Cheney's unwanted advice

When it comes to criticisms of foreign policy, neocons get to STFU.

Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant.

Surprising no one, Lindsey Graham resorts to fearmongering BS to lead the US into war

CBS Charlotte: South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s convinced that Syrian President Assad used chemical weapons on his own people.

Graham told reporters in Goose Creek on Tuesday that taking action against Syria in response to the situation is not a question of yes or no, but rather a question of bad or worse choices.

He says if there is no U.S. response, Iran will not believe America’s resolve to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Graham also says those nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could result in a bomb coming to Charleston Harbor.

This is just so wildly absurd, you really don’t know where to start. Let’s try the old tired and stupid “Iran could give nukes to terrorists” scare; no, Iran would not give nukes to terrorists. Ever. Why? Because the sort of terrorists Graham has in mind are unstable and unpredictable cultists who have no allegiance to nations. Handing them a nuke is handing a nuke to a potential enemy. The government of Iran is neither crazy nor stupid, so they’re going to keep any nukes under tight control.

And of course, there’s the little fact that Iran doesn’t actually have any nukes. And the idea that their nuclear research is for nuclear weapons is a matter of some debate. In fact, the Ayatollah — i.e., Iran’s “Supreme Leader” — has said that using nuclear weapons is a “big and unforgiveable sin.” So the “Iran is developing nuclear weapons” idea is entirely theoretical at this point.

Finally, assuming we could “block” anyone from developing nuclear weapons (North Korea, anyone?), what Iran thinks of our resolve would be irrelevant. In that scenario, they’d underestimate us and then we’d block their nuke program. Besides, which is more likely to pop into the Iranian leadership’s minds; the time we didn’t launch a limited strike against Syria or that one time we leveled Baghdad because Bush wanted to store up on “political capital?” If Iran needs proof that we’re freakin’ crazy enough to start swinging, I doubt that Syria is where they’d look to find back up for that assessment. We’ve got a long and dark history of jacking around with the lives of people in the middle east — a history that Iran is well aware of.

So if Graham really wants to make his case, he’s going to have to do a lot better than fearmongering fairy tales about Persian nukes in Charleston. Then again, as a neocon, he may not know any other way.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

In Senate draft resolution on Syria, McCain finally meets a military action he doesn’t like

Talking Points Memo: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Wednesday that he doesn’t support the Senate’s version of the resolution to authorize force in Syria, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt reported on air.

According to Hunt, McCain said that he’s opposed to the resolution because it “doesn’t make any reference to changing the momentum on the ground in Syria” and it also fails to arm the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group fighting the Assad regime there. The Arizona Republican indicated that several other senators share his misgivings about the resolution.

Although he left the door open to voting against the Syria resolution, McCain suggested Tuesday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that it would send a "seriously bad message" if Congress voted against taking military action. On Monday, McCain said it would be "catastrophic" if Congress failed to pass the resolution.

Ah yes, this is the old John McCain that all of us know and few of us love. If I were to boil this position down to one cogent point, it would be that McCain opposes this resolution precisely because it’s carefully drafted to avoid mission creep and escalation into all-out war. The resolution deals strictly with chemical weapons and McCain desperately wants us to join in the fighting with the rebels because that’s what John McCain does — if there’s a war going someplace without American involvement, McCain feels sad and left out, like the only kid not invited to a birthday party.

Of course, McCain’s dissatisfaction is the equivalent of the Peace-Lover’s Seal of Approval. Greg Sargent points out that “McCain refusing to support limited use of force resolution makes it easier for liberals and Dems to support it.” Politics is much more the art of the kneejerk contrarian than the art of the possible these days.

It’s tempting to suspect that this is McCain’s strategy to get more people on board with military action, but his reported unhappiness with the resolution is just so John McCain. He’s opposing the current draft because it’s not an open declaration of all-out war, not because he’s playing chess. He’s wanted to join in with the rebels for a very long time and if any action isn’t specifically designed to aid the rebels and topple Assad, McCain has no use for it.

McCain probably will vote for this in the end, but only because he’s settling for what, in his eyes, is the only possible alternative to doing nothing.

[photo via NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan]

By GOP standards, 74% of Americans are ‘soft on terror’

A Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans reject trying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev before a military tribunal, as “terror hawks” insist we absolutely must do.

And the rejection of a kangaroo court is bipartisan and across the board: 80% of Democrats, 72% of Republicans, and 73% of Independents agree that Tsarnaev should stand trial in a civilian criminal court.

