Bush OKs Torture. Media Yawns.
So ABC News had an exclusive interview and got a pretty important scoop last night. You may have heard about it: George Bush, a man who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, admitted (with zero shame) that he approved of the meetings at which his top advisors discussed and approved the excruciating details of torture.
And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.
The President just admitted that he approved torture.
And thus far at least, no one seems to give a damn. As of 9AM, the NYT published no news of Bush’s admission. The WaPo placed a story on A3 (stating that they had already reported this, even though they hadn’t reported this). ABC, the outlet that got the damn scoop, places the story fourth on its list of stories, behind Obama and Indiana and Hillary telling Bill to "butt out," with the main picture on the front page cycling through such critical stories as a dog who invited himself to his owner’s funeral. Oh–and do you think maybe there’s a connection between the stories of teens beating each other and the President, approving of torture?
This is an exclusive with the President who, after lying about torture for four years, just admitted that he knew and approved of the torture! And yet you place it there among the cute puppy stories?
As for the rest of the news media, thus far, crickets. Though kudos to Randy Scholfield of the Wichita Eagle who–without yet having the news that the Principals did not really insulate Bush from these discussions–states, "Nor will history judge the American people kindly if we look the other way."
I understand Bush’s approval of torture is not news, as in, something the beltway insiders didn’t already know. I agree with Bush, sort of, that this is not startling. At the same time, it appalls me that the President of the United States can admit to approving torture and yet no one finds that unusual, that no one is interrupting existing programming to announce this, that even ABC treats this as one story among the cute puppy and Hill and Bill stories. At the very least, try to muster some outrage that the President has been lying about torture for four years, could ya?
Remember Watergate? Remember "what did the President know, and when did he know it?" We just got the answer to that question, the answer damns this Administration, but no one seems to care.
Update: Here’s Digby:
I thought I was long past the point of being shocked at anything the Bush administration did. They suspended the constitution after 9/11 and set forth a series of legal opinions that said the president can do anything he deems necessary to "protect the country." Once you truly absorb that fact, it’s hard to be emotionally affected by anything else you learn.
But I was wrong. This shocks me. The president of the United States casually admits on television that he approved of his national security team personally deciding which specific torture techniques should be used against prisoners:
[snip]
There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.
The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president’s cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn’t occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.
History will not judge kindly the failure to impeach these criminals.
If we’re going to impeach, we’re first going to need reporting on WHY they’re being impeached. If the press can’t be bothered to report that Bush approved torture, we’re going to have a tough time explaining to Main Street why he needs to go.
I understand the sentiment, but I think calls for impeachment are dangerously naive.
Not only is it politically impossible, such a move would create political chaos, the kind of environment in which Rove and Drudge and their ilk thrive.
Furthermore, every pol is mindful of the risk of another terrorist attack, which if it occurred during an impeachment process over “get-tough” tactics, would be a gold-mine bonanza that just might salvage the entire crazed neocon legacy.
No, IMHO, re-establishing a rational political process has to come first. That is why Obama is, in my view, so extraordinary: even with his response to “Bitterness-gate” last night, he spoke calmly and clearly, pointing out McSame’s indiffernece to the mortgage crisis, and HRC’s support of changing bankruptcy laws to facilitate home forclosure: facts.
Mandela transformed S. Africa through daylight, not vengeance. and what we need on this dispicable and dangerous episode is daylight, lots of it. Obviously, everyone at this site believes that — just stating the obvious.
Bill Clinton was subject to impeachment for what high crimes and misdemeanors?
Nixon was subject to impeachment for what high crimes and misdemeanors?
Bush and Cheney have outed a CIA agent – treason; they have warmongered, they have suspended habeas corpus, they have tortured, they have politicized the justice system from top to bottom, they have appropriated to themselves the powers of Congress, they have ignored Congress when it attempted to assert its jurisdiction. If their actions don’t meet the test of high crimes and misdemeanors, then who ever will?
