Mike's Blog

Bush lied? Oh, no, who would think?

Friday Morning Open Thread

by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 5/15/2009 07:16:00 AM

Good morning.

Okay. How idiotic are the people in the traditional media? Speaker Pelosi said quite firmly that the CIA misled her about the Bush administration's torture policy back in 2002. She was adamant. And, yes, it was torture.

Yet, traditional media types can't grasp that concept. Surely, they're breathlessly intimating, Pelosi must be wrong. Do they not remember what really happened back in 2002-2003? I made the mistake of watching the start of the TODAY Show this morning. Matt Lauer and the ever painful Kelly O'Donnell seem shocked, shocked that Pelosi would say someone in the Bush government would have lied back in 2002. For Christ Sakes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and their entire administration were flat out lying to the American people back then about terrorism and Iraq. They misled us into a war -- abetted by the traditional media.

Do these idiots in the media not remember that? The likes of Lauer, O'Donnell and their colleague covering the White House, David Gregory, were regurgitating the Bush team's lies -- and echoing the drumbeat for war. It was appalling -- beyond appalling -- that no one challenged the lies back then. Now, they can't grasp that someone in the government was lying about these issues. Idiots.

Here we go...

Let's give Guantanamo to Spain and let them use it as they see fit

If extraordinary renditions worked for the US, they could certainly work for Interpol and Spain. I have never seen anyone as vile as this, not even Dick Cheney. If someone like this ever used the word "dear" in talking to me,  my next sentence would definitely include the "C" word along with a number of other appropriately descriptive terms.

The Stupidest, Most Evil, and Ugliest Woman in America

Scott Horton breaks it down for you.



Do us all a favor, Condi. Take a trip to sunny Spain.

"The Torturers’ Manifesto"

It's time to Impeach Jay Bybee

posted by Attaturk at 7:58 AM

He's already being investigated by the Justice Department, but there is no way a Federal Court Judge should have the profound lack of legal ethics Bybee has demonstrated and lifetime tenure.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

There is NO LEGAL authority for such a finding as complying with the Geneva Conventions, a Treaty the United States is a signatory of, and which is the law of the land. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it - there is no ticking time bomb exemptions and the fact is, there was none in effect at the time and Bybee knew it.

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

The Geneva Convention is the LAW of the United States and Bybee willingly shilled and sold his soul and his right to practice law, let alone sit as a Judge on a Federal bench for life in doing so.

The Geneva Convention is not the tax code, it is not COBRA, it is not a Disability Insurance Policy, it is not a lease, it is not an arbitration provision. It does not exist to be twisted into allowing sadism and savagery.

Full article in the New York Times

The Torturers’ Manifesto

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary

(continue reading in NY Times)

More stories of Bush's success in the Middle East

Iraq to Execute More Than One Hundred Gays

Category:
Posted on: April 3, 2009 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton

Here's a very disturbing story:

More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution - and many of them are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of being gay, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.

According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week. There is, said Mr. Hili, at least one member of Iraqi-LGBT who are among those to be put to death.

And the London-based group, which believes that a total of 128 executions are imminent, is calling on the UK Government, international human rights groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva to intervene "with due speed" to prevent "this tragic miscarriage of justice" from going ahead.

It gets worse:

"Iraqi-LGBT has been a banned from running activities on Iraqi soil," he revealed.

"Raids by the Iraqi police and Ministry of Interior forces cost our group [to the extent of] disappearing and killing of 17 members working for Iraqi-LGBT since 2005.

"The death penalty has been increasing at an alarming rate in Iraq since the new Iraqi regime reintroduced it in August 2004.

"In 2008, at least 285 people were sentenced to death, and at least 34 executed. In 2007 at least 199 people were sentenced to death and 33 were executed, while in 2006 at least 65 people were put to death.

"The actual figures," Mr. Hili suggested, "could be much higher as there are no official statistics for the number of prisoners facing execution."

I'm sure glad we gave Iraqis the freedom to live in a brutal theocracy. (link)

Bush's success in Afghanistan

Video of girl's flogging as Taliban hand out justice

Mobile phone movie shows that militant influence is spreading deeper into Pakistan

• Declan Walsh, Islamabad
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 April 2009 17.17 BST
• Article history

WARNING: This video contains images some people may find disturbing
Link to this video

A video showing a teenage girl being flogged by Taliban fighters has emerged from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, offering a shocking glimpse of militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, and a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country.

The two-minute video, shot using a mobile phone, shows a burka-clad woman face down on the ground. Two men hold her arms and feet while a third, a black-turbaned fighter with a flowing beard, whips her repeatedly.

