Let the sliming begin -- Part Neuf

Well, here's an interesting twist on Barack the Secret Moooslim, courtesy of Digby over at Hullabaloo:

I must admit that even with my dark and unrelenting cynicism toward the media that I'm a little bit shocked to see op-ed pieces appear in quick succession in two of the nation's most prestigious newspapers calling Barack Obama a "Muslim Apostate." They don't make the assertion that Obama is a Muslim, which he certainly isn't, only that Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists consider him one since his father was "born a Muslim." This apparently means that bin Laden will be able to rally the Muslim world against America because Obama has abandoned the true faith.

I'm sure I don't need to explain how silly this is. The last I heard bin Laden wasn't exactly enamored of any of us Murkins, so I find it hard to believe that this news will make him even more hostile than he already is. It's absurd on its face. So why are the Christian Science Monitor and the NY Times printing similar op-eds on the topic? I don't know.

Digby goes on:

Now, most people, even on the right, reject this stupid story about Obama being a Muslim (although they are picking up little pieces of it in interesting ways.) But this new twist is quite clever. It suggests that while Obama may not practice Islam, in the eyes of bloodthirsty terrorists he is a Muslim who has forsaken the religion and, therefore, is loathed even more than your average infidel.

So, for the email rubes, he is just a straight-up Muslim in league with terrorists. For the elites who read the Times and the Monitor, he's not a Muslim per se, but terrorists think he is and so they're going to unleash Armageddon on us and who needs that? Either way, that Muslim heritage is just a little bit too different for for us to be able to fully trust this man in these troubled times.

Do read Digby's whole article.

The mission is clear: "Take him out any way you can. Whatever it takes." Doesn't matter how absurd, fact-free, or even contradictory (as we saw, sadly, from the Kerry Swift-boating).

And it's just starting. Can you even imagine what it's going to become like, as the election nears and the RW tools get really desperate?

What was the "specific intent"?

The infamous Yoo/Bybee defence of torture contains, amongst other things, the claim that torture (under 18 USC § 2340) is a crime of "specific intent", and thus it is not torture if the "intent" was not to cause the severe pain or suffering prohibited by § 2340(A), but rather, let's say, just to have a friendly chat and extract a few confessions. Here's some commentary on that:

I. THE TORTURE MEMO: FAULTY AND RECKLESS

Numerous legal scholars have systematically deconstructed the shoddy reasoning of the Torture Memo. I will not restate their analyses. I will instead focus on the sections of the Torture Memo where Yoo and Bybee's advice appears to be reckless given the end to which it was to be used. Before doing so, however, I will explain the nature of the task in which Yoo and Bybee were engaged.

The Torture Memo begins by analyzing the definition of torture as implemented in 18 U.S.C. § 2340(A). To violate section 2340(A), the statute requires that (1) the torture occurred outside the United States; (2) the defendant acted under the color of law; (3) the victim was within the defendant's custody or control; (4) the defendant specifically intended to cause severe physical or mental pain or suffering; and (5) the act inflicted severe physical or mental pain or suffering. Yoo and Bybee were asked by the White House to focus on the fourth and fifth elements.

Yoo and Bybee first define "specific intent" very narrowly. They write, "In order for a defendant to have acted with specific intent, he must expressly intend to achieve the forbidden act . . . . [Knowledge alone that a particular result is certain to occur does not constitute specific intent]." Their definition presents a gross simplification of a complex issue. As the Levin memo -- which ultimately superseded the work of Yoo and Bybee -- notes, "[i]t is well recognized that the term specific intent is ambiguous and that the courts do not use it consistently." The prevailing view among criminal law practitioners is that a person acts with specific intent when he either desires the result of his conduct or the result is practically certain to follow from his conduct. In the Torture Memo, however, Yoo and Bybee equate specific intent with "purpose," without even acknowledging that their position could be perceived as legally controversial.

To be sure, lawyers can reasonably disagree about the meaning of "specific intent." More important is that in response to a request for guidance on interrogation procedures from the White House, Yoo and Bybee advised that "[e]ven if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite mens rea." In fact, Yoo and Bybee seemed to favor the infliction of pain on detainees when they note that information gained from suspected Al Qaeda personnel could prevent attacks equal or greater in magnitude to September 11th. Their implication is clear: because the Bush administration's goal is the security of the United States and not cruelty for cruelty's sake, good faith actions by interrogators to stop future terrorist attacks cannot be prosecuted as torture. Yoo and Bybee knew that their work would be used to shape interrogation policy, and yet they were indifferent as to how their legal advice would be applied in the real world by the Bush administration. The Pentagon ultimately relied on this advice to sanction extreme interrogation tactics including the use of deprivation of light, hooding, and even exposure to cold weather and water-boarding at Guantanamo Bay.

Then I saw this in today's S.F Chronicle:

A week after being paroled for bank robbery, Horace Bordelon returned to the same downtown Oakland bank and held it up again in 2004. His defense at trial? He robbed the bank only so he could return to the routine of prison life, so he didn't actually intend to steal any money.

The jury didn't buy it, and Bordelon was sentenced to 11 years in prison on a second-degree robbery conviction. A state appeals court rejected his appeal Thursday, saying his unique "institutionalization defense" was weak.