Let me ask you then, at what point does upholding the rule of law, as well as protecting and defending the Constitution via it’ designed mechanisms, actually become more important to you than sheer political calculation? At what point is it more important than fear of some freaking potential terrorist attack and what might be implied if that potential ever, by chance, occurred? At what point would you then be willing to have our elected politicians actually have the profile in courage to do the right thing? Would Bush have to be caught on a three camera soundstage personally crushing the testicles of young arab children? Would that be enough? What would it take? When is enough, you know, enough?
The statement seems intentionally vague, as if he just approved of the fact people were meeting. I’m guessing he was more involved than that, and this is just what he’s willing to admit to right now.
I think the Bush quote is one of those statements that might appear to be almost casual but is actually carefully parsed to be deniable. It can be taken either way, but if you look at what he literally said in this quote he only approved of the meeting and the discussion agenda, not torture. What gets communicated to his base is that he approved of “tough” measures, but when we go back to look at actual literal statements, the message can be denied. Vagueness is one of their prized tools. The press goes along, accepting the ground rule that follow-up questions are not allowed. This is how the Bushies accomplished much of the acceptance of their Big Lie that Iraq was involved in 9/11.
I think that there’s a difference between approving the meetings of the group as opposed to approving the decisions reached by the group. For example, I approve of the Senate having meetings, but I don’t approve of most of its decisions.
I might be wrong, of course, since IANAL. But it seems to me that you are reading the “and I approved” as suggesting he approved the decisions, when he may have only admitting to approving (only) the meetings.
He basically defended water-boarding. How is that not, also, approving the use of torture?
I’m sorry, but I was focusing on that first, short quote. You are presenting it as an admission and I just don’t see that. Maybe elsewhere he made a less ambiguous statement, but the “and I approved” doesn’t do it for me.
See the “enabling” paragraph EW quotes back on the last thread — pretty damning all on its own.
ABC gets this out on a Friday eve, then starts to bury it. Will this story be allowed to melt away completely this weekend? From digby:
“There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about “defiling the white house” with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.
The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president’s cabinet sat around the white house “choreographing” the torture and the president approved it.”
I’ve got about an hour right now before having to leave. Will spend it composing & sending LTEs & emails to CNN et al asking them to wake the hell up & cover this story. Got to do something…
The LA Times is ignoring this one also. @#$%^&*s.
I’m emailing them an LTE on that right now (minus the @#$%^&*s), also to the SF Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, & San DIego Union Tribune.
I had problem with the way things were being read in that thread.
Please understand: I am not disagreeing on the general point. I am simply saying that the argument in this thread is very weak since it relies on an inference about what someone else meant. IMO, a general argument is hurt by piling on weak points. I, personally, would not use the “and I approved” to support any war-crimes-type argument.
But, again, IANAL.
We’re not talking about a war crimes tribunal. I am sure the Principals still maintained enough separation for Bush to avoid direct implication in the torture–which doesn’t rule out a war crimes tribunal, but makes it harder.
What we’re talking about is an attempt by the Administration to manipulate the Press. What we’re talking about is an acknowledgment that Bush knew of discussions of enhanced interrogation with KSM, if not waterboarding itself, when he has claimed for four years that we do not torture. What we’re talking about is the President trying to dismiss the importance of these meetings precisely by making the argument you’re making. No, the President didn’t say, “golly, I got a hard-on when Dick described choreographing torture to me.” He didn’t say, “golly, I said 30 seconds of waterboarding was okay, but no more than 45 seconds.”
But he has said clearly that he approved of the process of instituting torture in systematic fashion. If you find the absence of a comment relating to a specific act of torture exonerates him, when he is admitting to establishing the systematic administration of torture, then he has succeeded in his apparent purpose.
Spot on.
I think you need to write an updated edition of your book Marcy.
Sorry, JTM, that was short. The coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.
