Author: catnip

As a special Ramadan present, US officials in Iraq waved goodbye to 500 Abu Ghraib prisoners after giving them going-away presents: a Koran, $25, and clean white shirts. That brings the total catch and release number in October to 1,500.

All 1,500, who also received traditional white shirts, were released after their cases went before an Iraqi-led review board and were found not to have committed serious or violent crimes, the U.S. military said in a statement.

“These detainees have confessed to their crimes, renounced violence and pledged to be good citizens of Iraq,” it said.

That’s all it takes? I wonder if the US Justice Department will run a similar program in the US as a Christmas present for prisoners in their jails.

Oh…and in the meantime…two more terrorism experts are saying that Bush is losing the war on terrorism. They obviously hate America.

It’s been a very long time coming but Justice John Gomery finally released his first report on the Canadian Liberal government’s sponsorship scandal* (aka “AdScam”) today.

His report (text) places the blame squarely on former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his key staff members and exonerates the current PM, Paul Martin, who was Chretien’s finance minister.

During the last election, Martin campaigned with a promise to investigate the corruption and to clean up the mess in Ottawa. The scandal’s effects rippled throughout Canada and the Liberals were reduced to a minority government situation as a result. It’s been one huge battle in the House of Commons since then for the Liberals as they’ve had to compromise in order to move their agenda forward.

Justice Gomery’s role in the investigation was to provide recommendations based on his fact-finding mission but, since he acted solely as a commissioner, he is not able to bring criminal charges. Some involved in the scandal have already faced charges in the courts as a result of RCMP investigations.

Gomery will release the second part of his report in February, 2006 at which time PM Paul Martin is expected to call an election as he had promised earlier this year but there are rumblings today that the opposition parties will pressure the government to call one as soon as possible instead.

Early opposition reaction to the Gomery Report, which was just released this morning, has been predictable. Despite the fact that the justice found Martin free of blame, he is being attacked from all sides.

Anyone interested in watching the debate in the House today can tune into Question Period at 2pm ET as the fireworks hit the floor.

* see link for background

The Globe and Mail has extensive coverage.

Remember John Yoo – one of Bush’s torture apologists when he was deputy assistant attorney general in the US Justice Department? Well, he’s back. And now, he’s saying that only the president should be allowed to declare war because that’s the way the founders wanted it.

Speaking last week at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute where Yoo is a visiting scholar, he wowed them with these pearls of wisdom:

“There are certainly decisions that Congress participated in that might have led to bad wars,” he said. “Whether the Iraq war turns out well or badly, Congress issued a decision to authorize war. Vietnam is another war for which Congress passed a statute authorizing hostility. It doesn’t seem to me that congressional participation automatically leads to good wars.”

[…]

“How would the pro-Congress model actually work in today’s world with the kind of threats we face, how does that allows us to address terrorism?” Yoo asked the AEI audience. “What happens is there’s a real trade-off between those (pro-Congress) values and acting swiftly, quickly, and secretly.”

Not only is presidential control in war desirable, but according to Yoo’s interpretation, the Constitution supports it.

That’s about as convincing an argument as his torture justifications were and this guy is a law professor – at Berkeley. He’s still supporting torture, by the way, arguing against the McCain amendment with Alan Dershowitz’s widely debunked ticking time bomb theory:

“I think without designating constitutional power to the president, then the amendment would rule out any kind of coercive interrogation in a ticking time bomb hypothetical. And I actually have a hard time believing that people in Congress would want to completely prohibit anything more than oral questioning if we were in that kind of situation.”

And people wonder why we on the left suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome(tm) day after day over what these right-wing nutjobs spew.

They’re dangerous. Period.

Tuesday’s Guardian reports that some families of those who died in the July London subway bombings will boycott the November 1st service because they are enraged with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support of the Iraq war, which they see as the catalyst for the attacks. Others are angry about the lack of support received through the criminal compensation program following the terrorist attacks that killed 52 people and injured hundreds.

One father has decided to attend with the hope of giving Blair a piece of his mind:

Sean Cassidy, whose son, Ciaran, 24, was killed in the Russell Square bomb, said he would attend the service today with his wife, Veronica, and daughter, Lisa, because he hoped to be able to speak to Mr Blair to express his anger.