Someone tell Lindsey Graham and John McCain. they’ll be interested to know that we’re all America-haters. Even 72% of Republicans “side with terrorists” on this one.

Report: “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” after 9/11

It’s ironic that one of the stories pushed off the front page by the Boston tragedy yesterday involved a report on the Bush administration’s brutal reaction to a similar tragedy.

New York Times: A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of President George W. Bush has often broken down on largely partisan lines. The Constitution Project’s task force on detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch — a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones — seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the torture question.

Not only would this make members of the Bush administration as guilty of war crimes as most realists have suspected, but it has almost certainly resulted in American deaths. Fighters who believe their enemies are torturers will fight to the death, rather than risk capture — meaning that many battles in Iraq and Afghanistan were lengthened by a torture-caused unwillingness to surrender among combatants.

It’s also very easy to recruit fighters when you’re fighting torturers, because torture itself is a sort of proof of evil — the good guys don’t torture.

And, of course, it’s stupid and pointless, as well as counterproductive:

The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

In other words, torture doesn’t magically turn people into truth-tellers.

There are a lot of people who deserve to be in prison over this. Unfortunately, that will almost certainly never happen. What we can do is keep this information and use it to make sure we never make the same mistake again. At heart, the torturer and the torture apologist are cowards. None of these people should ever be remembered as heroes.

[photo by World Can’t Wait]

Bush promised invading Iraq would bring ‘hope and progress into the lives of millions’

Was he right? Let’s have a look…

NBC News:

When the administration of President George W. Bush planned the invasion of Iraq, hopes ran high that the massive deployment of troops and money wouldn’t just result in the toppling of Saddam Hussein: The United States would help create a country that stood as an example to others. 

Ten years ago Tuesday, Bush announced military operations “to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” He warned that the coalition campaign “could be longer and more difficult than some predict,” but vowed to give the Iraqis a “united, stable and free country.”

In a speech only weeks earlier, the president had stressed that “a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions.”

In a televised statement to the nation, President George W. Bush announces “early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq.”

An estimated $61 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds later, reality has fallen short of these expectations.

An estimated 189,000 people — including Iraqi civilians, U.S. troops and journalists — were killed in the war in Iraq since 2003. The country is considered one of the most corrupt in the world, and many of the improvements promised have not materialized. Sectarian tensions regularly explode into open violence. 

And, of course, there’s the complete lack of anything remotely resembling “stockpiles” of WMD. So, I guess no. It’s been the big, stupid boondoggle/clusterfuck all the terr’ist-sympathizin’ peaceniks predicted it would be. Turns out we’ll be right about torture and warrantless surveillance, too. Reality has a liberal bias.

[photo via Dept. of Defense]

No, OWS will NOT be meeting with Ahmadinejad

Buzzfeed:

Occupy Wall Street protesters won’t be powwowing with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he arrives in New York for the U.N. General Assembly this week.

“Nobody in their right mind would meet with a fascist dictator like Ahmadenijad,” said Shawn Carrié, a longtime Occupy activist, in a direct message. “I think it’s been blown way out of proportion. There were some emails floating around on listservs about going to *protest* his appearance.”

“Anyway, it must be stressed that no one speaks for OWS,” Carrié said. “Any moron can go say they’re gonna go do something, but to say OWS meets with Ahmadinejad? That’s just ridiculous.”

So who’s saying that Occupy Wall Street was going to meet with Ahmadinejad? Conservatives, that’s who. Why would they be saying that? Because conservatives — even the supposedly “deep-thinker intellectual” types — are boobs. Observe (emphasis mine):

The Iranian news agency Fars News, which has close ties to the government, reported that “Ahmadinejad is also set to meet American university students, artists, intellectuals and elites, including Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist protestors, despite the ongoing efforts made by the pro-Zionist lobbies to prevent direct link between American people and the Iranian president.”

The Weekly Standard picked up the story this afternoon, writing that the Iranian dictator was going to meet with Occupy activists.

Those would be the super-serious smartypants conservatives I was talking about. The neocons (AKA militaristic “Cheney Republicans”). Turns out the neocon clown car is as packed with gullible fools in 2012 as it was in 2001, when they were absolutely certain Saddam had big piles of WMD.

And you would need to be astonishingly gullible, given Fars News’ track record. In 2007, they reported that squirrels were being used by America and Israel to spy on Iran.