My point was simple. Whatever else BUsh’s admission is, it is an admission he approved of the creation of a system of inflicting torture. As I’ve stated before, the system was denied such that Bush et al did not have to risk their own moral authority on the order to torture–they had John Yoo for that, and Bush probably has calendars that show he didn’t attend the meetings where specific torture methods were discussed, even while we know he was at meetings where the decision to torture, in theory, was made.
If we let this admission count as an admission ONLY that he approved of the meeting, without considering what the meeting was (that is, the calculating administration of torture), then we let him off morally simply because he has invented such fictional moral distance for precisely that purpose.
I strongly disagree with the notion that Bush maintained even the fiction of distance from this process. Take another look at the Feb 7, 2002 memo he signed. He starts out by saying he participated in the discussions and says, among other reprehensible things, this:
I … determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world…
The “Decider” was intimately involved in the torture regime.
Oh ya, he knew all along and it would not surprise me that he pushed the “Principals” towards that decision. This is the Bring-It-On Man.
Precisely. We have a Wannsee problem. Reinhard Heydrich’s conference, in a leafy Berlin suburb, not the White House basement, produced the infamous policy and euphemism known as the Endloesung, the Final Solution. The word Juden was uttered bureaucratically, no one talked of killing (or torturing) and Hitler wasn’t there, though he authorized the conference.
The White House torture meetings present a similar proof problem about how to reveal criminal governmental conduct. Everybody at these meetings knew what they were about and what they authorized; they knew how radical a departure from our law and history it was, though only Ashcroft seems naive enough to have admitted aloud his misgivings.
We need investigations, data. We cannot make bricks without clay, to borrow a commonplace saying used by Conan Doyle. The president gives us only assurances and the finger. What will Congress give us. Let’s write and phone them to find out.
EW, I think you have inadvertently put your finger on the best way to get impeachment back on the table:
Maybe not, but who doesn’t(sort of)think that’s at the bottom of it all? Brilliant!
The MSM won’t touch a discussion of impeachment based on constitutional or international law, but how about a lurid exploration of the sexual aberrance inherent in torture? A bunch of old “duds & fuds” sitting around a conference table in the basement on the WH masturbating to snuff flix, and all this chaired by Nurse Condi! Bet even Fox could get into that. Certainly the Demos aren’t too pure to pull that one off.
[Disclaimer: You may by now think that I’m not taking you or this discussion seriously. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is a very good, thought provoking exchange and I love you all!]
We will not have such un-serious comments made around here! Oh, also, please disregard my comment immediately preceding your heinously un-serious comment……
Better to be scooped than ignored!
Oops. There’s a difference between “I had problem” and “I had no problem,” isn’t there?
Marcy,
I rely on a number of foreign press not owned by US media for my news. I also enjoy the Guardian.
Just sent them an email stating how much I did not enjoy their US News headers of Cheney’s sunglasses reflections and the D.C. Madame story…Asked wherer is the “real” news of the day? You know, about torture?
Suggested they contact you to write the story…
The “heart” of the issue. Thank you. Great work EW.
osama ben laden and alquida have won america is no more
I’m just reminded of something klynn said on the last thread. It may be that the media will not cover this story until there are already people marching in the streets and packing the congresscritturs offices. I know that some people are already doing that, and it’s hard to get the families with baby strollers out if they’re not being informed, but it does take marches joined by people like that. We had them in the late sixties, and in many places we had them on 15 Feb 2003. It’s when you see the baby strollers that you know you’re having an effect.
I have to take exception to that skdadl. I was at one of the early gatherings in DC in 2003; full of families from the midwest and South, many buses, strollers. We covered the city. Media flew over a few times in helicopters, were dead silent on the “evening news”, then later low-balled the crowd population by a factor of five. Admin folks were dead silent too.
