techniques saved lives. My job is to protect America and I did.

No, torture didn't keep us safe. Bush and Cheney decided to torture for political gain, torture results in false intelligence, and the fact that we torture was used as a powerful recruiting tool for al Qaeda.

Torture is also abhorrent and illegal, despite what Bush's lawyers thought.

But now we have Bush's memoirs which should have been titled "I Approved Waterboarding," and might as well be used as a signed confession if anybody has the balls to prosecute.

Memoirs of the Decider

George W. Bush's memoir, written in crayon I assume, will have the funny title Decision Points. Here's one famous decision point they should have used for the cover:

(Image via TBogg.)

Oh yes, we're going to be reminded once again how Bush made "tough decisions." But I guess nobody ever told him you only get the pat on the back when you make right decisions.

Another book you should probably avoid is Laura Bush's memoir, Spoken from the Heart.

Trillion Is the New Billion

The New York Times has a nifty treemap to help us visualize Obama's 2011 budget proposal. I can't seem to hack that app onto my own blog, so you'll have to click that link to get a look at it. Green squares indicate an increase in spending for a function. Orange squares indicate a decrease in spending.

The 2011 budget is only $100 billion more than Bush's final budget. But here's the crazy thing I'm hearing from analysts: Obama's budget includes Iraq and Afghanistan war funding. Bush's budget did not. How the hell did Bush get away with that? Not including funding for wars that he knew would continue for another 5 or 10 years?

Bush funded the wars, as well as the prescription drug program, through $8 trillion in supplementals. These accounting tricks are not subject to the congressional oversight process. The Bush Administration claimed this was necessary because they could not predict the costs of a protracted war on terror. However, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) noted that "both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process - not emergency supplementals."

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would end the abuse of supplemental budgets for war, and he is keeping that promise.

Anyway, back to the chart on NYT, did you notice what kind of funding has been decreased? Unemployment insurance programs, education for the disadvantaged, school improvement, Indian education, railroads, mass transit, Corps of Engineers, Federal Housing Administration loan programs, civil and criminal prosecution and representation, and space operations to name a few. It takes a mighty leap of logic to say President Obama is a socialist creating a welfare state.

Looks more like the US is equal parts welfare and warfare. We need to keep our debt in perspective. Some of our allies are in even worse debt traps. It's been going on for a long time. So when Republicans open their mouths to complain about this budget, we must realize it's all choreographed knee-jerking.

Well, At Least They Talked

It was an 80 minute therapy session American-style. Last night, President Obama faced 140 House Republicans who think that the President is a far-left socialist/communist/fascist. Needless to say, it got a little testy at times:

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If this entire political rehab session doesn't go down in history, then certainly Obama's "Bolshevik plot" quip will. I applaud Obama for fighting the whiners who still push the 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear against health care reform.

This is the right way to debate major issues, and President Obama has the intellect and patience to stand up there, answer questions, reach across the aisle, and hold everybody accountable. I can't help but contrast this with Bush's prefabricated townhall meetings stuffed with supporters in order to give a false impression of public approval. Bush didn't have the brains or balls for real confrontation.

Neither did the House Republicans last night. Apparently, they have a few regrets about letting the cameras roll. They tried to bully, but they came across as meek and thin-skinned. That's not good for the poll numbers I guess.

But hearing Republicans regurgitate their talking points reminds me of the sad fact that we are now stuck in 4-year campaign cycles complete with divisiveness and scheming. That's not good for any of us.

Torture Memo Guy

NYT: A psychiatrist might say you are in denial.
Yoo: I deny that I am in denial.
(New York Times interview with John C. Yoo)

Neither Jon Stewart nor I are constitutional lawyers, but we can't be fooled by John Yoo's doubletalk:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Daily Show: Exclusive - John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1
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Yoo became even more frustratingly evasive in part 2 of the interview. Yoo claims that somehow we had not defined what Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions meant, yet the Bush administration could weasel with the definition of "at war" to meet their needs: we are at war when we want to give the president more power, but we are not at war when we want to torture prisoners.