I’m sure the people at The Weekly Standard were incredibly impressed by western squirrel technology, just as they were incredibly shocked that OWS would actually meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Same Day Liz Cheney Attacks Obama's 'Incompetence' Fighting Terrorism, Bernie Kerik Sentenced to 4 Years

Oh that Obama fella, he just sucks at fighting terrorism! So says big-time terrorism expert Liz Cheney, who introduced her dad to be urged to run for president at the big Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) -- AKA "Crazy People's Action Conference" -- today.

Huffington Post:

"There's no polite way to put this, but that kind of incompetence gets people killed," Cheney said, accusing the Obama administration of missing warnings from the intelligence community that Yemeni terrorists were plotting an attack.

"There is no doubt that the daily intelligence briefings that the president receives contained much more information on the threat from Yemen," she said, without a hint of irony at the failures of the Bush-Cheney years, bemoaning "incompetence, misjudgment and presidential neglect."

Here's something else fun that happened today:

New York Times:

Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was hailed as a hero alongside former Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and nearly became chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to four years behind bars Thursday for eight felonies.

Kerik admitted in November that he lied to the White House, filed false taxes and committed other crimes.

''The fact that Mr. Kerik would use that event (9/11) for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me,'' said federal Judge Stephen Robinson.

Yeah, you guys really had that whole fighting terrorism thing buttoned down, didn't you? You can shut up now.

Griper Blade: The Mad Neocon

If you ask Dick Cheney, changes in counter-terrorism tactics by the Obama administration mean we're all going to die in a big terrorist attack. And that's what CNN's John King did this weekend; ask Dick Cheney. As always, he was less than convincing. I don't think Dick's capable of excitement and this makes him a pretty bad liar -- his warning of the inevitable destruction of the world's first modern democracy was delivered in the same tone of voice he might use to talk about a flat tire. The destruction of America's unfortunate, of course, but that's just the way things are. No use getting all riled up about it.

Maybe Dick's like Cassandra, who was able to predict the future, but cursed in that no one would believe her. Why knock yourself out with histrionics if no one's going to buy it?

Another possibility is that Dick's not especially worked up over our oncoming doom because he knows it's a bunch of crap. That'd put him in the same boat as most of us, who also aren't extremely concerned about Cheney's doomsaying either. Other than the wingnut right who'll believe anything, we're all pretty sure that Dick's a BS dispenser and we don't lose a lot of sleep over his warnings.

There's a third possibility; that Dick believes what he says because he's a dangerous lunatic prone to paranoia. Cheney's not especially animated at the thought of another 9/11 because he's used to living in a world where disaster is always right around the corner. His lack of excitement doesn't indicate a lack of earnestness, it's just the consequence of living in constant fear... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Planet America

Things are looking good for former Bush administration officials. You wouldn't think this would be the case, looking at some of the news stories that have come out after they'd packed up their stuff and left the White House. But that'd be because you think rationally; that doesn't fly in DC anymore. Post-Bush, the nation's capital is still dominated by denial.

Sure, Bush was an abuser of the law and -- under the paranoiac Dick Cheney's guidance -- played a little fast and loose with legalities. But that doesn't mean he actually broke the law and, since we don't know for sure, we should probably forget the whole thing. When it comes to anti-Constitutional behavior, human rights abuses, and war crimes, it's probably best to ignore things -- no one wants to open up that whole can of worms. We used to say that no one was above the law, now we worry that upholding the law might be inconvenient or embarrassing. As it is now, some people are above the law -- but only if those people are members of the Bush administration.

Outside the US, people don't get this. They insist on bringing this stuff up over and over. Out in the big, wide world, they just don't get that the Bush administration gets a pass for anything and everything, because to do otherwise would be bad politics. Forgive and forget. Look forward, not backward. Let's move on. Some people don't get the simplicity of solving a problem by pretending it never happened.

Take David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University. As a former UN prosecutor, Crane is a citizen of that big, wide world and doesn't see things through the lens of political expediency and an insular American media. For Crane, the United States is not a separate planet in its own orbit and things that happen in one nation inform and set precedent for things that could -- and sometimes should -- happen in other nations.

In Crane's world -- which, admittedly, is that part of the world that isn't the US -- a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir means that other leaders could be held accountable for their crimes.

Crane says that the Bashir warrant "may even be extended to the former president George W. Bush, on the grounds that some officials in terms of his administration engaged in harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects which mostly amounted to torture." Turns out that when something's a war crime for one leader, it's a war crime for all leaders.