The demonstration and several others like it, east and west coast, did NOTHING to affect the reptiles’ war plans. Why should it? They have the power regardless of the popular will. Cheney’s recent “So?” is just another example of that, as is W’s admission that he approved torture meetings etc. Watcha gonna do about it? Elections BTW, are taken care of; no point in expecting that exercise to help.
I was thinking about that this morning when CNN did a story on how China is covering the Torch Relay protests. There is only happy time coverage, even from Paris and San Francisco. Just like our media in 2003, and even at the presidential inauguration in 2001.
Well, and you’re right about Britain as well — there were over a million people marching there, and Blair just thumbed his nose at them, as we know. But those protests did have an effect elsewhere; I think they had an effect on our PM at the time, eg, who kept us out (formally — the truth is that we’re always involved somehow). And if you look back at the so-called Coalition of the Willing, that’s a pretty pathetic list. A lot of European political leaders knew they didn’t dare risk joining.
The thing is, we have to do it more than once. I know it’s hard to imagine how.
Not to get Vice Presidential on you or anything, but that just makes it like nearly every single civil rights march from the Montgmery days on; I think you’ll find that even the 1963 March on Washington had its numbers greatly lowballed, though it did certainly have a significant press impact.
Direct action takes a lot of persistence, you can’t just show up one find spring day and expect that to do it.
Seattle Times, Saturday, Page 4, below the fold, reprinted Dan Eggen’s Washington Post article under heading, “Bush approved meetings on interrogation tactics.”
My email to the Times asks if an editorial is planned.
I understand the point that Bush’s admission is damning. My point is that he was more involved than he’s admitted. He’s never given up information before so readily. Compare to the US Attorney scandal. The only way I see him getting something out of this admission is if it’s hiding something more.
Got to leave now since it’s a work day for me this Sat., but just wanted to link to Bush originally “misspeaking” on this subject. CNN video is included:
Bush: This Government Does Not Torture
Read you all later.
The MSM is blasé about torture because (choose all that apply):
1. So?
2. That’s just Junya. He’s been this way all his life, so this is old news.
3. It didn’t/won’t happen to us, so we don’t care.
While the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment are inward looking and apply to citizens the principles of the Geneva Convention and Nuremberg apply internationally. The premise of “high contracting parties” is a statist fig leaf. It implies an international jurisdiction where the Administration eschews such notions. It is part and parcel of the argument deployed by Hitler, Stalin and in the America Indian Wars that the indigenous have no rights.
The so called MSM sees no story here because the practices have been given the imprimatur of legitmacy in statements like Hillary’s that she would like to keep torture in her trick bag of war powers. I would only note the causa belli with respect to both Afghanistan and Iran included the argument that if a state harbored terrorist that it was subject to preemptive intervention.
Still the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the 14 Amendment, the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg trials, the legal constitutional scheme itself, does not emerge without a sense of moral outrage agaisnt those who cloak themselves in unfettered tyrannical absolutism–the warlord myth that Bush is not so unwittingly acting out. The march of history takes a few steps backwards.
“14th” even
It is a while since I was young in Boston. For comparison, I thought the frontpage editor’s outline of the Boston Globe this Saturday might reveal what Is on people’s mind in that amiable burg. The following are the images. The Globe’s electronic edition layout makes finding the actual news and text links more difficult than the images, which seem to control the composition of their Front Page:
IMAGES FROM BOSTON GLOBE SATURDAY APRIL 12, 2008:
sports…map…charity…Bob Dylan in his 20s
A dessert…sports…a contemplative member of a sect
Office worker, sports, members of a sect, sports, soldiers, Holsteins
Democratic candidate, spiral artwork, theater, solar energy
New car sticker, tax 1040, dessert, sports
Recycling toxics
Portland, ME lighthouse on a desolate promontory; breathe, deeply.
I am sort of amazed at the reading that Bush approved meetings on torture but somehow did not know about their decisions.
As the article notes on page 3:
This certainly sounds like approval of torture to me.