It also called Bordelon's first bank robbery "inartful" and said his second heist was done "ineptly."

"While defendant may have been hoping to get caught, he also might have been content to keep the money - a win/win situation from his point of view," Justice James Marchiano of the First District Court of Appeal wrote.

Marchiano said there was no evidence that Bordelon had planned to give the money back.

Further down:

Bordelon's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Tony Cheng, told jurors that the defendant "wanted to get caught holding the money so that he can go back to jail. He was not interested in keeping the money; he was not interested in getting away. He was interested in getting caught and getting arrested holding the money."

The attorney said Bordelon committed no crime and that his actions were "only a cry for help."

Looks like they can nail you for intent, even if you have different, more -- ummm, "benign" -- purposes as well. If you intended the forbidden result, other purposes don't matter.

But what was the point of the torture, as long as we're asking? DDay at Digby's Hullabaloo has some thoughts in this "MUST READ" article:

[R]ather than coming from a few bad apples at the various detention sites, there was a parallel process of improvisation and brainstorming happening at the highest levels. Before the activities were codified, the interrogators got to play Jack Bauer and draw up a wish list.

(Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo Diane) Beaver told me she arrived in Guantánamo in June 2002. In September that year there was a series of brainstorming meetings, some of which were led by Beaver, to gather possible new interrogation techniques. Ideas came from all over the place, she said. Discussion was wide-ranging [...]

Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo Bay, Beaver said, "he gave people lots of ideas." She believed the series contributed to an environment in which those at Guantánamo were encouraged to see themselves as being on the frontline - and to go further than they otherwise might [...]

The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A wan smile crossed Beaver's face. "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached."

However, an authoritarian Administration was not going to let the sexually aroused grunts drive this policy. In fact, proxies to the highest-ranking officials in the executive branch went on a field trip to carry out their boss' desires.

Dunlavey told me that at the end of September a group of the most senior Washington lawyers visited Guantánamo, including David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, Gonzales and Haynes. "They brought ideas with them which had been given from sources in DC." When the new techniques were more or less finalised, Dunlavey needed them to be approved by Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, his staff judge advocate in Guantánamo. "We had talked and talked, brainstormed, then we drew up a list," he said. The list was passed on to Diane Beaver." [...]

Beaver confirmed what Dunlavey had told me, that a delegation of senior lawyers came down to Guantánamo well before the list of techniques was sent up to Washington. They talked to the intelligence people, they even watched some interrogations. The message from the visitors was that they should do "whatever needed to be done", meaning a green light from the very top - from the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the CIA.

The interrogators were allowed some jollies in the idea formation phase, but once the rules were put in place, it was Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush - their top deputies, sitting around and WATCHING live interrogations, and demanding that the most strenuous techniques be employed, going around Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers, whose bitterness suggests he was a key source for the ABC story.

So was this a "win/win situation" for Addington, Yoo, Haynes, Cheney, and Dubya?

The first "Stoopid? Or Evil? You Decide!" contest

All right, folks, let's give our two first contestants a big hand as they come out, vying today for the titles of "Evil" or "Stoopid":

* * * * *

Our first contestant is Sen. Joseph Lieberman ("CT-for-meeeeee" Party-CT):

On right-winger Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) expressed his openess to bombing Iran, saying that there is “an appeal to it.” Discussing the West Virginia primary results, Bennett praised what he claimed was Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) transformation into his “style” of politician, which he said is someone who “throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran.”

Lieberman whole-heartedly endorsed the “appeal” of the hawkish caricature Bennett had created:

BENNETT: Listen, I give her credit. She has found her…three things. She’s found her voice. He is very much in the background now, it’s not this, you know, ventriloquial thing, it’s definitely her voice.

LIEBERMAN: That’s true.

BENNETT: And Joe, you know, this is my style. This is a girl who puts on her pearls, goes down, throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran, you know. This is…lookout Mrs. Bennett, this is my kind of girl.

LIEBERMAN: Hehehe, it does have an appeal to it.

(h/t to ThinkProgress for this nomination)

* * * * *

And in the other corner, we have the father of the eponymous FU, the "Friedman Unit", Mr. Thomas Friedman himself:

Today's a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most Serious foreign policy expert, the brilliant Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has today declared our latest new war:

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.

So congratulations to us. After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our New Soviet Union. Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that it's a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III . . . the third great totalitarian challenge in the last, you know, 60 years," and which he today defines this way (featuring an amazingly disingenuous use of parenthesis):

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."

Friedman laments that "Team America" -- that's really what he calls it -- "is losing on just about every front."

(h/t to Glenn Greenwald for this nomination)

More supporting affidavits from Glenn:

There's a reason that Friedman occupies the place he does in America's foreign policy establishment. He's perfectly representative of it. It's an establishment in perpetual search of an Enemy and the next war. And finding it (or creating it) is the one thing they do well.

Friedman spent months before the invasion of Iraq continuously supporting and cheering it on based on righteous appeals to the transformational values of freedom and democracy. But once the invasion was complete, he unmasked himself, acknowledging in that NPR interview that the real purpose of the invasion was that the U.S. had to send a message to Muslims generally and "sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message."