And I think Yoo was trying to say -- it's hard to know exactly what he was trying to say -- that we had no idea what constituted torture. However, we had manuals on the topic: JTF GTMO "SERE" Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure. And 40 years ago we court-martialed a US soldier who waterboarded Vietnamese prisoners.

In part 3 of the interview, Yoo continues to defend the idea that the president should have unchecked power when there is war. Whenever the president decides we are not at war, then he can stop being king. Stewart is amazed that a conservative would defend this. Also, the Supreme Court has, on the ruling of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, differed.

At this point, I hardly care about the dubious legal basis for Yoo's infamous torture memos. When Yoo says "remember the time we were in..." I'm not persuaded. I don't understand anybody who says we should abandon laws, treaties, and principles because we're scared. I do, however, understand the lack of morality in torture and the danger of an executive branch with unlimited power.

Mr. Torture Memo is still teaching law in California.

Rewriting History

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." — Robert F. Kennedy, 1925 - 1968

From the mouth of Dana Perino, with no objection from Sean Hannity and his pals: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term."


(YouTube video)

That extraordinary lie is insulting to our entire country. We won't forget that the attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3000 people, and the subsequent anthrax attacks, and the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks all happened under the careless watch of President George W. Bush.

I only mention the Beltway sniper attacks because if anybody wants to call the Fort Hood shootings an act of terrorism, then we also must call the Beltway attacks an act of terrorism.

And I'll tell Perino what she owes the American people: the truth or shut up.

God, Gog, Magog, and Bush

Here's more proof why I never again want a "true believer" as president. In 2003, while George W. Bush was assembling his "coalition of the willing," he had one hell of an alarming conversation with France's President Jacques Chirac.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

I have little doubt that ultimately that unnecessary trillion dollar war in Iraq was about oil. But clearly Bush's nutty, supernatural beliefs prevailed over logic, facts, and clear thinking.

We're All Going to Die

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." — Sarah Palin, 2009

"Paranoia is just another word for ignorance." — Hunter S. Thompson, 2004

Let's get the facts out. America's Affordable Health Choices Act does not create "death panels." Some conservatives have dismissed Palin's claims, including now FOX's Neil Cavuto. Crazy Cavuto isn't even on your side, Sarah.

The wild-eyed fears are over Sec. 1233 - Advance care planning consultation. An analysis of the bill produced by the three relevant House committees explains:

Sec. 1233. Advance care planning consultation. Provides coverage for consultation between enrollees and practitioners to discuss orders for life-sustaining treatment. Instructs CMS to modify ‘Medicare & You’ handbook to incorporate information on end-of-life planning resources and to incorporate measures on advance care planning into the physician’s quality reporting initiative.

There is no requirement that anybody have end-of-life planning. However, this type of counseling has been a standard recommendation for senior citizens. My grandma had it back in 1994. She was 79 and her heart was failing. She knew that physically she couldn't tolerate a heart operation and that she didn't want any more treatment. She could have just as easily told her doctors that she wanted to live on life support. But the point is that she was informed of her options and prognosis, and the key to that is the consultation where your doctors discuss these issues with you and find out what you want!

And notice I said "your doctors" and not "government." You won't be having this conversation with a government bureaucrat. That's just right-wing lunacy. In reality land, the government will pay your doctor for the time spent consulting you.

We're all going to die. It's nothing new.

However, the fear-mongers conveniently forget that our current system of free-market private insurers already forces many of these end-of-life decisions on us. The scariest systems are the ones that don't follow the patient's wishes.

Like in Texas, for example, where their Advance Directives Act allows a health care facility to discontinue life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian. George W. Bush signed that one into law while he was governor, and then his successor, Rick Perry, amended the law to apply to children. Since then, the law has been used to withdraw life support from an infant against the wishes of the parents. Remind me again why we call these Republicans "pro-life"?

You know, Sarah Palin is partly right. Such a system is evil. Hopefully every one of us will have quality, affordable options when healthcare reform is passed.

Death to Potatoes

In case you haven't heard, there was a disputed election in Iran. I won't pretend to be an expert because that's just stupid.

But I do try to understand what I don't understand. Last year, during our own long and heated election debates, I blogged about McCain and Clinton's cavalier attitude towards war with Iran. The candidates' flippant remarks played to the public belief which, for as long as I can remember, is that the people of Iran hate America.