Re impeachment at 4:
To paraphrase, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for people of conviction to do nothing. Impeachment is not about what is convenient or comfortable. It is about defense of the Constitution. What part of this do you not understand? It is waiting for votes to b absolutely positively guaranteed in advance that has brought us to this sorry passage in our history. I am tired of condoning more of the same.
Perhaps more than even the past obscenity, this statement is damning in how he still thinks about things. He is extremely dangerous to both us and the world.
The reason the media don’t pursue this story is because they are complicit in all of the excesses and criminality of this Administration. To tar Bush at this point would be to tar themselves.
How can something go from “preposterous speculation” to “old hat” without ever being news? It seems like only yesterday that conservative pundits were expressing outrage at anyone who conjectured that the president had even the slightest knowledge of the goings on at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
Well put!!!
Late to the thread — I was busy looking at Bright Shiny Things® and The Search for Missing White Women®.
The WaPo really needs to learn how links work. (Froomkin could teach the class, so they wouldn’t need to bring in an outside expert.) They say this:
Most of the proper names in this excerpt have hyperlinks, but they go only to a WaPo search engine using that term — “Washington Post,” “White House,” etc.
If they are so proud of their reporting that they repeat the phrase “The Post reported” three times in three paragraphs (including the “first reported” variant), you might think that they’d want to link to their own damn report instead of send you to a useless search.
Except . . . searching the WaPo archives for articles more than two weeks old brings to you a results page that lets you pay for the privilege of seeing their old reporting.
Ah, yes: things are becoming clear. It’s not incompetence in linking; it’s a conscious market strategy.
Peterr, I think the WaPo wants to say see, we reported on this already so if anyone had the scoop on this we did. For me, however, this leads to the question well why didn’t the WaPo pursue this story then? Why didn’t they hammer away at it? If they are the news organization they claim to be, why didn’t they? The answer I think is that like most of the rest of the media they ceased being a news organization some time ago.
As I’m reading the WaPo story, I also see that the story is different.
THe Eggen story appears to be an attempt on the part of some to ruin Gonzales’ chances of getting confirmed at AG. The story emphasizes the dialogue between WHCO and OLC on the development of the memo. ANd the WaPo focuses on the next level down, the Hayneses and Addingtons rather than the Cheneys and Rummys. If I had to guess, the WaPo story was a State/DOD attempt to scuttle Gonzales’ nomination.
As I’ve said, I think this one is about several of teh inquiries going on right now,but above all the torture tape one. The goal of these stories is to prevent CIA from getting hung out to dry on the torture and torture tapes.
Interestingly, there is a dispute about whether Powell and his allies were excluded from these discussions. And the discussions make me all the more interested in whether Richard Myers was involved at all.
Makes sense. And because if they were hung out to dry they could lash back with revelations incriminating the administration? You cover for me and I’ll cover for you?
the wapo has been reporting on usa torture policy since, at least, march 2002.
I think this brings up the idea of false equivalence: that to cover an issue means to cover it thoroughly. All media can point to some story or other on page A 13 or for 30 seconds on such and such a day, and then say see we covered this. But is this really coverage? The Raddatz interview becomes part of the Friday news dump. Is that coverage? The WaPo article seems to want to say see, we had a story on this too way back when. But if this is so why can they not point to the 10 articles they wrote immediately after that developing the story and exploring the subject? Referring to an article from 2002 merely shifts the starting point but not the basis of the criticism. If the WaPo knew about torture in 2002, why did it not cover the subject exhaustively then? Why has it failed to do so even now?
Hey! I reported this back in 2002 too! Do I get my Pulitzer Prize now??
no. and for all the reasons you describe.
but for a long time the wapo was the only msm source i had – i read that march 2002 article when it was published and was grateful for it.
so, no. it isn’t really coverage – except when i compare it to the competition.
sorta reminds me of the dem presidential candidates – when compared to what i want from a president, they suck. when compared to the competition, they shine.