That admission was accompanied by Friedman's 2003 "epiphany" on The Charlie Rose Show that the invasion of Iraq was "unquestionably worth doing" because "looking back, I now feel I understand more what the war was about."

* * * * *

So those are the candidates, folks. What will it be: Lieberman "Evil" and Friedman "Stoopid"? Or the other way around?

Wait while we count the votes ... ummm, hmmmm ... hmmMMMmmm ... no, you can't vote both of them both "Evil" and "Stoopid"; I don't have enough trophies to go around....

"I have a dream...."

So McSame gave some speech this morning -- carried, of course, for free on all the cable news channels except the financially oriented CNBC -- and started talking of his vision for five years from now.

I think his speechwriters were trying to emulate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream..." speech.

But it didn't exactly come out that way. As one review commented:

Throughout the speech, McCain spoke in the present tense -- listing accomplishment after accomplishment, as if were giving the speech four years from now, at the end of his first term.

He kept imagining the wonders that would ensure if people would just vote for him (from the link above):

By January 2013, McCain envisions Americans welcoming home "most of the servicemen and women" who have served in Iraq.

McCain said the Iraq war will be won; Iraq will be a functioning democracy, and any lingering violence will be "spasmodic and much reduced." He envisions the disbanding of the Iraqi militias, the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq; a professional and competent Iraqi security force -- and a functioning and authoritative Iraqi government.

America will have a small military presence in Iraq, he said, but U.S. troops will not play a direct combat role.

(Editor's note: Much of the applause for McCain's speech seemed perfunctory. At some points, McCain paused, apparently waiting for the clapping to begin.)

By the end of McCain's first term, "there's no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven," he said. There will be no major terror attacks in the U.S. during his first term, he predicted.

McCain said the U.S. and its allies will have made great progress in achieving nuclear security. "The prospect of nuclear materials in the hands of terrorists has been vastly diminished," he said.

... but not explaining how these wonders would come to pass thanks to his ascension.

More daydreams:

McCain also mentioned a "newly formed League of Democracies" that will act where the United Nations has failed to act -- in Sudan and in other places where gross human rights abuses are happening.

He predicted robust economic growth, a reduction in the corporate tax rate, a low capital gains rate. He said an elimination of tax loopholes and "corporate welfare" will "spur innovation and productivity and encourage companies to keep their operations and jobs" in the U.S.

The DNC wasn't impressed either.

My impression, listening to as much of this broadcast-for-free spew as I could stand, was that we ought to label this -- not McSame's "I have a dream..." speech -- rather the McSame "I'm on drugs..." speech.... Or perhaps the "Hey, you guys, I just had this really awesome 'wet dream' fantasy, wait till I tell ya about it..." speech.


Update

ThinkProgress reports that others saw it exactly the same way:

One reporter told McCain that his speech sounded more like “a magic carpet ride.” Taking issue with that characterization, McCain said, “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy.”

Yeah. That's another way to describe it.... I think he was fantasizing about bin Laden being brought to justice somewhere in there as well. Why not two chickens in every pot too? That one worked real well last time....

Living your philosophy

The Rethuglicans are the "Party of Fear". So they ought to be able to handle this:

A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the once-dominant House Republicans reeling from their third special-election defeat of the spring.

Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat who serves as Prentiss County chancery clerk, defeated Southaven Mayor Greg Davis by 54 percent to 46 percent in the race to represent Mississippi's 1st Congressional District, which both parties considered a potential bellwether for the fall elections.

Democrats said the results prove that they are poised for another round of big gains in the November general elections, and they attacked the Republican strategy of tying Democrats to Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination, saying it had failed for a second time in 10 days in the Deep South. Democrat Don Cazayoux won the special election for a GOP-held House seat in Louisiana on May 3.

"No one could have imagined the tsunami that just crashed on Republicans in Mississippi," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview after the victory. "There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates."

House Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sounded an alarm for all GOP candidates "to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall" while lashing themselves to the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Go ahead, lash away. ;-)

We're gonna lash McSame to Dubya as well. You can all go swirling down together. Then you'll see what real lashing is....

Let the sliming begin -- Part Huit

Fuhhhh-neeeeee..... Not.

There's so much other stuff too, it's hard to keep up. But nice to see some people put their rhetorical robes on.

(h/t to ThinkProgress for bringing to people's attention this latest beautiful example of human nature)


Update

Darrin Bell's insightful comic strip "Candorville" has the best answer to all that foofrah about the Rev. Wright "controversy" that the M$M has been peddling (doing yeoman work for the GOP race-baiters without even getting paid). It starts on the May 5th strip and goes on from there (click the ">>" icon for subsequent strips)


Update 2

Tony Blankeley puts on the robes too. He's just too stoopid to realise it.... Sadly, No! vivisects him expertly:

Tony Blankley, that “fish-eyed sack of loathsome bile and infamy,”¹ is gracing the pages of the Moonie Times with a column arguing that one of the legitimate reasons to vote against Obama is because he’s black:

"In this unprecedented election year we run the risk of having two conversations: a polite, public one that uses euphemisms or evasions about race, and a nasty private one that is likely to dredge up the worst within us — the conversation that won’t be on television, but will be on the internet and on the subway and wherever people congregate to chat. I would argue that the more honest the public conversation is, the less virulent the private one will be."