“As far as I am concerned there would be no memorial service if it wasn’t for the war in Iraq,” he said. “I never thought of not going because I want to speak to Mr Blair to have a little chat about the war. I am not sure what the protocol will be but I would like to speak to him. Everyone knows the war made us more vulnerable to attack, but Mr Blair won’t say it. There are some families who say they aren’t going because they are angry at the lack of support from the government. I am still very angry, it just doesn’t go away, it just comes to you every couple of hours. You just can’t get away from it.”

May Mr Cassidy have his opportunity to speak to Mr Blair.

The ripple effects of the Fitzgerald investigation are also being felt in Britain as they add salt to the freshly opened wounds, according to the Sunday Herald:

THE fall-out from the Plame affair now engulfing Washington will extend to Britain. But there may be one significant difference in the way the two leaders, Bush and Blair, will be affected. Iraq has already severely damaged Tony Blair; his association with George W Bush and US foreign policy has already weakened him. Bush may still be expecting worse is to come. For Blair, Iraq and its fall-out has all but destroyed his legacy.

Bush’s illegal war in Iraq has affected the lives of millions around the globe. Both he and Blair deserve a legacy of shame.

Please take a moment on Tuesday to remember the victims, their families and all who grieve. Thank you.

It appears we have a Halloween trickster who has decided that, since they can’t throw toilet paper all over the site, thought they’d create a little chaos by requesting new passwords for some members.

If you get an e-mail from Booman Tribune with a new password that you didn’t request, just ignore it and keep using your current password. Your private information is still secure.

To the trickster: we know where you’re visiting from so we have a few tricks of our own up our sleeves.

With the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court today, Bush’s conservative and anti-abortion fundie supporters are now claiming victory as they hail their president as a strong leader once again.

What they fail to see is how the religious right, acting like a 2 year old having a tantrum and holding its collective breath until its face turned blue so daddy would give in, has once again hijacked the White House agenda. George obviously did not take his parenting lessons from his old buddy James Dobson or he simply would have spanked the kid and told him to obey his father or else.

What Bush chose to do instead, despite the fact that he is at the weakest point in his presidency and is currently embroiled in the culture of corruption scandals from hell, was to grab the kid’s hand and buy them the really big, expensive red firetruck they were whining about just to shut them up. And we all know what happens to a dad’s power when he does that: he becomes weakened.

He’s now called for a huge public brawl over this nomination which will further damage his credibility among mainstream Americans. He’s always said he doesn’t govern according to the polls but when the Miers reaction tanked his numbers, we all know he was damn sure paying attention. If he had the fortitude required to believe in and back up his decisions, he would not have accepted Miers’ resignation and would have pushed ahead. He’s worried and it shows.

Watching Bushistas like Bay Buchanan on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room practically have an on screen orgasm because she was so happy with Bush’s pick today proves that this nominee must be fought at all costs. Listening to conservative mouthpieces asking Democrats to be “fair” and to look at Alito’s judicial record before they judge him makes one wonder if their memories were all wiped clean by some strange virus this morning.

They seem to have conveniently forgotten that it was their side that pushed so hard against Harriet Miers that she wasn’t even allowed to make it to the confirmation hearings. When you point a finger at someone, you have three pointing right back at you, as they say.

You would have thought that Bush and the Republicans had learned a lesson about pandering to their extreme supporters after the Terry Schiavo fiasco in which an emergency session of congress was called for to deal with the poor woman’s plight – totally embarassing the congress and the administration.

Obviously not.

If I was a garden-variety Republican, I’d certainly be concerned again that Bush has fallen off the rails by throwing out red meat to his fundie vultures. This will only strengthen their power. Ordinary Republicans need to step back and absorb this manipulation before they too join Bay Buchanan in public displays of quasi-masturbatory pleasure.

Update [2005-10-31 21:43:53 by catnip]: Crooks and Liars has the video. Thanks, John!.

I’d like to welcome the latest lefty blog to the blogosphere: Political Cortex – Brain Food for the Body Politic. You’ll see that it’s been set up by some very familiar names from Daily Kos and Booman Tribune. I wish them great success. Go and visit (but make sure you come back here eventually). 🙂

Happy Halloween!

