Go Directly to the Dock at the Hague

ABC reports that war criminals Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and John Ashcroft discussed and approved of specific methods of torturing prisoners during meetings in the White House situation room. And though the reporters do not mention him, I have no doubt that the Master of Disaster himself, the psychopath-in-chief George W. Clusterfuck was right in there with them, gleefully discussing violating the most fundamental of human rights, the right not to be tortured.

Under the rules of their own religions, they will certainly go to hell. Before, that, I hope most sincerely that they are taken to the Hague in shackles and paraded in front of the world as the monstrosities that they are. I think the fact that each of these church-going hypocrites approved of torture proves that there is no God, for if there was a God, surely she would have struck each of them down by now.

ABCNews: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'
Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda Suspects

ABC cited a top official as saying that Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Reuters: Top Bush aides approved interrogation tactics: report

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

Another General Knifed in the Back by the Chickenhawk Bush Administration

Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker: Annals of National Security
The General’s Report
How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

Here's the report that killed his career.

Privatizing Walter Reed: Rich Get Richer, Veterans Get Screwed

I've never understood the premise of privatization. Why does adding a profit motive to a third party improve government services? Answer: It doesn't. It just allows private companies to pay workers less and give them poorer benefits to do the same job, then transfers the cost savings into the pockets of the owners of the private company. And some of those companies also cut the numbers of workers doing the work. Like IAP Worldwide, which has replaced 300 federal support services workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with 50 private employees. The result? Dan Quayle, John Snow and Al Neffgen get richer. Who got poorer? The workers who now work for IAP don't make the wages of federal workers, and don't have equivalent benefits. But most horrifying, the maimed and brain-damaged soldiers at Walter Reed are suffering because our government chose to put money into the pockets of their rich friends rather than put money into caring for the veterans injured in their immoral, illegal war. Sickening.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Editorial: Privatizing Walter Reed

As a letter from the House committee investigating Walter Reed stated, "it would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.

The thread of privatization and cronyism runs through this administration's disasters: from Abu Ghraib, where private contractors had a role in intelligence-gathering, to New Orleans, where a major city paid the price after political appointees replaced experienced emergency service professionals at FEMA.

Palm Beach (FL) Post editorial: Failures at Walter Reed expose VA system failure

Incredibly, despite the rising numbers of those who will need care, the White House is proposing a VA budget that is essentially flat from last year. The administration wants to cut money for prosthetic research and provide inadequate financing for the backlog of cases that only will grow. Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Bush called on Congress to "fund our war fighters." Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, whose "qualification" was running the Republican National Committee, has compounded the administration's indifference with insulting rhetoric. Asked about the 200,000-plus who have tried to get care, Mr. Nicholson says, "A lot of them come in for dental problems."

YahooNews: Deborah Burger, HuffPo: We're All at Walter Reed

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as the Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving the VA. Since 2001, as Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times, federal allocations for veterans medical care lag behind overall healthcare spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

There's more. Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. To cut costs, enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses. So much for the guarantee of lifetime healthcare. And, if all the other indignities were not enough, some Walter Reed patients had to buy their own meals.

The final piece of this unholy troika is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel.

Christian Science Monitor: How decay overtook Walter Reed
The problems at the US Army hospital show how strained military resources have become.

Another Corporation Smears Democrats

RawStory: An image of bondage gear is then shown, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then depicted in a dominatrix outfit while the associated jingle declares that "Love is free with Pelosi":
This time it's Blue Mountain Greeting Company, a subsidiary of American GreetingsInteractive which is owned by American Greetings.

I won't be buying any American Greetings cards until I see a full, widely-disseminated apology for this crap. Of course, there is no Love Republican Style card. It wouldn't be as easy to photoshop the Rethugs stealing our money to give it to Halliburton and oil companies. And the images of Abu Ghraib aren't exactly holiday fare.

RawStory: National greeting card company carrying 'Love Democratic style' card with Pelosi, others in bondage

This Is My Brother

Jose Padilla, fitted with blacked-out goggles, was videotaped by the government when he was allowed outside solitary confinement to see a dentist.

Am I my brother's keeper?

Cain's words have come to symbolize people's unwillingness to accept responsibility for the welfare of their fellows — their “brothers” in the extended sense of the term.