I’m not buying this. Saying publicly that Obama is a scary Negro who will play hoops in the Rose Garden while the U.S. burns isn’t going to make the private conversations less virulent. Blankley is just looking for an excuse to say in public, with a smile on his face, that he doesn’t want a porch monkey in the Oval Office.

"And therein I respectfully dissent from the comments last week by my friend and former Reagan White House colleague, Peggy Noonan — who argued that it was 'vulgar' and destructive of the body politic to talk about race. … Vulgar? Yes, I will give Peggy that. But democratic politics is inherently vulgar."

And you thought I was exaggerating when I said the Blankley was getting ready to call Barack a porch monkey.

"[W]hat are we to make of the fact that Barack Obama’s African father causes him to be seen as the first African American or black nominee for president? … [F]or a larger number of voters there exists some extra resistance to voting for someone who — on the surface — seems different. This is race (or other demographic) consciousness — but not straight out bigotry."

Saying that extra resistance based on skin color isn’t bigotry but is “race consciousness” is like saying that putting blacks in the back of the bus isn’t racism but is simply a “passenger sorting technique.”

Like I said, these people just don't "get it". This all comes natural to them, like sh*tting, and they never sit and think about what their thoughts and actions mean ... or whether the stuff that comes out stinks.

Friday fishblogging

Is the primary season over? Is it safe to come out?

For reference, arc-eye hawkfish, Moorea, July 7, 2007, Nikon D70s with twin Ikelite DS-125 strobes, 105mm macro Nikkor lens, 1/25th @ F/11 [click picture for larger image]

"Dumb and ... dumbest"?!?!?

... or is it just feeding red meat to the far RW foamer contingent....

With the "straight-talking" McCain, it's hard to tell whether it's pandering ... or just a "senior moment", ignerrence, sublime eedjitcy, or worse.

ThinkProgress reports that McCain's trying for foreign policy gutterballs:

McCain, seeking to make “his most comprehensive statement” yet on foreign policy, declared that Russia should be kicked out of the G8, of which it has been a member since 1997:

We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.

Why McCain thinks that sucking up to RW kooks is going to get him elected is beyond me.

And just for McCain's information, Russia is one of the world's biggest petroleum and natural gas producers ... not that this little nugget of actual fact has anything to do with the issue of whether we ought to go gratuitously dumping Russia from the G-8 because the RW foamers still think that Russia is ... well, Russia ... you know, Rooskies....

More from the ThinkProgress post:

But, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, McCain is already backing away from that idea because it was “greeted with alarm by some Republican supporters and wariness by important U.S. allies.”

Hey! Over there! Looky! It's an angry black minister....

Go read the rest; it's pretty bone-numbingly stoopid.

A half a decade ago

We had "Mission Accomplished".

The lying, dissembling sack'o'sh*te that calls herself "Dana Perino" tried to pretend that Dubya didn't mean what everyone knows he meant. But her story (that Dubya was just talking about "mission accomplished" for the folks on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln as it returned to port) is easily demolished, as ThinkProgress points out (from the link):

In fact, regardless of Perino’s attempts to amend the banner, it’s clear what Bush meant. Just a month after his speech on the U.S.S. Lincoln, he also spoke to troops in Qatar: “America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.”

So five years ago, May 1st, we had 140 dead soldiers in Iraq. Today, we have 4065. 96+% of the deaths have happened since that brave "photo-op".

I said during the first days of the Iraq war (on Mar. 30th, 2003) that we'd have more soldiers killed during the occupation than during the initial war. I said probably "many more". I was wrong. Wrong on the wrong side. Almost all of the soldiers have been killed during the occupation, after Dubya's stoopid "Mission Accomplished" blustering and posturing. Sometimes I hate being wrong. Today is one such day....

Cheers,

Rejoice! "Islamo-fascism" is defeated!

The maladministration has issued new "talking points" to the RW "noise machine". From the S.F. Chronicle:

Don't call them jihadists any more.

And don't call al-Qaida a movement.

The Bush administration has launched a new front in the war on terrorism, this time targeting language.

Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as "jihadists" or "mujahedeen," according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Lingo like "Islamo-fascism" is out, too.

Here's the new rulz, as reported by the AP:

The memo, originally prepared in March by the Extremist Messaging Branch at the National Counter Terrorism Center, was approved for diplomatic use this week by the State Department, which plans to distribute a version to all U.S. embassies, officials said.

"It's not what you say but what they hear," the memo says in bold italic lettering, listing 14 points about how to better present the war on terrorism.

"Don't take the bait," it says, urging officials not to react when Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida affiliates speak. "We should offer only minimal, if any, response to their messages. When we respond loudly, we raise their prestige in the Muslim world."

"Don't compromise our credibility" by using words and phrases that may ascribe benign motives to terrorists.

Some other specifics:

• "Never use the terms 'jihadist' or 'mujahedeen' in conversation to describe the terrorists. ... Calling our enemies 'jihadis' and their movement a global 'jihad' unintentionally legitimizes their actions."
• "Use the terms 'violent extremist' or 'terrorist.' Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy."
• On the other hand, avoid ill-defined and offensive terminology: "We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims."

