Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, Dick!

Well, well, well...I can't imagine why he'd be up in arms over this, can you?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out at President Obama and the attorney general on Sunday, saying the Justice Department's recent decision to investigate whether CIA operatives broke the law in their interrogation of terrorism suspects was politically motivated and dangerous to U.S. national security.

"I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long-term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say," Cheney said in an interview that aired on " Fox News Sunday."

The formal interview, conducted last week at Cheney's Wyoming ranch, was his first since Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced last Monday that he was conducting a preliminary review into the actions of certain CIA interrogators who might have gone beyond the techniques approved by the Bush administration's Justice Department.

Of course, an effective administration investigates its own wrong-doing, as how Janet Reno did under Bill Clinton, so Cheney has a point to make: any investigation should have rightly been carried out under the Bush DoJ.

Which seemed to have issues with indicting a ham sandwich, to stretch the famous analogy.

Or Congress could have, as it did in the early 70s for President Nixon's crimes, the 80s for Iran-Contra, and the 90s for the Lewinski affair.

I don't know about you, but my instinct tells me CIA agents violating international treaties probably ranks higher on the crime scale than a blow job.

But I digress...

It is true that, in none of the above scenarios was the investigation of a previous administration left as the dirty work for the next group of bureaucrats.

But then no administration, in conjunction with a Congress best described as "whorish to the self-interests of the administration," had ever had such an abysmal record of dictatorial, almost tyrannical, abuses of authority as the Bush administration, which includes ignoring the fact it might have been breaking the law.

It was, in short, a perfect storm of corruption and scandal, with a "look the other way" mentality that was at once abhorrent and antithetical to the good and welfare of the nation.

In shorter, it was the blind leading the deaf leading the dumb.

The dumb being us.

There are higher issues at stake here than whether some rogue CIA agents violated even the very liberal torture policies of an autocrat. There are issues that go to the very heart of what we stand for as a nation: do we allow torture so blatantly (because no one believes the US is always right and always innocent) or do we shove it back in that dark corner where we occasionally get upset at the things done in the name of freedom?

For that, and that reason alone, Dick Cheney should shut the fuck up.

Note To Dead Old White Guy

You had your chance, you killed 3,000 Americans on American soil and another 5,000 in unnecessary wars. Please go away:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have largely stayed under the radar during his time in the Bush administration, but he is not going softly into that good night, seemingly launching a one-man campaign to fight for his legacy and -- in his view -- the safety of the nation.

"Legacy"...funny word that. No doubt you were privvy to the contents of the August 6, 2001 PDB. Maybe you recall the bloody title?

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Nothing says "safe" like ignoring a warning!

Did anyone else die in terror attacks on American soil since September 11? Frankly no. But no one can know if that's due to your *koffkoff* tireless efforts, or merely because Al Qaeda et al shot their wad on 9/11 and it took them years to arm up again.

Indeed, I'd absolutely lay money on the latter because of the posturing you guys did. Keeping in touch with your inner adolescence, you and your Bush administration cronies acted like a bunch of pre-teen hoodlums outside the polar bear enclave at the zoo, teasing and harassing the animals, knowing full well that the next person in the cage...you know, the adults?...would have to deal with an angry bear.

Yea. Brave. That pretty much sums up the level of courage you and Bush the Immature showed in the past eight years.

Dick, and I call you that because it's your name and not necessarily because I think it describes you to a T, your heart stopped decades ago. Follow suit, mmmmmmmmmmmmmK?

Politics Stops At The Border, Right?

Then explain this:

US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as "grim", but there are "no plans to declassify" any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process.

Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community's 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final "coordination meeting" of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.

According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.

Lemme think, now...what happens in the next few weeks...*koffkoff* electionisonlyfiveweeksaway*koffkoff*

Ah, yes, and a grim picture of Afghanistan would play against the public image of John McCain on national security.

Or maybe not. If I'm the McCain campaign, I want this report released to make people understand that the past eight years have been a boondoggled blunderfest, that has to be fixed.

This issue plays to Obama, too, to be sure: the agent of change trope is tailormade for the case I made for the "Maverick". In other words, the declassification of this report would neither hurt nor really help either candidate.

Which is why it will likely remain conveniently classified until November 5, when miraculously it will be leaked to the Washington Post.