Oh, where did we get that idea? In recent memory, we got the fear-mongering from Bush who put Iran in an "axis of evil" even though there was no axis. But even long before that, we heard the Iranian chants of "Death to America." I always wondered exactly what the people meant by that.

Hooman Madj, author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, says it doesn't mean they want to kill us. In fact, during the recent campaign, Iranians also shouted "death to potatoes":


(YouTube video)

So the phrase really kind of means "down with America" which doesn't sound nearly as threatening. Sometimes history is shaped by things lost in translation.

But right now, I don't think much is being lost in translation. It's very clear that Iranians are willing to die for freedom and democracy. And people who share our basic values probably don't want to kill us.

Ticking Time Bombs

The imminent threat of a terrorist attack was Dick Cheney's justification for torture. Terrorists are poised to set off dirty bombs and biological weapons annihilating entire US cities -- according to Cheney and the popular TV show 24. But real experts, like former Army interrogators in the war in Iraq, tell us how unrealistic a torture fantasy show can be:

“These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out,” he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!”
...
“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

But now, after all these years of FOX propaganda, evidence is gathering that Cheney's authorization of torture wasn't really about the theoretical ticking time bombs anyway. The Bush administration tortured for political gain:

Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida."

I don't know if these revelations will change public opinion, but most certainly we need to rephrase our dialog about these issues: "Pollsters should be asking if Americans support using torture to extract false confessions for political purposes, because that's what happened."

Also, somebody needs to present Cheney with this bit of logic: if torturing people led to false justifications for war, and if thousands of Americans died in that war, then didn't torture cost American lives?

Nothing looks the same in the light.

True Believers

The above picture is one of eleven cover sheets featured in the GQ article And He Shall be Judged, a damning exposé on former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The amateurish cover sheets adorned top-secret intelligence briefings approved by Rumsfeld and featuring triumphant images from the Iraq war effort. But it's the quotes above the images that reveal way too much about Bush's crusade. Straight from the Bible they came: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

I can only see this as a cynical and crafty move by Rumsfeld:

The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests. In the case of the sheets, publicly flaunting his own religious views was not at all the SecDef’s style—“Rumsfeld was old-fashioned that way,” Shaffer acknowledged when I contacted him about the briefings—but it was decidedly Bush’s style, and Rumsfeld likely saw the Scriptures as a way of making a personal connection with a president who frequently quoted the Bible. No matter that, if leaked, the images would reinforce impressions that the administration was embarking on a religious war and could escalate tensions with the Muslim world. The sheets were not Rumsfeld’s direct invention—and he could thus distance himself from them, should that prove necessary.

So this is why I never again want a "true believer" as president. Bush was too easily manipulated. Convinced he had a calling from God, he shunned diplomacy, rushed to war, and was simply reckless.

It's a miracle we didn't all die in a big mushroom cloud.

The Big Partisan Smokescreen

The Republicans don't understand that torture is not a partisan issue. Take that old Newt Gingrich for example. Does he honestly believe that if he can prove that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about torture, then everybody will forget about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay S. Bybee, and William Haynes?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is engaging in a "despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort" to withhold what she knew about the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday.

Gingrich said Pelosi "lied to the House" when she earlier claimed that the CIA had never briefed her about the Bush administration's use of interrogation methods like waterboarding, which is considered torture by the current administration.

"I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don't think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," the Republican leader said in an interview with ABC Radio.

Pelosi has been under fire from critics who say she was fully briefed on the techniques in 2002 and 2003. On Thursday, the California Democrat accused CIA officials of misleading her, reiterating a claim that she was briefed on such techniques only once -- in September 2002 -- and that she was told at the time that the techniques were not being used.

I know torture is abhorrent and illegal, and this is not about politics. You can't fool me, persuade me, calm me, or dazzle me with your smokescreens or a million "provocative" editorials. Even if Pelosi did know about torture (and I doubt she did), then we, the torture opponents, do not lose the argument! This is not like Clinton and blow jobs. This is not about getting even with the Republicans. This is about pursuing justice even if it's our highest officials who are guilty.