Looks like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Weine... -- ummm, sorry, "Savage", and their ilk -- are going to have to find some other derogatory and inflammatory terms. After all, if the rulz don't specifically prohibit something, it's not prohibited. And we have to daemonise our Enemies....

Déjà vu all over again....

"The Baddies have nukes! They're gonna kill us! We have pictures to prove it!!!"

As Glenn Greenwald reports (and as reported on page 2 of todays S.F. Chronicle), the maladministration claims the Syrians are trying to get nukular weapons. And the news report it just the same way they fell all over themselves for the Powell U.N. presentation in 2002.

Here's Glenn:

This Associated Press article, for instance, is 32 paragraphs long, yet it contains little other than unchallenged assertions by the Bush administration, using the now-familiar media conventions for disseminating government claims -- i.e., quoting administration accusations without challenge and then granting completely unwarranted anonymity to "intelligence officials" to echo those accusations:

The White House said Thursday that North Korea did secret work on a nuclear reactor with Syria...

Seven months after Israel bombed the site, the White House broke its silence and said North Korea assisted Syria in a secret nuclear program...

While calling North Korea's nuclear assistance to Syria a "dangerous manifestation" of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and its proliferation activities, the White House said ...

The United States became aware North Korea was helping Syria with a nuclear project in 2003, said intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity...

The critical intelligence that cemented that conclusion, they said, came last year: dozens of photographs taken from ground level over a period of time, showing the construction both inside and outside the building...

The Israeli strike on Sept. 6, 2007, ripped open the structure and revealed even more evidence to spy satellites: reinforced concrete walls that echoed the design of the Yongbyon reactor...

The alleged Syrian nuclear reactor was within weeks or months of being functional, a top U.S. official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter...

But the U.S. official said the reactor was similar in design to a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which has produced small amounts of plutonium, the material needed to make powerful nuclear weapons...

The White House also used its statement as an opportunity to denounce the nuclear activities of Iran, which it says is a threat to the stability of the Middle East.

... and my first reaction was, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ... ummm, uhh, ahhh ... won't get fooled again."

I recall at the time that there was some scepticism of the claim that the building was a nuclear facility.

Haven't we been through this (the "dog and pony" show) before? How'd that work out?

In today's print S.F. Chronicle, the headline reads "U.S. asserts North Korean link to Syria", and says:

"Seven months after Israel bombed the reactor, the White House broke its silence and said North Korea assisted Syria's secret nuclear program and that the destroyed facility was not intended for 'peaceful purposes'."

"Israel bombed the reactor" is asserted as fact, not as something the maladministration claimed.

Cursory denials from Syria were reported later by the AP:

Syria denies US nuclear allegations

Friday, April 25, 2008

PDT DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syria's government is denying U.S. allegations that it was involved in a clandestine nuclear program with North Korea.

The government is accusing Washington of misleading Congress about the country's nuclear activity.

Syria's statement Friday also alleges that the U.S. aided Israel in its bombing of a purported nuclear facility seven months ago.

The Bush administration said Thursday that North Korea was secretly assisting work on a nuclear reactor in Syria and the facility destroyed by Israel was not intended for "peaceful purposes.

But that wasn't in the papers. Instead, we have maladministration claims repeated without comment. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

* * * * *

Then there's this (from Glenn's post above):

[T]he IAEA is condemning both Israel and the U.S. -- Israel for the unilateral attack on Syria without even asking the IAEA to inspect the facility (an inspection Syria would have been required by the NPT to allow), and the U.S. for withholding from the IAEA its claimed evidence of Syrian nuclear activities.

That reminds me. UNSCR 1441 required all parties (including Iraq) that had relevant information on Iraq's alleged WoMD to turn that material over to the U.N. The U.S. harped on the reticence of the Iraqis to do so (despite the fact that Iraq did so by the deadline imposed in December of 2002, prompting the U.S. to say they had turned over "too much", some 12,000 pages, supposedly in an effort to snow the U.S. in paperwork or to obscure any real shenanigans in mountains of fluff). But the U.S. violated its obligations under UNSCR 1441, refusing to turn over its information despite repeated requests from Blix and el Baradei. They delayed for months, and when they finally did so, the U.N. inspectors looked at it, checked it out, and termed it "garbage, garbage, and more garbage"....

Dem's the facts. This should be better known.

By their deeds shall ye know them....

I've pointed out the roots of today's Republican party.

But every once in a while, they just take off their robes for all to see. ThinkProgress reports:

Conservative House Candidate In Indiana Defends Speaking To Nazi Group On Hitler’s Birthday

On Sunday, Tony Zirkle — who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana’s 2nd Congressional district — delivered a speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP) on the 119th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth. At the event, Zirkle “stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background.”

Asked by reporters why he spoke to a group like ANSWP, which refers to itself as “the largest and most active pro-white organization in America,” Zirkle said he’ll “speak before any group that invites me,” adding that he’s even “spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta.”

Zirkle told The News-Dispatch that he doesn’t “know enough about the group” to say whether he agrees with it’s ideology or not:

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

Ya think maybe the swastika arm-bands and the picture of Adolph in the background might have tipped him off? Well, maybe not, he's a Republican....