After all, it's important that the American people hear confirmation of what Admiral Michael Mullen said last week to Congress we're running out of time. "I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," were his exact words.

Couple that with the story about the deteriorating situation Pakistan in last week's Time Magazine, and you have a now-regional fuck up on the part of the Bush administration.

All this is happening while the clown car that is the White House has distracted you with handwringing and bickering over the $700 billion bailout as proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Fingerpointing seems to be the order of the day on the Hill. All eyes focused on McCain's support or lack thereof of Paulson's deeply flawed package, while Nancy Pelosi has demanded strong Republican backing in the House.

Give Pelosi credit. She's at least taking a stand. Harry Reid has all but dissappeared here. Can you say "Senate Majority Leader Clinton"? I knew that you could. So now we uncover the bargain Hillary and Barack came to.

Things are so bad in the House that even the Dark Lord of the Shits, Dick Cheney, can't keep his stormtroopers quiet, probably because they've deliberately kept their minions in the dark.

That's not to minimize the bailout or underlying economic troubles of the country. Bush and company have managed to do what Osama bin Laden, 19 terrorists and four airplanes could not: bring America to its knees.

What it does point out is, yet again, the Bush administration is deliberately paying lip service to an unfolding foreign crisis in order to let it fester to the point where the US is, once again, forced to go to war.

Only this time, it will be for the good of the economy, and not just the oil barons. You think jingoism was the order of the day in the early Aughts, wait till you seen what happens next!

It ain't gonna be pretty, folks.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeea, this was probably a bad idea....

Injured vets. Two hours. Cheney pulls a stunt worthy of a diva:

[Chehey's] staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney's arrival and couldn't leave until he'd finished talking, officials confirmed.

"Word got back to us ... that this would be a prerequisite," said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn't have any rest rooms. "We told them it just wasn't acceptable."

No rest rooms, did I forget to mention that?

We're talking about a bunch of men who left pieces of themselves on a battlefield somewhere, some of whom may take two hours just to go to the bathroom, and this idiot is mocking them.

Oh, but wait...there's the cringeworthy response:

Cheney's office acknowledged the security requests, but insisted he is sensitive to combat veterans' needs.

Spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said the two-hour rule is "a recommendation, not a requirement," and "we always work to make sure the bathrooms are within the security perimeters."

"The vice president would never let us do anything that didn't help facilitate the needs of our veterans," Mitchell added.

I dunno, those bedbugs in Walter Reed...maybe they were there in lieu of stitches for the wounds?

Suddenly, He's The Great Communicator...

Bush will hold a press conference today.

That's the second this month. The first was where he all but called Congress "do-nothing" (unlike the 109th and last Republican-led conference, which did even less), and then promptly got spnaked all over the place over the NIE report on Iran's nuclear program. Bush's feeble response was to try to make lemons out of lemonade and prove that the NIE supported his claims all along.

The NIE most certainly did not support claims of World War III (the implication in October was that this was imminent if Iran continued to develop their (knowledge of, deliberately parenthetically) nuclear arms.

That issue still hasn't gone away, as Bush claimed he was only apprised of the new NIE in late November, but sources close to the Oval Office have been quoted as saying that Vice President Darth Vader was briefed as early as March and that the President himself exhibited knowledge of the new assessment even in February of 2007.

It has, however, been overshadowed by a far more urgent issue, and that is the deliberate destruction of torture videotapes held by the CIA that had been subpoenaed by a Federal court.

This is a smoking gun issue, and early reports cite officials as high up as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez as having discussed the destruction of the tapes before the actual destruction took place.

Errr, "conspiracy to obstruct justice" is the first charge that leaps to mind.

"Contempt of court" is another possible charge.

This is the smoking gun issue for pro-impeachment forces. This is an illegal act, and appears to have been done, if not under the direction of, with foreknowledge by senior officials of the Bush administration, if not Bush and Cheney themselves.

The timing is the problem, however. Obviously, this issue will work its way up to the Supreme Court, and as we all know, that court is stacked with Bush partisans.

Will they set aside personal relationships for the greater good of the Constitution?

I doubt it. But I can hope.

This Is Going To Raise Some Right Wing Hackles....