So yes, Mr. Gingrich. Let's gather up everybody who has lied to the House and the American public about torture and war and weapons of mass destruction. Let's investigate all of them.

Cheney Rats Out Bush

I was counting on this happening eventually, but I thought it would come as the result of a criminal investigation. Vincent Bugliosi explained how and why Bush administration officials would start ratting each other out:

What I'm saying is that even people of character aren't usually loyal to each other when their own life is on the line. But these moral weaklings will all probably sing like canaries against each other, since they all appear to be almost amoral individuals who are devoid of any character. If they are willing to lie to the American public about a matter of war and peace that resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people, certainly they'd be willing to tell the truth to save their worthless hides from the gas chamber or electric chair. Indeed, I suspect that the prosecutor's biggest problem won't be to get them to talk to save their lives, but to make sure they don't embroider the truth and start telling lies in an effort to get a better deal from the prosecutor.

Well, they're starting to sing even without any prosecutor (if video doesn't show, click here):

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Time to Prosecute for Torture

Last week the Justice Department released detailed memos describing the brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The documents are the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the Bush administration's top-secret program.

The precise bureaucratic standards include instructions for forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls (walling), prolonged sleep deprivation (up to 11 straight days), the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees, being locked in a cramped box with an insect, and waterboarding.

Since the release of these documents, the torture debate has reached a crescendo that is impossible to ignore yet difficult to listen to.

There is, of course, former Vice President Dick Cheney who months ago calmly and shamelessly admitted to authorizing torture because he really thinks it works. He'd like us to believe that waterboarding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) 183 times was a worthwhile endeavor, but counter-terrorism experts are contradicting his claims saying most of the information KSM coughed up during the waterboarding sessions involved things he thought his interrogators already knew, or were just his ideas for mayhem. Also, there is the inconvenient fact that the Bush timeline shows the LA plot was thwarted long before KSM was caught and waterboarded.

Then there are the cries of Former Attorney Michael Mukasey and former CIA director Michael Hayden. One imaginative claim from the duo is that the no-torture policy is inviting "the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11, 2001." However, history isn't a Gumby toy they can bend into any pose they like. The cumulative failures leading up to the attack on September 11, 2001 are well documented and have nothing to do with timidity and everything to do with incompetence.

Mukasey and Hayden also want us to believe that we shouldn't admit to torture because then the terrorists will know we torture! First of all, terrorists would also know this if they listened to the news or picked up any newspaper in the last 6 years. Secondly, I don't think knowledge of a US government document will ease any man's panic while being drowned. Thirdly, because the US is committed to lawful interrogation techniques now, it won't matter if detainees know about banned procedures.

Listening to this ongoing debate is like sitting through a remedial math class where everybody has to relearn that two plus two is four. Indeed, the Bush administration might have also been wise to sit through a remedial history class. In a shocking article, the New York Times asserts that nobody in the Bush administration investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate:

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.

So there you have it. Our ineffectual and barbaric program of torture was created out of ignorance and enthusiasm. It's also illegal. Why are we still debating this shit? There's nothing left to debate. It's time to prosecute.

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Boom to Bushville

Behold the Internet version of the angry mob in this flickr album's comment section! Over on YouTube the crowd is slightly less frightening, but it's amazing anybody has the stamina to view the 10 minute dull prattle of an oppressed wealthy man and still post incensed yet witty comments. See if you can pass the endurance test:



I really only gathered a few things from the above video. TigerHawk sees himself as a member of the Better Class, looks down on people who make less money, and thinks small businesses create "lame jobs." Bizarre threats of Going John Galt are beyond belief because if these presumably educated tycoons were so bloody smart they would understand how our tax system works. All of your income is not taxed at the same rate. The TigerHawks of the country will only pay another 3 cents on the dollar for the income they earn over $250K! To shut down your business or even turn away customers is absurd.