The leader of the Kitties for Frog-Marching Movement is all dressed up for tonite’s trick-or-treating:

Just in on CNN: 2 people to replace Scooter Libby…David Addington as VP’s Chief of Staff…John Hannah as new VP National Security Advisor…Scary!

Update [2005-10-31 13:43:37 by catnip]: Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday appointed his counsel, David Addington, as chief of staff to replace Lewis Libby, who was indicted in the CIA leak investigation, the vice president’s office said.

Cheney also appointed John Hannah, who had served on his national security staff since March 2001, as assistant to the vice president for national security affairs. Libby had held both positions.

Addington has served as counsel to the vice president since January 20, 2001.

See Murray Waas and Paul Singer’s most recent article about Addington here.

A new article by NEWSWEEK’s Michael Hirsh, “Truth About Torture”, is bound to make your blood boil. It confirms what we have all long suspected: that the use of torture by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq has been more widespread than those in charge have let on, that soldiers are still in the dark about what the policy of the DoD really is and that Donald Rumsfeld has been lying about it all.

NEWSWEEK has obtained corroboration for Fishback’s central point in the Army’s own files. According to papers released by the Defense Department in September in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, supporting documents for an inspector-general probe in July 2004 show that abuses were much more widespread than the Army acknowledged. In one IG document, an Army sergeant testifies that putting detainees in stressful positions and pouring water on them “seemed to be something all interrogators” in the Fourth Infantry Division were doing.

Fishback, headlined by NEWSWEEK as a “courageous soldier” and “plainly a very brave man. Crazy brave, even” sounded the alarm on the systemic torture he witnessed and participated in by contacting Senator John McCain and Human Rights Watch after several attempts to contact the Pentagon failed to garner a response.

McCain, of course, is one of the authors of an amendment attached to the latest defense appropriations bill to prohibit the use of torture – an amendment that had caused Bush to threaten to veto the bill with Cheney and CIA head Porter Goss backing his opposition by proposing a waiver: “…with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense. . . if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”

That’s a helluva lot of power to give to a miserable failure of a war president.

McCain is defiant and he’s not alone:

“We aren’t going to allow any weakening of language,” McCain told NEWSWEEK. If the present bill is vetoed or watered down, he adds, “we will certainly put it on another piece of legislation. I think we could get 90 votes tomorrow.” Even at senior levels of the Pentagon, some officials are uneasy about the administration’s opposition to the McCain amendment. “The uniformed military is appalled by Cheney’s stand,” says a Pentagon official who would talk only if he were not identified.

It’s up to the Republicans in congress now to prove whether they are purveyors of torture or not and whether they will allow their leaders in the WH to define them and the US as such in the eyes of the world.

Subtitle: Indictments? What Indictments?

In case you missed it, Senator Barbara Boxer played therapist to her patient Rep. David Dreier on Friday nite. I think he’ll be needing a lot more sessions before he’s able to make a breakthrough though.

Transcript of Friday’s CNN Larry King Live Show, “Libby Indicted, Resigns”:

KING: We’ll start with the elected officials first. Senator Boxer, surprised?

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Oh, on some levels but it is very disturbing, not only the fact that we are facing this terribly difficult time for our country with such a high level individual being indicted on five counts of lying and all the rest and we’re talking about lying to FBI agents, lying to the grand jury. We’re talking about obstruction of justice, which means there could be a lot more to this case than meets the eye.

But the bigger picture, which is why did all this happen? It’s because this administration we think, and we don’t know how deep it goes, wanted to punish a man’s family. That’s what happened.

Joe Wilson, he told the truth. He said there was no truth to the fact that Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear weapons program by getting uranium from Niger.

And so, to punish him, they in fact outed this CIA agent and ruined her career and hurt our national security and who knows who they put in jeopardy and that is kind of like the enemy’s list that I remember from the Nixon years and it’s very chilling to me.

KING: Congressman Dreier, as chairman of the Rules Committee, how much trouble is your White House in?

REP. DAVID DREIER (R), CALIFORNIA: Well let me say at the outset I disagree with most of what my friend Barbara has just said. Scooter Libby has not been charged with disclosing the identity of a covert agent. We know that he’s been charged with providing purportedly false statements to a grand jury. And, I will say this, everyone in this county…

BOXER: And obstruction of justice.