Crazy, huh?... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]


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Griper Blade: A Trickle When We Need a Flood

It's one of those good news/bad news things. Yesterday, the Justice Department released nine of the Bush administration's secret memos [all PDF] detailing legal opinions on the president's "War on Terror." What they reveal is a frightening disregard for American principles. Knowing that some of these memos would eventually come out, the Bush administration renounced the arguments put forward in them -- days before the new president took office.

McClatchy Newspapers:

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Justice Department renounced some of its own sweeping legal justifications, which were enacted after the 9/11 attacks, for spying on Americans and for harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

In a memo written five days before President Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, the then-principal deputy assistant attorney general, warned that a series of opinions issued secretly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

Bradbury said he wrote the 11-page document to confirm that "certain propositions" in memos issued by the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 "do not reflect the current views of this office."

They were just spitballin', throwing ideas at the wall to see which stuck, running them up the flag pole to see who saluted. Never mind that, from 2001 to 2003, those legal opinions remained unopposed by the Bush administration -- unused bullets in their arsenal of legal defense.

And, believe it or not, this is the good news part -- that these memos saw the light of day at all. The bad news is that the Obama administration is sitting on "dozens" more... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Shooting Down Missile Defense

Long, long ago, shrouded in the mists of ancient history (i.e., December 2006), I wrote a post I titled "The Only Purpose of Missile Defense is to Waste Money." At that point in time, we had blown $95 billion on missile defense systems since Ronald Reagan jotted his "Star Wars" notion on the back of a matchbook. What we got out of all this spending and research was nothing. We still have no working missile defense system. Worse, after the fall of the Soviet Union, missile defense became a solution in search of a problem -- its reason for being is to counter a threat that no longer exists.

In that post, I wrote:

So why is the Bush administration pushing this? Did I mention that we've spent $95 billion on it? Throwing pots of cash at defense contractors is what Bush does. It doesn't make any difference whether or not it works -- a failed test is exactly as expensive as a successful one -- the only thing that matters is that it allows people who are already unbelievably rich to reach into your wallet and grab your tax dollars. Who cares if it works?

Oddly, with all the Republican complaining about wasteful spending, missile defense hasn't really made an appearance. Obama has signaled that he might be open to placing a missile defense system in Poland, so it's not like the subject hasn't come up. For the GOP, wasteful spending means monitoring volcanoes so we're prepared for eruptions, not throwing money at stupid-expensive missile systems that may not actually work and have never been adequately tested. Bailing you out because you got suckered into a crap mortgage is "pork," while throwing billions at defense contractors for what amounts to a lucky charm is sound fiscal policy.

Starting to see how we got into this economic mess in the first place?... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: What if Bush was the Peanut Guy?

The Peanut Corporation of America is responsible for hundreds of cases of salmonella in the United States. Investigators found "dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers" in its Plainview, Texas processing plant, prompting the Texas Department of State Health Services to recall every product ever made from peanuts shipped from the facility. In Blakely, Georgia, the story is the same -- Peanut Corporation of America ran an astonishingly unclean operation. All told, 600 people have suffered food poisoning. Nine have died. Calls to the company's telephone number "elicited a recording that said it was no longer in service." For all intents and purposes, Peanut Corporation of America no longer exists.

But the man ultimately responsible for his company's operations still exists. PCA owner Stewart Parnell was subpoenaed to testify to congress. He pleaded the fifth and refused to testify.

Clearly, congress has hit a dead end. Parnell can't possibly be prosecuted, his company is in no danger of ever returning to poison people, and it's time to let bygones be bygones. What we need to do is find out what happened, so we can avoid it ever happening again. And the best way to do that is to put together a blue ribbon panel and hold a third world style truth and reconciliation commission. No one will be charged, no one will go to jail, no one will pay any price, Parnell can get on with his life and we can get on with ours. But we'll get the truth and that's what really counts.

You might've noticed that my little synopsis veered off into crazy town around the third paragraph. Of course Stewart Parnell should be prosecuted -- along with those managers and executives who helped him sell garbage to unsuspecting families. So what if his company is shut down and will never sell poison again? So what if he won't testify? So what if all this has happened in the past?