You want to know who I feel sorry for? The families living in Bushvilles. These are the new shanty towns -- named after George W. Bush just like Hoovervilles were named after President Herbert Hoover. Hey, if we're going to relive history, let's make sure we understand it. There's a lot of bull going around that somehow FDR prolonged or even created the Great Depression. Writer Jonathan Chait tackles this new chapter of revisionist history:

Moreover, the classic right-wing critique fails to explain how the economy recovered at all. In one of his columns touting Shlaes, George Will observed that "the war, not the New Deal, defeated the Depression." Why, though, did the war defeat the Depression? Because it entailed a massive expansion of government spending. The Republicans who have been endlessly making the anti-stimulus case seem not to realize that, if you believe that the war ended the Depression, then you are a Keynesian.

I don't know what the Republicans will do when the public figures out that the Democrats' policies have been historically good for economic growth and all these Republican obstructionist battles over President Barack Obama's budget are a blatant sham.

Homegrown Terrorists

Republicans tell us they have kept us safe and there have been no terrorist attacks in the US since September 11, 2001. But what do you call this? In Miramar Beach, Florida, Dannie Roy Baker shot 5 people killing two of them. Baker had a recent history of e-mailing friends about national political issues. One recipient described the e-mails as "radical" and "inappropriate."

Another acquaintance of Baker commented, "he did come up to me one time and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant in my house to get them out." Baker fits my definition of a hateful homegrown terrorist. His demented dreams of creating fear in a group of people through violence and intimidation with the goal of promoting his own ideology unfortunately came to reality last Thursday.

Some people might simply call Baker an "angry white male." Strangely, we didn't hear much about this species during eight years of the Bush administration. Glenn Greenwald points out that this group is not so much fueled by anti-government sentiment but more so by a fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy:

What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

The angry white male is only pacified when one of his own tribe is in the White House.

Unfortunately the angry tribe has its own political party which is proving itself to be completely out of touch with the American public and reality. Tonight the Daily Show covered the endless hate and malice spewed at last week's CPAC (if video doesn't show, click here):

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CPAC After Party

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Though Jon Stewart is awesome, I can't laugh. I can't laugh at the CPAC audience laughing at a nuclear bomb being dropped on Chicago. The whole joke -- based on misquoting President Obama -- was too disturbing. The Republicans are cheering for another terrorist attack in the US. And I fear they are trying to inspire such an attack. This is the new Republican Nihilism.

Because they say socialism is the enemy, or "islamofascism" is the enemy, or immigration is the enemy, they are moved to broadcast creepy fantasies about a coming civil war. It's only a matter of time before more disturbed people take these war games as prophecy. Now I know what Republicans really imagine when they say they want Obama to fail.

I keep waiting for somebody in the Republican party to stand up and stop this vitriol for the sake of the nation.

The Whistles Are Blowing

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking Thirteen..." — George Orwell, 1984

On this bright cold day in January, two days after the Bush presidency ended, whistleblower Russel Tice has come forward alleging that the NSA, under the direction of George W. Bush, spied on everyone, specifically targeting journalists. Keith Olbermann reported last night (if video doesn't show, click here and you can also watch part 2 here):

So let's think back and remember when Bush told us that his administration was not using the Patriot Act to violate civil rights. After all, "a wiretap requires a court order," Bush said. At least he demonstrated that he understood FISA. Of course, the liar had no intentions of following that law, but he understood it.

This news is being called a bombshell, but who is really surprised at this point? The Bush administration was not just wiretapping terrorists. They were not just wiretapping overseas communications. They were spying on Americans, specifically journalists.

There exists a segment of the population who might say, "so what?" But let's think about what this news means. They wiretapped journalists. They kept tabs on who and what reporters were investigating. They could identify potential whistleblowers. And certainly, private communications reveal private information. In other words, this is the stuff the government could smear and blackmail with.

And though Tice made no mention of this, who doubts that Bush was spying on members of Congress? What information did he have? What was he going to do with it? And does this revelation point to why Pelosi took impeachment "off the table"?

What else could Bush and friends do with everyone's communications? Corporate espionage to benefit his cronies? Just guessing. I'm not afraid to make these wild guesses, because everything I've vaguely suspected about the Bush administration has slowly been verified. I'm wondering what more will come out in the next year, and I wonder if any of it will shock me...

Here is some good news -- if we're not too cynical to believe it -- Dennis Blair, the man President Obama has nominated to head national intelligence, promised there would be no torture and no warrantless wiretapping on his watch. This is a good start.