And wow. Talking to blacks is like giving a speech to a bunch of Nazis?!?!? That good ol' "moral relativism" sneaking in, I guess. He's certainly a brave soul to actually speak to blacks.

Just one question...

As reported by ThinkProgress, torture is a spectator sport for the maladministration:

Addington, Gonzales Witnessed Gitmo Interrogations In 2002; Approved Of ‘Whatever Needs To Be Done’

Last month, ABC News revealed that President Bush’s most senior advisers approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days later, Bush confirmed to ABC he “approved” of the tactics.

In a forthcoming book, British international law professor Phillippe Sands further documents how the most extreme interrogation techniques — including stress, hooding, noise, nudity, and “dogs” — came directly from the White House and Pentagon.

Sands reveals that Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s lawyer Jim Haynes traveled to Guantanamo in 2002, witnessed an interrogation, and sent approval back to Washington. The “driving individual was Mr. Addington, who was obviously the man in control,” Sands said:

There was an extraordinary meeting held in September 2002, just before the techniques were to go up the chain of command, so to speak. [Gonzales, Addington, and Haynes] descended on Guantanamo, met with the combatant commander there Mike Dunlavey, watched some interrogations, and as I was told by Dunlavey and by his lawyer Diane Beaver, basically sent out the signal ‘do whatever needs to be done.’

The only question I have is: "Who brought the popcorn?"


Update

Since the CIA destroyed the tapes of the tortu... -- umm, sorry, "interrogations" -- under orders from the maladministration, maybe the defence lawyers that were looking to subpoena the tapes can subpoena Addington and Gonzales to testify instead....

Compare and contrast

From the Washington Post (via the S.F. Chronicle):

Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle.

"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi police officer captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al Qaeda, I will.' "

Nusairi, now free in Saudi Arabia, was unable to learn what drugs were injected before his interrogations. He is not alone in wondering: At least two dozen other former and current detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere say they were given drugs against their will or witnessed other inmates being drugged, based on interviews and court documents.

Like Nusairi, other detainees believe the injections were intended to coerce confessions.

The Defense Department and the CIA, the two agencies responsible for detaining terrorism suspects, both deny using drugs as an enhancement for interrogations and suggest that the stories from Nusairi and others like him are either fabrications or mistaken interpretations of routine medical treatment.

Yet the allegations have resurfaced because of the release this month of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees.

Written to provide legal justification for interrogation practices, the memo by then-Justice Department lawyer John Yoo rejected a decades-old U.S. ban on the use of "mind-altering substances" on prisoners. Instead, he argued that drugs could be used as long as they did not inflict permanent or "profound" psychological damage. U.S. law "does not preclude any and all use of drugs," wrote Yoo, now a law professor at UC Berkeley. He declined to comment for this article.

Compare:

18 USC § 2340:

Title 18, U.S. Code (Crimes and Criminal Procedure)
Chapter 113C (Torture)

Section 2340. Definitions

      As used in this chapter -

   (1) "torture" means an act committed by a person
 acting under the color of law specifically intended
 to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering
 (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful
 sanctions) upon another person within his custody or
 physical control;

   (2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the
 prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from -
     (A) the intentional infliction or threatened
   infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
     (B) the administration or application, or
   threatened administration or application, of
   mind-altering substances or other procedures
   calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or
     the personality;
     (C) the threat of imminent death; or
     (D) the threat that another person will
   imminently be subjected to death, severe physical
   pain or suffering, or the administration or
   application of mind-altering substances or
   other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly
   the senses or personality; and

   (3) "United States" includes all areas under the
 jurisdiction of the United States including any of
 the places described in sections 5 and 7 of this
 title and section 46501(2) of title 49.

Hey, CNN!!! Where's "Scooter"?

So FauxSnooze has hired Karl Rove to be a "contributor" (all the while refusing to point out that he's a McCain advisor ... not to mention all-round azo).

CNN, not to be outdone in a Rush To The Right, hires Tony Snow to try and attract the same foaming RW 28%ers that FauxSnooze has already got all sewn up.

Why, CNN? Didn't hiring the racist sack'o'sh*te (and RW foamer) Glenn Beck get you enough of the mental midget brigade?!?!?

I've got an idea: Why not hire convicted felons fresh from the maladministration in need of a job? There's a whole slew of them. "Affirmative Action" for Rethuglican crooks'n'liars, you see, one of the most "disadvantaged" groups around. I know "Scooter" Libby could use some love.....

Explaining to the brain-dead what we already knew

ThinkProgress brings us this tidbit:

Given the [National Defense university's] ties to the Defense Department, it’s therefore significant that it has chosen to publish a withering critique of the Iraq [war] written by Joseph J. Collins, a former senior Pentagon official who served under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Collins’s conclusions were based, in part, “on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations,” and were completed in fall 2007. From his study:

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle. […]

The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies has fallen. Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. […]

To date, the war in Iraq is a classic case of failure to adopt and adapt prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. After the major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate means for pursuing ambitious ends. It is also a case where the perceived illegitimacy of our policy has led the United States to bear a disproportionate share of the war’s burden.