Parnell lacks one quality that would apparently put him above or beyond the law -- he's not a former President of the United States. Stewart Parnell is just a former Poison Peanut King. When anyone else has committed a crime, they have to face the legal system. When a former President has committed a crime, we have to have a truth commission -- without prosecutions -- to get to the bottom of the crime and let the criminals walk away. There will be no jail time, there would only be embarrassment for the accused -- that is, if he weren't shameless. But the accused is shameless, so there wouldn't even be that. He would face the wagging finger of justice and retire to Dallas a rich, rich man. Maybe hire a ghost-writer and put out a memoir. And his example would do absolutely nothing to prevent future executives from committing similar crimes. After all, the crime without any real consequence might as well be legal -- without punishment, there is no crime... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: The Man in the Iron Bubble

Maybe if we all take up a collection, we can raise enough money to bribe Dick Cheney to just go away. He may be the most politically tone deaf politician in recent history, acting as if everyone agrees that the Bush administration's policies have been dazzling in their genius. You wonder if Dick actually checks any news sources or if he just relies on a circle of fawning sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear. If Bush was the boy in the bubble, Cheney's may be the model that bubble was based on.

Or maybe "bubble" is the wrong word. More like "armored iron sphere." Not only doesn't truth seem to reach Dick, but it seems to be actively repelled. Nothing sinks in, because no truth ever gets close enough to touch him. There's a certain segment of the population who seem to believe that you can force your beliefs to become fact. All it takes is a sincere and fervent faith that your view of the universe is correct and it magically becomes true, true, true. You see it with creationists, Holocaust-deniers, global warming naysayers, free market moonies, and other various and assorted species of flatearthers. No fact can get in, because facts are the enemy of faith. Every bit of evidence that your position is wrong -- no matter how damning or conclusive -- is rejected immediately. The logic of this illogical thinking is simple; you're right, therefore, any evidence to the contrary must be wrong. That's all the proof you need to keep believing that the Earth is in the thrall of UFO overlords or that Vladimir Putin is really a robot or that Dick Cheney is right.

Of course, it may just be that the former-VP is just slinging propaganda when he pretends to be as ignorant and stupid as he often seems to be. It may just be that Dick's familiar with reality, but uses lies and fearmongering to try to change our perception of it. It may just be that he's not wrapped in a cocoon of yes men.

But, as always when we're talking about neocons, I'll go ahead and take them at their word on what they believe and don't believe. I'll assume that Dick Cheney's not a lying sack, but just a stupid and ignorant man. Honestly, you can't be generous with these people -- it's completely impossible. Your choices are always "they're lying" or "they're stupid." Somewhere along the line, we've established that it's a terrible, terrible thing to call these guys liars, so we're left with stupid. And that's being charitable... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Gitmo's Closing, Everybody Panic!

Now that Barack Obama has signed an executive order to close the detention facility (read "prison camp") at Guantánamo Bay, one thing is becoming clear -- we're all going to freakin' die. Depending on which right wing nut you ask, the president will have no choice but to move at least one deadly terrorist into either your bedroom or your closet. We are doomed.

Writing for the Center for American Progress, blogger Matthew Yglesias helpfully lays out the arguments being advanced by talking heads in the media. Unfortunately for those same talking heads, he translates the arguments from BS into English:

-The fact that the Bush administration has let dangerous terrorists go free means Obama should keep innocent people detained.

-The fact that the Bush administration screwed up the paperwork on detainees shows that there was more wisdom to Bush’s policies than Obama acknowledged on the campaign trail.

-Obama’s promise of change was empty and hypocritical because it will take time to implement his executive orders.

-The “Guantánamo” issue is primarily about the physical location of the facility rather than the legal status or treatment of the detainees.

-Since many liberals live in San Francisco, anyone who thinks it would be ill-advised to transfer prisoners to a museum in the San Francisco Bay that hasn’t been a prison for decades is a hypocrite.

When you put it that way -- i.e., in plain English -- the arguments don't look so good. No fair using logic, because reality has a liberal bias... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Farewell Address from President Suck

Presidential addresses always begin with what I think of as frosting. A bunch of inconsequential fluff, shout outs, and thanks. Bush's farewell address last night was no different. It was three paragraphs of "a final opportunity to share some thoughts," "best wishes to President-Elect Obama," and "I am filled with gratitude" came before we got through the vanilla cream flowers and our fork hit cake. And the flavor of the cake the president served last night was "OHMYFREAKIN'GOD!"

Bush went straight to 9/11 -- which should, in any sane world, be seen as his worst failure. The response to Hurricane Katrina would be a close second, but 9/11 would have to be the crowning screw up of his presidential career. Make that domestic screw up. The prize for foreign policy screw up goes to Iraq.