DREIER: Excuse me. Everyone in this country is presumed innocent until proved otherwise and I will tell you that I’ve worked with Scooter Libby for many years. He is a phenomenal individual and he’s someone who has worked long and hard dealing with our nation’s homeland security and I think that we still need to have respect for him.

Now the president, Larry, has accepted his resignation and we have to move ahead. We have to deal — so that is an issue that those of us who serve in the United States Congress have nothing to do with.

We need to continue to do everything we can to focus on the success that we’ve had with 78 percent of the Iraqi people voting in that referendum, rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina.

KING: Is the party in any trouble?

DREIER: Let me just tell you how I can make sure that the party is not in trouble and that’s for us to continue to do out work, cutting federal spending, making sure that the phenomenal news that we got today of 3.8 percent GDP growth, I mean incredible even in the wake of the hurricane we have incredible economic growth. And so I think that if we can focus on our work then to answer your question directly, Larry, the party and the country are not in trouble.

KING: OK.

BOXER: Larry, David is in denial.

KING: No, Barbara don’t interrupt. Let me get everybody in.

BOXER: He’s just in denial.

KING: OK. The headline in the paper, David, tomorrow is not going to be about the GDP.

DREIER: You’re right. That’s why I’m talking about it, Larry, because I know the headline tomorrow won’t be about the GDP and somebody needs to talk about that.

KING: David Gergen it says that Karl Rove is still under investigation. What does that mean?

It’s going to take nothing short of magic – a very convincing illusion – for George W Bush to now steer the focus away from the corruption in his administration back to his big agenda issues for this term. Perhaps he should enlist David Copperfield to replace Karl Rove.

With the indictments of Scooter Libby and Tom DeLay, the investigation of Bill Frist, the withdrawal of the nomination of Harriet Miers after a massive implosion of the Republican Party’s base, an illegal war that is out of control, a pro-torture Vice President and the absolute inability to even utter one regret over any of it, this is more than just a “culture of corruption”. It’s a culture of lies. Corruption seems like far too gentle a word at this point for what the Bush administration has been perpetuating since it took over the White House.

While the Republicans will try furiously to refocus the American public’s attention back to Bush’s domestic agenda again this week, that same public is still reeling from what congress and the WH have wrought the past few months as a result of that agenda: a bankruptcy bill that will harm millions and protect the credit card companies, pandering to the gun companies by protecting them from lawsuits, cutting back on food stamps, proposing cutbacks to Medicaid and Medicare, the lack of a viable energy policy, the continual mismanagement of hurricane relief efforts, the flip-flop on the Davis-Bacon Act and the ongoing inability to manage the war in Iraq.

This is a failed presidency.

One only had to watch Bush’s statement to the press on Friday about the Libby indictments to see that he had lost that look of steely determination that has been his hallmark as the “war president”. He looked defeated – not defiant. That’s what happens to a man who refuses to allow anything but good news from the lips of his closest advisors to penetrate his daily reality. He has lost control of the message to an extent that we can be sure he never envisioned due to his stubborn insistence that he never makes mistakes.

The only way such a man can move ahead is to continue to deny reality by attempting once again to push his social security “reforms”, his war on terror campaign and his meme that “freedom is on the march” while carrying an approval rating hovering around 40%. It hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now.

Bush also faces the dilemma of again having to nominate a new candidate to the Supreme Court to replace the failed Miers candidacy. His only safe bet is to nominate a moderate who is clearly conservative. If he chooses to give his fundie base the red meat they’ve been salivating for, he risks another major battle with the end result being the use of the nuclear option in the Senate. He may believe he can afford that fight, and his base may believe it as well, but if he thinks things around him are ugly now – just wait until the Democrats bring down the hammer on that strategy.

It’s obviously going to take more than the power of a master illusionist like David Copperfield, who is quite capable of making real elephants disappear, to take away the stench that emanates from this White House. It’s going to take more than the business-as-usual right-wing smear machine to change things as well. What else does Bush have up his sleeve and, in the end, will he be able to pull off the trick without a hitch? He has a very cynical audience to convince and they will be watching his every move knowing what magic really is: just one big illusion.