For many months now, I've dangled the "psychosis" trope on my blog about Bush & Co., calling them magical children whose grasp of reality is driven by fear of inadequacies.

From out of the west in supoport of these theme comes Rosa Brooks, riding from the fires of Malibu and San Diego like Carter Slade in Ghost Rider:

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

By the way...is that "Old Europe" or "New Europe", Mr. President? You know, like how there was New Coke and Coke Classic and everyone turned on New Coke so that Coke Classic ended up dominating our palates for decades beyond?

Of course, New Coke didn't have your marketing genius behind it, now, did it?

But I digress:

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.

I want to take a few paragraphs here to delve a bit more into the probable cause of this psychosis, at least in my mind opinion.

Here we have a man of whom it was once famously quipped, "He was born on third base, thinking he'd hit a triple."

Life should have been easy for him, and it was, until he went to school. Suddenly, learnin' became hard werk. Dodging the draft became hard werk. Skipping out on the Champagne Squadron of the TANG became hard werk. Runnin' a bidness became hard werk.

And all this time, Poppy and Bar were right there to hold his little hand and march him along past all these obstacles like the good l'il soldier he was (say that in a Shirley Temple voice. It's a lot funnier.)

So here, in his immortal hubris, he's locked himself into his own worst nightmare: a job that he so desperately needs his father's help with....gee...did you ever imagine looking back at Bush the Elder nostalgically?...but who he has pushed away publicly in favor of men who would exploit his power at the drop of a hat to advance an agenda that is not only unacceptable to a free society, but is antithetical to that very foundation of freedom.

They say the Presidency is the loneliest job in the world, and given Bush's "attaboy" cheerleader attitude about his socializations, one can only imagine the depths of his soul that are aflame with fear and even terror.

But there is no Al Qaeda there. There is only a mirror and when Bush looks into it, all he sees is his own reflection and hovering over him like a wraith, Dick Cheney.

Too, Cheney himself has his own reality to deal with. This is a man who's ignorance and ego prevent him from taking even the simplest steps to preserve his own health (after all, with all those stents in his bloodstream, we should probably start thinking of him as more an Erector set and less as a human). This is a man who wouldn't consider an opposing opinion if Jesus himself came down, shook him by the shoulders and said "Listen, man!"

We all know people like Dick. He's as officious as a DMV clerk (a job more suited to his talents, anyway). It's nearly OCD how compartmentalized his thinking has become: no matter what, he must cause a war. My daughter's a lesbian mommy? Threaten war. My wife wrote a lesbian porn novel? Threaten war. I had a heart attack? Threaten war.

I can't imagine that the Founding Fathers ever had it in their heads that a small cadre of completely psychotic wackjobs would ever occupy the highest levels of government (remember, our earliest elections saw the second place finished in the Presidential election become Vice President, which forced a tamping down of ambitions. That was changed in 1803).

Since clearly both men are physically able to execute their offices, there is no recourse beyond impeachment to bring sanity back to the White House (and you'd need to impeach both and then deal with Condi Rice, about whose sanity I have some reservations.)

Ah, but our Ms. Brooks has an out:

In Washington, the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a "court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and . . . is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization."

Anyone want to file the commitment papers?

Texas Oilman Commits Treason

This is really disgusting. If this man had been a liberal, he'd have been strung up for what he did. More on the flip:

Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt is trying to ensure that a jury doesn't see an Iraqi document suggesting he discussed American troop levels and possible dates for an attack with a member of Saddam Hussein's regime prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Wyatt, 83, is slated to stand trial Sept. 5 on charges that he and others funneled millions of dollars in illegal payments to Saddam's government in order to win lucrative oil export contracts.

His attorneys are asking a federal judge in New York to prohibit prosecutors from presenting as evidence handwritten notes purportedly made by an Iraqi oil official, which suggest Wyatt conveyed information about when the United States might begin bombing, when ground forces would be sent in and how many soldiers would be deployed.

His lawyer claims none of the discussions were of confidential matters and that release of the notes would tend to prejudice a jury.

Still, one wonders where the prattling purveyors of purity are on this? A businessman, involved in an illegal transaction with an enemy nation, discussing troop movements and strengths ahead of an invasion to liberate said nation from the grip of evil?