This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house -- September the 11th, 2001. That morning, terrorists took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon, and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. I remember Arlene Howard, who gave me her fallen son's police shield as a reminder of all that was lost. And I still carry his badge.

As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.

I'm not much of a historian, but off the top of my head, I can't remember a farewell address that reads so much like a defense of the speechgiver's presidency. With polling showing the occupation of Iraq as less popular than measles, Bush actually decided that now would be a good time to brag about it. "Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States," he said. He wasn't entirely stupid, however; this was the only mention of the event the largest percentage of Americans believe he'll be remembered for. One sentence for the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: It's Torture. We Tortured. There was Torture.

Let's start out with a few quotes.

I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party there are some people who believe that we really tortured.
--Dick Cheney

It's torture. It's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had. It's a means of making their lives more miserable.
--Chris Arendt, formerly stationed at Guantanamo

We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case [for prosecution].
--Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commissions

Some on the left may think "we really tortured" Dick, but those in the know do too. We've gotten to the point where simple denial isn't going to be good enough. "We don't torture" doesn't wash when everyone knows we do. When cases are thrown out of court because the accused was tortured, then there was torture. When people who work in the prisons say they saw torture, then there was torture. When people coming out of those prisons say they were tortured, then there was torture.

At this point, denial isn't just useless, but it's insulting to everyone's intelligence -- the denier's included. There was torture... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: The Unpunished Crime Might as Well be Legal

I usually hate these "two headlines" things, where two sources report the same event and come up with entirely different takes. Usually, this means that, of the two, one of them is BS. But not always. Sometimes the event is difficult to assess and the headlines they write depend as much on what the writers had for breakfast that morning as anything else. If your inclined to see bad news, you'll see bad news.

The event in question here is an appearance by Barack Obama on This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday. Raw Story reports "Obama not likely to prosecute torture." Meanwhile, USA Today's The Oval blog tells us "Obama: Time to look forward, but Bush aides aren't above the law."

Given the noncommittal nature of Obama's statements to Stephanopoulos, it's easy to see how this could happen. He really didn't give any definitive answer. Maybe there will be prosecutions for torture, maybe not... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: A History of Torture

President Bush finished what will apparently be his final press conference this morning. He managed to make most of the answers the press threw at him into defenses of his presidency. This guy's pretty much already punched out, thinking more about next Wednesday and beyond. For example, he spoke about the future in discussing Iraq.

"When the history of Iraq is written, historians will analyze for example the decision on the surge," he said. "I decided to do something about it, and to send 30,000 troops in as opposed to withdrawing. The part of history is certain in the situation did change."

This strikes me as kind of a crazy hope for the future, like saying that the lessons scholars take from Vietnam is that napalm works really well. It's the invasion itself that people remember, not some tactic used during the occupation -- Civil War history isn't all about Pickett's Charge. Bush may hope that historians put a lot of emphasis on his "surge" -- while also hoping they don't look too closely at it -- but that seems a vain hope... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Bush's Strip Club Economics

As I write, Barack Obama will deliver a "major economic address." In it, he'll basically pitch his stimulus package -- which is reported to come in at $775 billion over two years. The problem is that we don't have it. In fact, just Tuesday, Obama warned that we're going to be dealing with deficits for some time.

Politico:

President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday that $1 trillion deficits could last for “years to come” as he sought to make the case for budget reforms amid an economy in peril.

Obama’s warning came as he met for the second consecutive day in Washington with his top economic officials, this time in a session devoted to fixing the budget process.

“Peter Orszag now forecasts that, at the current course and speed, a trillion-dollar deficit will be here before we even start the next budget,” Obama said, alluding to his nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget.

The president-elect suggested that such 13-figure deficits could last “for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on at this point.”

The problem, of course, is that George W. Bush has spent money like a drunk in a strip club for the past eight years. And, like that drunk stuffing bills into a stripper's G-string, he really doesn't have anything to show for it. Defenders of Bush's bender will point to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, to the "Global War on Terror," and to events like 9/11. This spending, they'd argue, was forced upon poor George.

But that's not extremely true. With the exception of Katrina, all of these expenses were avoidable. Iraq is a war of choice, not necessity, and there's a very good argument to be made that 9/11 was Bush's fault. Attorney General John Ashcroft once threatened to fire the next person who wasted his time with terrorism, for example. Fighting porn was the Justice Department's big project. 9/11 happened because no one in the Bush administration took terrorism seriously... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]