No news to us there. But, the thought occurs to me:

Why is it that people only start to pay attention when the critic's a member of the "military establishment"? These are things that many people pointed out early on in the Iraq debacle, even beforehand. But they were dismissed by the M$M as "BDS" rantings, politically motivated and uninformed, by people of no competence to judge these things, if not outright "surrender monkeys", "friends of OBL", or worse. This, of course, is nonsense, at the very least proven by the fact that the "DFH"s (as well as those carping, disaffected Army folks) were right all along.

We knew WTF we're talking about, and the folks that pushed for the war (and the folks at the top that ran the war) didn't. Not a f*cking clue did they have. Do we really need them to admit error to finally say that the obvious result was a disaster? Sure, it helps to get the "conservatives" (and other that supposedly "actually know something of these things") to do so as well, but why should it even be necessary; they were once wrong, and they can keep on being wrong as long as they want ... as long as we ignore them and anything they say, and make sure none of them ever gets near a position of responsibility again.

"Mickey Mouse" journalism

Leave it to ABC, ground-breaking pioneer of such wonderful journalisming as "The Path to 9/11", to manage to put on what is easily the most horrible "debate" yet this primary season.

The S.F. Chronicle reports:

ABC News drew both impressive ratings and a heap of complaints about how Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos moderated the Democratic presidential debate, criticism that Stephanopoulos on Thursday called a sign of how much people care.

By Thursday evening, more than 16,800 comments were posted on ABC News' Web site, the tone overwhelmingly negative. A prominent TV critic, Tom Shales of the Washington Post, said Gibson and Stephanopoulos "turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

Translated from Beltway-Speak™ into English: "how much people care" means "how outraged and upset people were at the hack-job ABC did".

The Obama campaign, whose supporters were most angered by the debate, quickly sent out a fundraising appeal Thursday titled, "Gotcha." The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org said it would run an ad protesting ABC if 100,000 people signed their petition.

"Last night, I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people," Obama said at a rally in North Carolina on Thursday. "Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices."

That pretty much sums it up. Stephanopoulis and Gibson, OTOH, think that what's really important is whether you have a flag pin on your lapel.

Need to know what this all accomplished? Just pay attention to who was happy:

There was some positive feedback, with columnist David Brooks of the New York Times giving ABC News' performance an "A."

Maladministration flack and sycophant Brooks (who thinks he is in touch with the 'Merkun people if he goes to a Red Lobster) is quite happy about the debate. The questions he thought should be asked were asked. The questions that RW "Noise Machine"harpy Sean Hannity wanted asked got asked, ferchrisssake.....

I had the bad (or perhaps good) sense of timing to be leaving Philly in the hours before the debate, and being on a plane as the travesty unfolded. When I got to Salt Lake City, a bobblehead on CNN was explaining in a post-mortem that such questioning was necessary because the candidates didn't differ on the issues. How the would you know if you don't ask them about the issues, you bleating cud-chewer?

Perhaps the best commentary and analysis of this comes from the inestimable Digby over at Hullabaloo, in a piece on Glenn Greenwald's new book "Great American Hypocrites" (go buy it and read it):

The "issues" that Stephanopoulos and Gibson thought were of such interest to the Democratic primary electorate are the vaunted "character issues" which are pulled off the shelf in each successive election cycle and reused like an old winter blanket. These manufactured controversies are supposed to illustrate something important about the candidates --- indeed, journalists tout them as necessary to see if the candidates can "take it." Since the media see Republicans as being straight shootin' sons 'o guns who tell it like it is, there is no need to run them through the same meat grinder to find out if they are similarly "qualified."

It's absurd to think that Americans really care about flag pins or unreliable memories of a single event, (which have already been hashed out ad nauseum for weeks, by the way.) Of course they don't.

Glenn's book takes a nice long look at this phenomenon, examining the MSM's unabashed obsession with tabloid gossip and their eagerness to help the conservatives employ the death of 1000 trivial character slams, which we've all observed with slack-jawed incredulity over the past couple of decades. He carefully examines the long standing "Republicans are real men, Democrats are wimps" narrative that was consciously and carefully marketed to the mainstream media over the course of many years by the right wing propagandists. He takes us through the Dukakis campaign, through the bizarre case of Bill Clinton (where they feminized him by masculinizing his wife) to the recent atrocities of Gore and Kerry. It's not in the book, obviously, but we can see the same forces at work with Obama and Clinton just this past month.

The important thing to realize is that these themes have been completely internalized by the villagers. They really don't even question it anymore, it's completely natural to them. When you see George Stephanopoulos essentially explain that Democratic voters are choosing between an flaccid, unpatriotic "metrosexual" and a lying, delusional succubus, and it's simply his job to help them sort that out, you know that he's completely lost touch with what people actually need politics and government for. (It pays to remember that George made his bones by being the first in the media to use the word "impeachment" when Monica Lewinsky was revealed. He always knew which side his stale baguette was buttered on.)

Digby has a knack for getting to the heart of the situation, and the bolded part bears repeating.

Let the sliming begin -- Part Sept

Now Obama's a Commie! Here's the latest RW Mighty Wurlitzer "talking point"/meme as laid bare by ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol claimed that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) now-infamous “bitter” remarks were Marxist in nature. On Fox News’s Hannity And Colmes last night, former Bush adviser Karl Rove echoed Kristol’s over-the-top characterization, saying “it was almost Marxian“:

Karl Rove: I don’t find a lot of people in rural America, I certainly don’t find the dominant view to be — “I’m so bitter that I’m going to hold on to my gun or I’m gonna” — You know, it was almost Marxian in this they cling to their religion. I mean, you know, it’s sort of like it’s the opiate of the masses.