Oscar Wyatt, along with Bayoil executives David B Chalmers and Ludmil Dionissiev, is charged with fraud and conspiracy, but not treason, in connection with illegal transactions under the UN "oil for food" program in 2003. Under that program, Saddam Hussein was allowed to "sell" oil to companies (other than US companies) in exchange for staples like food, clothing and other necessities. The intent was that no money could trade hands, so that Saddam could not profit from these deals.

As these things always go, some palms were greased and some other negotiations took place, such that Saddam indeed made out handsomely.

So nevermind about discussing troop movements, these guys committed treason from the get-go.

Yet, not a peep out of the right wing noise machine. And if you recall, a LOT of hay was made about how France and Russia were the major players in the scandal, and how then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son was behind it all.

Eh...not so much, it turns out!

So why would two dumb hicks from the sticks warrant such a large distraction, drumming up lies about Kofi Annan and Russia and France?

Here's one reason. Here's the other, although to his credit (or debit), Wyatt and his father seem to have spread out their contributions amongst both parties. And here's a third.

But notice something: no man gave to any Presidential campaigns, even though all are obviously politically active, tend towards more conservative candidates and, critically, all are Houston-based oilmen!

Why, what magic! They didn't give to Bush-Cheney, '00 or '04????

Not likely, I'm sure. But it would take a lot more digging than I have either the time or resources to pursue.

The real question is, who fed them this troop information, which I recall was scrupulously NOT discussed on the major television networks in the run-up to the war, for fear of revealing, well, troop movements and deployments?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...pardon me, I need to sneeze...Dick Cheney.

There, that's better!

Naked America

One of the underreported side effects of a war in Iraq fought on the cheap is suddenly becoming a grave issue:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is not adequately equipping the National Guard and has not adapted to the increasingly important security role it plays in the post-September 11 environment, an independent commission said in a report to Congress on Thursday.

The report said the global war on terrorism had placed increased demands for the National Guard to provide forces for both overseas and domestic missions, but added that the Defense Department, or DOD, had been slow to adapt to the change.

"DOD's failure to appropriately consider National Guard needs and funding requirements has produced a National Guard that is not fully ready to meet current and emerging missions," the commission concluded.

Among its findings, the 13-member panel said the Defense Department was not adequately equipping the Guard for its domestic missions.

Pretty scary stuff, but it gets worse:

Nearly 90 percent of Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready," partly because of equipment shortages, according to Guard data and the findings of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, The Washington Post reported.

National Guard units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been required to leave large quantities of gear behind when they return home, the newspaper said.

So we're trashing them there so they can trash us here...

The National Guard's function used to be pretty simple: help out in an emergency that overwhelmed local authorities. You know, a tornado hits, you call in the Red Cross and National Guard. Or maybe a big blizzard.

Certainly during and after a terror attack.And while the Guard can be used to protect our land by fighting overseas, that really ought to be a last resort and ought to be in support of regular army and other military branch forces. You should be sending in the first team. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush et al, did not, and there's a price to pay for that.

See, there's a concept in American constitutional law, posse comitatus, which was created in Colonial times, as the British army used to barrack their soldiers in private residences, creating a de facto network of military police. Although the Constitution itself does not create the concept of "posse comitatus", it does contain the Third Amendment, prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in peacetime without the owner's consent. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1875 goes one step further in barring the use of the military in nearly any domestic situation, under Federal authority.

The National Guard is an outgrowth of Article 1 of the Constitution, and so is explicitly designated for domestic use along with the Coast Guard, should it become necessary.

You know, like, in a blizzard. Or tornado. Or terror attack. The governor of the afflicted state (remember, it cannot be the President) can ask for his state's Guard to assist.

We've been fairly lucky in that, since the Iraq invasion began, aside from Katrina, we haven't had a major disaster that required all hands on deck.

And one begins to wonder how much better Katrina would have turned out had the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guards been at full complement. As it was, over 58,000 Guard troops from all over the country were called in, and you have to figure that the 30,000 that were serving in Iraq including thousands from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama could have been there, as the Civil War general used to say, "furstest", saving hours and saving lives.

But no. And it's costing us: lives, money, property. All to fight a war overseas that means nothing at a cheaper cost to the economic royalty.

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