Mock, Paper, Scissors

Chimpy and the banner

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

…and of course Commander Codpiece was wrong again, terribly, tragically wrong. From invading the wrong country, to fighting the wrong war, to having no exit strategy, to, well, infinity.

Baby Jeebus with a firecracker! What the hell is University of Texas historian Jeremi Suri doing proposing we preemptively bomb (nuke? Yes.) North Korea? Did some of the stupid leak over from Chimpy’s Liberry and coloring book emporium at SMU?

One would think that a historian would, you know, remember some history? I can only conclude that Jeremi Suri is aiming to write the definitive court history of Chimpy’s Reign of Error, probably with contributions from the whole, doomed PNAC crowd and special forward by Rummie and Cheney.

(NYTimes)

NYTimes:

The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees classified documents discussing the legal justification for killing, by drone strikes and other means, American citizens abroad who are considered terrorists.

[snip]

…”Today, as part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the Congressional Intelligence Committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice white paper,” said an administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the handling of classified material.

The official said members of the Intelligence Committees would now get “access” to the documents.

Please note that access to the documents means that members of the Intelligence Committees only get to read it, take no notes, no trascripts, and the document goes back to being secret. Oh, and they cannot discuss what they learned about it. And We the People are never to learn about it?

Bitch, please.

That’s not transparancy, that’s making members of the Intelligence Committees co-conspirators.

Wasn’t this the same routine that Chimpy allowed his coterie of toadies and minions to read John Yoo’s justification of the War Crime of torture?

I’m not a policy wonk, and I’m not sure it would matter to me if I was allowed to read it. There is nothing about the Drone Strikes that I like. This is a terrible policy and if it is not illegal it should be made explicitely illegal.

This is as morally repugnant to me as Torture was under Chimpy. I don’t want the President to have an enemies list, let alone justification to kill civillians–including US Citizens–at will, without due process, trial by a jury of his peers, etc. This is not who we are supposed to be.

The always excellent Jon Perr has a piece up at his site that might appeal to the more legal-wonk out there. Worthwhile reading.

A Tengrain photoshop

Today marks a sad day for us, a turning point, really, where the US started down a slippery slope. You see, it was on this date in 2001 that Chimpy received the briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US” (or words to that effect). The rest is history.

This image was taken on that day, and might actually be Harriet Miers giving Chimpy the memo (that was part of her job).

Please reflect for a moment on this.

Simple little words, that if understood and acted upon could have saved our souls and thousands (millions?) of others.

While there are those who say our national tragedy began with the stolen 2000 election (and I will not argue that point), I would say our fate was sealed on this day, eleven long years ago.

Gawker reports that amongst the many decapitated heads in scenes in a Game of Thrones segment, one is of Chimpy. Of course, all of Wingnuttia is up in arms over this, Hollywood conspiracies, etc., but the producers have a calm and reasonable explanation: they rent these heads in bulk because (it seems) that they have a lot of scenes with head-on-pikes, and they don’t know what the props guys are going to get in their box.

This feel-good scene will be removed from future editions of the DVD, so I better run out and buy it today…

Anyway, Gawker has a picture of Chimpy’s head on a pike, so at least one item on my bucket list is now complete.

(Gawker)

This Wonkette article on the secret kill list that the Administration has really says it all for me. I have nothing to add.

…the US Left could get the media’s attention. Sigh.

Anyway, this protestor made it into Tony Blair’s testemony about phone hacking and his relationhip to Rupert Murdoch to yell about war crimes. So much material to work with in that one.

(Raw Story)

…Pity the TSA agent that got to pat down war criminal and Satan’s Favorite Son Henry Kissinger.

No word on the TSA agent’s hands smelling like brimstone after the grope.

(WaPo)

I’m guessing that if you are a certain Robotic preznint candidate for a certain party known for being Hawks (*cough*Willard*cough*cough) and you find yourself under attack for not being sufficiently hawkish from an allegedly leftist party lead by a certain Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby Marxist-Socialist-Commie (cough*Obama*cough*cough*) and you defend your position by saying that you and even Jimmy Carter would have made the same decision, well, it seems only reasonable that some of the dead-enders from the last junta would jump in to help:

“I think what offends people is that instead of recognizing it as a national triumph and having everybody share in it, that the Obama administration has tried to make it look like the president did everything, including fast-roping out of the helicopter and pulling the trigger.”

–John Bolton

And of course, the one-time most popular GOPer and “rock star” had to pipe in, too:

“The special operators who have every right to “spike the football” are too professional to do so. The White House might follow their lead.”

–Donald Rumsfeld

So while Willard 2.0 tries to tack to the center, it is really cool of these guys to remind us about what a clusterfuck they created while defending The Mechanism.

Keep f***ing that chicken, boys.

Heir to the Henry Kissinger War Crimes Memorial, Dick Cheney is not worried about being tried as a war criminal. What is interesting is that instead of defending his record or denying the allegation, he says that he never met James Wilkerson, his accuser.