Not only that, but he's big, black, and scary. Boo!

In the "take your boots off ...

... your socks, your pants, your shirt, and all the rest of your clothes, and take a bath before you come in" department, we have this ... ummm, "nugget" ... from John McCain:

In full disclosure and frankness and candor and straight talk, the Maliki movement to Basra had a very big downside to it. As you know, we saw a thousand police and military desert their posts. But the rest of the military did a pretty good job, did a pretty good job. We did secure the port of Basra. Maybe I’m digging for the pony here.

"I know it's in here somewhere...."

(h/t to ThinkProgress)

In the "old news" department

TalkingPointsMemo reports this:

An intriguing pattern has emerged in two special elections for the House in Louisiana and Mississippi: Both of the candidates backed by the National Republican Congressional Committee have had a bit of a, shall we say, white supremacy issue.

This is not to say that the two are white supremacists -- rather, they have both flirted with organizations and/or people who are known for, at a minimum, dabbling rather heavily in such sentiments.

The Mississippi case is fairly straightforward -- the GOP candidate is a mayor who had once agreed to accept a gift to his city from a white supremacist group, then backed off. The Louisiana example is a lot more complicated, involving attempts to cover up payments connected to the infamous Klansman/Neo-Nazi David Duke.

Both seats were held by the GOP before resignations by incumbents set up the special elections -- and both are heavily contested and have attracted the attention of the national parties, especially the Louisiana contest.

For those that have have been sleeping for forty years, news flash: The Republicans have taken in the racist contingent in the U.S. into their party. David Duke, former head of the KKK, was the Republican candidate for governor in Louisiana, for those that still need a clue. That's your "Republican base"....

"Taxi to the Dark Side" now available on line

I recommended "Taxi to the Dark Side" previously as a "must see!"

You can go watch it here. Go now, and do the right thing. Tell your neighbours, tell your friends, too.


Update:

video.google.com is reporting that "[t]his video is currently not available. Please try again later." Sorry about that, folks, but keep trying, maybe they'll put it up again. Or just go rent it. They could use the love....

A little thing YOU (and everyone) can do

Please take a moment and visit this site:

Restore The Rule Of Law

I thank you for it, as does the ghost of Sir Thomas More, and good people everywhere.

Pass it on to your friends and neighbours too.


Update

Here's another one to visit (h/t to Digby and John Amato at Crooks'n'Liars)

Exporting kangaroo ... courts

Seems the "show trials" in Guantánamo have hit a little snag: Not enough lawyers. Who would have thunk it?:

When military officials announced war crimes charges against six detainees for the Sept. 11 attacks two months ago, the move was part of an effort to accelerate the Bush administration’s sluggish military commission system, which has yet to hold a single trial.

But the Sept. 11 case immediately hit a snag. Military defense lawyers were in short supply, and even now, two months later, not one of the six detainees has met his military lawyer.

Well, seeing as they forced out Col. Morris Davis, and Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, perhaps someone should have seen this coming.

But not to worry! Someone's on top of the problem. We're out-sourcing the kangaroo courts!:

Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.

The prosecutions are based in part on a security law promulgated in 1987, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

Why does all this sound familiar?

(h/t to ThinkProgress on these two N.Y. Times stories)

Why did this take so long to come out?

While it was no surprise to anyone with more than a dozen neurones and an eye on the news (in particular, Sy Hersh's work), we just have this just in:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

So why did this take so long to come out?

Simple answers to simple questions:

They knew what they were doing was wrong, and they didn't want anyone to know they did this. Nope, it was "just a few bad apples" that did the dirty work....

Don't believe me? Try this (from later in the article):

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

OK? Clear now?

(h/t to commentator AnnieW over at Glenn Greenwald's blog)

Irony is dead

The Dubya maladministration and the Rethuglicans have stoned it to death, beheaded it, and drawn and quartered the carcass.

From MSNBC, we have this:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.

On the other hand, we had this a while back:

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday formally recommended criminal contempt charges against former White House counsel Harriet Miers and chief of staff Joshua Bolten for their failure to comply with an investigation into the firing of eight US Attorneys.

The charges were presented in a resolution that, if passed by the House as a whole, would present a case for criminal proceedings to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. But the justice department has said it will not purse the charges because the White House has invoked executive privilege.

"Secrecy for me, but not for thee...."

"No kings"

The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States

We have no king. No sovereign.

Here's what John Yoo had to say in his memorandum as to the legality of torture as practised by the Dubya maladministration, though (from p. 11):

We discuss below several canons of construction that indicate that ordinary federal criminal statutes do not apply to the properly-authorized interrogation of enemy combatants by the United States Armed Forces during an armed conflict. These canons include the avoidance of constitutional difficulties, inapplicability of general criminal statutes to the conduct of the military during war, inapplicability of general statutes to the sovereign, and the specific governs the general. The Criminal Division concurs in our conclusion that these canons of construction preclude the application of the