Spiking in plain view? Perhaps Rove and his pet editors read Poe, too. Where best to hide the purloined scandal? On the front page, written with euphemism and boring understatement.
But, it’s not like he got a blowjob and left pecker tracks on the worman’s blue dress. Move along.
the above was a reply to wigwam.
I’m going to get my Pulitzer Prize yet. Here is my proposed new headline for the story.
i like your style. and, who knows? it might be just have the right touch to get the kind of echo effect that John Edwards’ haircut got …..
Brilliant strategizing, bmaz — I have to agree that only headlines like that will wake up the sheep in this country and especially in the Congress.
I can’t for the life of me, figure out why more people are not outraged and marching in the streets for impeachment. I do think part of it is that these greedy-corporate crooks keep the middle-and-lower classes so busy working overtime and two jobs that it is hard for many to find time or energy to keep up with the details of this administration’s crimes and to mobilize any activiism. Thank goodness for FDL, EW and others.
Not to mention, keeping them watching ‘reality’ TV, with full coverage of every person kicked off whatever show it is that’s being pushed.
I hear these people talking, and wonder what kind of reality they’re living in. It doesn’t sound like the same planet, even. It’s getting to where you can just about spot them by the disconnect.
The steady drip-drip-drip is sinking in.
Just because many people are too pissed off and uncomfortable to want to talk about politics very much doesn’t mean they don’t care; it may be true that their frustrations aren’t manifesting as riots in the streets, but that doesn’t make them uninformed or unengaged.
Note the number of ‘true conservatives’ (i.e., Bruce Fein, Goldsmith) who have publicly opposed Bush admin legal interpretations and UE notions.
Note the number of former military officers who have come out –publicly — against this administration. The US has never seen so many statements of ‘conscience’ from retired military opposing an administration.
Then note the phenomenal turnout in Democratic primaries; in my state, we’ve never seen anything even close to this turnout.
Note the sobering differences between the coverage of Petraeus/Crocker testimony last fall, as opposed to last week — now, even Republican electeds voiced open criticism of the war.
Still not convinced that attitudes are shifting in the US?
Then read this essay by prominent evangelical, Jim Wallis, who (along with the WaPo’s E.J.Dionne, plus some good NYT reporting) is analyzing and explaining the collapse of the neocon/WallStreet/evangelical coalition that managed to put Reagan into office, then Bush41 into office, and 12 years later squeak Bu$hCheney into office:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/gods…..bee-b.html
Note that the reporting style of **some** media is (finally!!) including more context and background information; when placed against statistics, it becomes embarrassingly obvious that current Bu$hCo is mostly engaged in desperate wishful thinking.
Then look at the commodities indexes, or the financial indicators.
Then check the American Bar Assn website and note their focus on ensuring that torture policies and DoJ corruption are addressed — topics not traditionally at the top of the ABA annual agendas. (When in US history has the nations Bar Assn come out against a sitting administration? Maybe bmaz knows, but I suspect this is a first.)
Just because people aren’t rioting in the streets doesn’t mean that millions of us aren’t collassally pissed off, angry, and appalled.
Don’t believe me yet?
Look at how much campaign money has been raised by candidates — particularly conservative/libertarian Ron Paul. When people are so pissed that they’re willing to donate money, you can reasonably predict they’re going to vote in November.
And I’m not predicting a Dem blowout, but the respective bank balances between the Dems and the Republicans signify a decided lack of interest in more market-fundamentalist, corporatist, militariest ideology.
The military-industrial complex still has a stranglehold, but it seems to be weakening. It’s based on forms of energy that have become extremely costly, and it doesn’t appear to be sustainable.
Here you go, Peterr.
Eggen didn’t want to say it was his story.
Though, as was sort of clear from the WaPo’s reference to it, there were two different kinds of meetings–those with the Principals, those with the torture team.