I hope everyone in the vicinity of Fox News turned on their microwave ovens and clicked their garage door openers just a few times, you know, for old time’s sake.

…anything human in there

Cheney undecided on heart transplant operation

“Pass me a kitten-ka-bob, Lynne!”

Getty Images

“…we outed a CIA agent?!”

…as he does about singing.

[John] Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,” its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement, an entity designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability” and “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private security industry.”

(TPM)

…for killing Jeebus.

(I cannot make this stuff up. Via AP on Yahoo)

…and he says he wants to bomb Iran.

Anyway, not wanting to waste any time (or a good crisis), Bolton says that the thing to do with Egypt in revolt is to bomb Iran:

HANNITY: Do you think that the Israelis are going to have to strike — they are going to have to take action. … As you pointed out, El Baradei, you know, ran cover for the Iranians for all those years that he was with the IAEA. And, I just don’t think the Israelis have much longer to wait…they’re going to have to act in fairly short order.

BOLTON: I think that’s right. I don’t think there’s much time to act. And I think the fall of a Egyptian government committed to the peace agreement will almost certainly speed that timetable up.

Bombing Iran always gives Bolton a Woodie.

(Think Progress)

I’m not sure what insight I can add to our understanding of what is going on in Egypt, who is absolutely one of our “key allies” in the area.

But here is what I do know:

• Egypt is one of our principle cohorts in those extraordinary renditions, you know, where we scoop someone up off the street and send them somewhere to be tortured. That somewhere is frequently Egypt.
• The new Vice President and heir apparent of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a CIA asset.
• None of the admissions from torture is admissible as evidence in the US, and because torture is nominally illegal, those who torture or cause torture are breaking the law. Hence the reason the GOP (with the help of some compliant Dims) blocked US-based trials for the Gitmo detainees, and thus stopped the shutting down of that horrible recruiting tool for terrorists world wide.

So my guess is that the Administration will do whatever it can, as it always does, to prop up the new despot when the current despot is chased like a rat down a drain pipe, because we cannot let it generally be known that we are still busy carrying out Chimpy’s (and Blam-Blam’s) life work.

(But I’m no scholar.)

What I can say is that, yes I was aware of the techniques, I did have knowledge, and I know that a number of lawyers worked to look to see whether it could be administered in a way that was consistent with the anti-torture statute and guidance was given by the Department of Justice while I was in the White House about how these techniques could be implemented to gather important information, in a dangerous period for our nation, to gather information from the enemy that would be in America’s favor.

– Alberto Gonzales

Note to Eric Holder: OK, Gonzales, Chimpy, and Blam-Blam have all now confessed to War Crimes in public forums, and have either published their stories in books or plan to. When are you going to prosecute them?

(TPM)

The Pope will not be arrested. That non-news flash offers a taste of what Benedict XVI is up against in his historic four-day visit to Britain, which he will set off for on Thursday. It promises to be the chilliest – and potentially rudest – welcome of his 17 trips abroad.

That man of peace and pornstache expert, John Bolton, Chimpy McStagger’s UN Ambassador, hopes not:

BOLTON: Well, unless the Israelis move within the next eight days. Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they’re in the reactor as you say, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it. So if Israel’s going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days. If they don’t, then as I say something Saddam Hussein wanted but couldn’t get, a functioning nuclear reactor — because the Israelis bombed it in 1981 — something that Bashar al-Assad in Syria wanted, a functioning nuclear reactor — until the Israelis bombed it — couldn’t get, the Iranians, sworn enemies of Israel, will have.

I think Bill Kristol is weeping in his masturbatorium.

(Think Progress)

On this day, in 2001, Harriet Miers, serving as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary, gave George W. Bush his Presidential Daily Briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. He went off on a bike ride, and took no action. He was on vacation, after all.

This picture was taken that day, this might actually be the ill-fated memo.

September 11, followed, and the rest is our sad history. For me, this date marks the absolute descent into Hell, the exact moment when we had our souls ripped away and so much tragedy, so much grief, so much suffering around the world really began in earnest.

Take a moment today to consider what might have been different if the idiot son of an asshole, an illiterate, dry-drunk, sonofabitch had not been illegally installed by The Supreme Court to be our president.

Getty Images

“…next to Cheney.”

Wingnuttia wants to put the visage of Saint Ronnie on the $50.

This is how the mythology of Saint Ronnie continues to evolve from his being a devisive and much-hated nincompoop to his being The Greatest President of the Last Half of the Last Century, Maybe the Greates President Ever.^TM

Are they not satisfied with the airport, the freeway, the mountain range? They tried the dime and the $10 bill earlier.

Boing-Boing tells us that…

This week, the US Homeland Security department, Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency released 162 pages of intelligence oversight reporting, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The reports provide new information on intelligence activities conducted under the Bush administration which are now believed to have been unlawful.

Hahahahahaha, I crack myself up.

Meghan twits to us that she is like, so super excited to meet Dr. Kissinger!

Because nothing says the holidays like having your picture taken with a notorious criminal. And Dr. Kissinger, too.