"Please stop it," she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. "Either kill me or stop it now."

A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions. "Hold her legs tightly," he says as she squirms and yelps.

After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant.

Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging. "She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said. He defended the Taliban's right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law.

The Guardian received the video through Samar Minallah, a Pashtun documentary maker and anthropologist who lived in Swat for two years in the late 1990s. It has been passed between Swat residents by mobile phones.

Ms Minallah said the punishment had been inflicted within the last 10 days, following the signing of a controversial peace deal under which the provincial government ceded control of the valley's judicial system to the militants.

"This video is being widely circulated because the Taliban want people to see it. They want to give the message that this is taking place after the peace deal because this is something they ideologically believe in," she said.

Local sources including journalists and human rights workers, some of whom declined to be identified, confirmed the video was recent, although estimates of its timing varied between one and three weeks ago. The Taliban spokesman said it predated the peace deal.

Sher Muhammad Khan, an official in Swat with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said: "They have committed so many atrocities since the peace deal. They have taken entire control of the district. There is nobody to control them; they decide disputes according to their whims."

Since the 15 February deal, a hybrid of traditional and Islamic law has been operational in Mingora, the largest city in Swat district. The qazi courts, as they are known, are not operated by the Taliban but by a related political movement. They have a murky legal status because the changes have yet to be signed into law.

Floggings and other physical punishments have not been imposed in Mingora, where some residents have praised the system's efficiency. However, in outlying districts, where government writ has been entirely crushed, a crude form of gun justice prevails.

The woman in the video, named as Chaand and believed to be aged 17, was punished in Matta, a district further up the Swat Valley.

Minallah and other sources said the girl was punished on suspicion of having had an illicit relationship with a married man. She did not receive a trial. "The whole case is based on the suspicions of one neighbour," said Minallah.

The woman's brother is among the men pinning her down, she added. "It's symbolic that he does it with his own hands. It gives him honour in local society, that he has done it for the sake of religion."

The Swat Valley is controlled by Maulana Fazlullah, a charismatic preacher who initially gained popularity through radio broadcasts, then seized control through gun battles, suicide attacks and intimidation of the local population.

Since the peace deal, women have been beaten for shopping unaccompanied in Mingora's main market and dozens of girls' schools remain closed, many of them bombed.

Fazlullah has sworn loyalty to Baitullah Mehsud, the overall Taliban leader from South Waziristan who claimed responsibility for last Monday's eight-hour assault on a police centre in Lahore and has vowed to mount attacks in Washington.

On Wednesday a presumed American drone fired rockets at a compound controlled by his network, killing at least 14 people.

The effective surrender of government authority in Swat has caused great alarm across Pakistan and among western allies.Minallah said she feared Talibanisation would spread across Pakistan. "I have distributed this video because I feel people are in denial. They don't want to believe what is happening." (link)

Ari Fleisher still making a tie between Saddam Hussein and 9/11

Just trying to think of a comment on this pisses me off to where I can't think.

Tweety's making me hot
John Aravosis (DC) · 3/11/2009 10:05:00 PM ET ·
(link AMERICAblog)

The Bush Legacy

Probably not quite what he has/had in mind, but I'm pretty sure  he doesn't really care anymore.

Tent Cities: Welcome to the new Bushvilles

By David Neiwert Monday Mar 09, 2009 4:00pm

Download | Play    Download | Play

MSNBC has been reporting on the huge tent city forming outside Sacramento, including a remarkable photo essay on the encampment. Similarly, a Daily Mail piece offers more detail:

Mikkel Fishman at The Moderate Voice has more details on the economic and political background.

As Chris Jansing reports, this isn't the only "tent city" gaining in size: So are similar encampments near Seattle, and Reno, and Nashville. Down in Dallas, the need for an encampment is rising quickly.

In other words, by mid-summer, we may see these encampments around the country. And they deserve a name:

Bushvilles.

When Americans had to endure such hardships 80 years ago -- forming shantytowns made of wood shacks and canvas tents -- they named them in honor of the president who had done nothing to prevent the oncoming recession and ultimately Depression into which he had led them.

They called them Hoovervilles:

(link Crooks and Liars)

WSJ editoral from one of Bush's gang of war criminals - John Yoo

More sickness from the Bush war criminals. Links below go to the Wall Street Journal and a you-tube of Yoo saying that it's fine and within the law to crush the testicles of a suspects 10 year old child if the president wants to. 