More differences between Eggen’s reporting and ABC:
This nation must demand the immediate resignations of all principals involved in authorizing and choreographing torture: Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and Rice.
This was kind of startling to me. Scott Horton says in an interview with Ian Masters and Glenn Greenwals that I listened to this am that there must have been a state of emergency that was secretly declaired then withdrawn sometime in 2003. ( minute 23)
Interview: http://www.ianmasters.org/
Feb 7, 2002 memo http://lawofwar.org/Bush_memo_Genevas.htm
Thanks for that link!
or, to paraphrase the title of your last post:
“Corporate Media to Citizens: So?”
It’s old news, because he’s always talked out of both sides of his mouth on this. He’s always said, “America does not torture”, and then in the same breath, “but every option is on the table.”
Bmaz, we are not going to get an impeachment out of this congress. They are unwilling to enforce their own subpoenas, let alone the Constitution.
Yeah, I pretty much know. I just refuse to sanction the thought that such fact is in any way acceptable or reasonable; it is not. Keystrokes are cheap, I intend to keep expending my reservoir.
well, it is kinda the same if you remember just what it is that gets a a neocon/Republican randy an’ all …..
Something hopeful from Scott Horton blogging at Balkinization:
Cross-posted at EW.
The MSM is dead. This is the final nail in it’s coffin. We mourn it’s passing, but must move on to better days and honest media.
Viva La Blogs!
Thanks for this post! Spotlighted!
With some irony, I am listening now to Justice Scalia talking to a group of high school students, and he opened his remarks by praising the U.S. Constitution, lamenting that it seemed not to be revered much anymore, and going on to praise the importance of the Constitution (”It is what continues to bind us together.”)
Maybe the Bush Crime Syndicate would not fare so well before the bar of the SCOTUS as some have feared.
His opening remarks might be worth calling attention to.
Bob in HI
Scalia strikes me as one to praise the Constitution and then uphold the powers of this Unitary Executive in the next breath …
I’m going to take a shot that the story is still in it’s clarifying stage, and what remains to be known goes something like this:
The policy issues regarding detainees got taken up early on, in the NSC. These discussions progressed along until an *impasse* was reached – Powell and Myers, basically State and DoD, drawing the line somewhere, probably concurrent with the UCMJ, and said, “No further!”
Bush then directed Gonzo to make an “end-around” through ‘restricted’ channels’ (aka – UE Compartmentalization) and have drafted, in Secret – without seeking State or DoD legal concurrence – all the Opinions that went down the long dark path to Torture and Hell – after the impasse.
So, it seems clearer, at least at this point, that there were some among the Prinicipals who had Principles, and some who didn’t.
But, it seems there’s also plenty more to come…
This story breaking now is practically a cue-call for Bush to go straight to his Core Argument – He’s the UE, and whatever he says is Law, regardless of the Rule of Law and Treaties.
This story was ’so on target,’ it ‘got the drop’ on Bush – he had to go straight to his “and I approved” UE Defense – no more propped-up ‘bullet-catchers’ like Libby to get in the way.
We’re down to ‘testing’ the ‘argument’ behind Bush’s Frightening Assertions of Unitary Executive Power that Whitehouse alerted US to.
Bush has been ‘caught’ and now he’s Daring – just like his SOTU a few months ago was Defying – US to come ‘take the battery off his shoulder.’
“Go ahead, I dare you!”
He ordered Torture – should We have expected anything less?
It’s like we’ve all fallen through the Looking Glass. I keep thinking what in the hell is going on with Congress & the media? NONE of them seem to care about this. And then I think maybe the media found out that Bush & Cheney are truly crazy and they don’t want to upset them for fear that they will cause a false flag attack and declare martial law to remain in power or maybe Bush & Co. have created files on all the members of Congress, the media and their families and they are blackmailing all of them. It’s got to be something huge for all of these things to happen, right? Or maybe these people are all just totally clueless. I don’t know which explanation is worse.