Balko v Yoo

Category:
Posted on: February 3, 2009 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton

Radley Balko has a hilarious take on this op-ed by torture-loving John Yoo. The title of Balko's post:

B-B-B-Baby, Yoo Just Ain't Seen Mutt and Jeff

Here's what he's referring to. In the op-ed, Yoo makes the following claim:

The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America.

But this is false. As Media Matters reports, the Army Field Manual includes a section on the good cop/bad cop routine, which it calls the "Mutt and Jeff" routine. And they explicitly say that this is another name for good cop/bad cop. Balko's response is perfect:

I think I see what happened, here, and we should probably cut Yoo some slack. He probably just mistakenly wrote "good-cop bad-cop" when he actually meant to write, "good cop, crush-your-10-year-old-son's-testicles-cop."

It's a pretty common mistake.

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

(link Dispatches trom the Culture Wars)

The Bush Legacy

The February issue of The Progressive has a great summary of the Bush administration. I get the print copy which also includes the ability to download the digital version.

Parting Shots

The Lowdown Jim Hightower

Finally, our country is getting a new beginning, and maybe, just maybe, we can  put our country back on the right path. As we head that way, however, we ought not totally put out of mind the dark path we’ve been down the past eight, lest we allow future leaders to take us there again. So here’s a parting shot at the Bush years. Start, of course, with George W—what a guy! Just ask him, he’ll tell you. While he spent seven years and eleven months of his tenure trying to thwart media scrutiny of his life and actions, in the final month he popped up everywhere, eager to reveal the inner George. The essence of his self-assessment as President was that while not everything he pursued worked out perfectly, he should be viewed as a bold, transformative, and even profound President. “An old sage,” he called himself during a December Q&A session. Wow. A sage. What can you add to that? Let’s hope that some loved one thought to buy a tube of Reality Gripper for him as a Christmas gift. In fairness, though, George was not the only one saying that he’s been absolutely terrific. Top-ranking officials of his Administration were also vouching for his overall excellence. In case they weren’t sure what to say, the White House PR office helpfully provided a two-page memo of talking points for the officials to follow in their public appearances. Titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record,” this dandy document extolled Bush as a terror on terrorists, a courageous tax whacker, etc. Indeed, in two pages of bullet points, the memo found not a single flaw in the marvelous man’s record. Amazing! For those of you looking for a more fair and balanced analysis of the past eight years, why not trust Karl Rove? Yes, the gnarly rightwing gnome who has been Bush’s political keeper since his first campaign in Texas is now directing the “Bush Legacy Project.” Rove and a crew of  crafting a comprehensive overview of the boss’s tenure, coming soon to an IMAX near you, no doubt. As we wave bye-bye to Bush & Company, it’s worthwhile to offer a few of our own bullet points highlighting some of their greatest hits:

• Stealing the 2000 election

• The Patriot Act

• “Dead or Alive”

• Preemptive war

• Iraq “will be a cakewalk”

• Weapons of mass destruction

• “Bring ’em on”

• Troops with no body armor

• “Mission Accomplished”

• Osama bin Forgotten

• Abu Ghraib

• Gitmo

• Secret renditions

• Walter Reed Hospital scandal

• Katrina

• “I’m the decider”

• Valerie Plame

• Scooter Libby

• Halliburton

• Blackwater

• Harriet Miers

• Alberto Gonzales

• Fired federal prosecutors

• Illegal spying on Americans

• Executive privilege

• Signing statements

• Secret energy task force

• Fake news releases

• Ignore global climate change

• Veto children’s health care bill

• Deregulate Wall Street

• Bail out Wall Street

• Iraqi journalist throws shoe.

 

It’s said that the worst job in the circus is cleaning up after the elephants.

There’s a great deal of cleaning up to do.

Maybe there is still hope for BushCo war crimes trials

I don't know if anything will come of this but it is nice to see the rest of the world demanding war crimes trials

UN Rapporteur: Initiate criminal proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld now

By Scott Horton

In an interview on Tuesday evening with the German television program “Frontal 21,” on channel ZDF Professor Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Rapporteur responsible for torture, stated that with George W. Bush’s head of state immunity now terminated, the new government of Barack Obama was obligated by international law to commence a criminal investigation into Bush’s torture practices.

“The evidence is sitting on the table,” he stated. “There is no avoiding the fact that this was torture.” He pointed to the U.S. undertakings under the Convention Against Torture in which the country committed that it would criminally prosecute anyone who tortured, or extradite the person to a state that would prosecute him. “The government of the United States is required to take all necessary steps to bring George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld before a court,” Nowak said.

(link Harper's via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)