The government's continued torture of Jose Padilla, AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, while he is held on trumped-up charges, is a national disgrace. He has been subjected to extreme sensory deprivation and is treated as though he were the fictional character Hannibal Lector. Lector is not only a fictional creature, in his fictional world, he's a convicted murderer. In the twisted Bushworld, innocent until proven guilty American citizen Padilla has been the subject of wild accusations by former Attorney General John Witchcroft in the court of public opinion. In actual court, he's charged with nothing more than vague and unsupported allegations of terrorist activity.

The Newsweek article reports that there is videotape of his interrogations. Like the pictures of Abu Ghraib, which when justice is finally served, these videotapes will be evidence in the trial of the people who tortured him.

Padilla is my brother. He's your brother, too. This could happen to any of us. The government decides you are a threat, and you are disappeared. This is the type of criminal behavior we associate with fascist dictatorships, not with the United States of America. We're not a beacon of freedom as long as we let atrocities like this occur without speaking up and dissenting from the government's abuse of its awesome power.

NYTimes: Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

Glenn Greenwald: The ongoing national disgrace of lawless indefinite detentions

Digby: Breaking The Furniture

Newsweek: Courtroom Showdown
Accused terrorist Jose Padilla wants to describe how he was treated in a military brig. The government is trying to keep him quiet.

What Becomes A Torturer Most? Medal of Freedom, Lifetime Court Appointment....

William Haynes, nominated for seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, leaves the British Attorney General's Office in London, in this Aug. 12, 2003 file photo. Haynes, an architect of the Bush administration's policy toward detainee treatment, which has since been abandoned, struggled Tuesday to save his nomination to an appellate judgeship. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)
He looks so banal for being so evil

Bush nominates torture advocate and Pentagon general counsel William Haynes for 4th Circuit judgeship with lifetime appointment. Will Democrats stand up and filibuster, or go along yet again? MoDo actually takes on a serious subject in today's Times:

Maureen Dowd, NYTimes: He Let the Dogs Out! (TimesSelect wall), full article at Ed Strong

As three female protesters in Abu Ghraib-style orange jumpsuits and black headscarves stood vigil in the back of the Senate Judiciary hearing room, like the supernatural chorus in “Macbeth,” William Haynes was grilled about his worthiness to ascend to the federal bench when his main claim to the promotion is complicity in letting Dick Cheney dance a jig on the Geneva Conventions.

“The State Department characterizes the use of dogs as an interrogation aid as torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,’’ Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, said to the Pentagon general counsel. “We publicly condemned the countries of Libya and Burma for using dogs in interrogation. In November of 2002, you recommended that Secretary Rumsfeld approve the use of dogs to intimidate detainees at Guantánamo.

“The Department of Defense’s own investigation concluded that this technique migrated from Guantánamo to Iraq and Abu Ghraib. At least two members of the armed forces have now been convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for using dogs to frighten detainees. It is striking that as these soldiers were prosecuted, you were being promoted. What message are we sending our troops? And what message are we sending the world, in light of your role in promulgating abusive interrogation techniques, like the use of dogs, stress positions and forced nudity. What message are we sending if we promote you to the second highest court in the land?”....."Well, we’re going to dispatch a few privates, a few corporals, a sergeant, maybe it will get to a lieutenant, but it’ll never get upstairs. ... Apparently, upstairs there’s a promotion party. Downstairs people are being sent to prison.’’

Mr. Haynes, 48, lamely resorted to the argument that Abu Ghraib was simply a few bad apples, “the work of the night shift, without any authority whatsoever.”....

[]

A group of 20 retired military officers sent a letter to Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, expressing “profound concern” about Mr. Haynes and arguing that he promoted policies that “compromised military values, ignored federal and international law, and damaged America’s reputation and world leadership.’’

They asserted that the policies “fostered animosity toward the United States, undermined rather than enhanced our intelligence-gathering efforts, and added significantly to the risks facing our troops serving around the world.’’

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who is a military lawyer, a member of the Armed Services Committee and is close to the JAG Corps lawyers, is reported to oppose Mr. Haynes behind the scenes. Speaking to reporters in the hallway, he echoed Senator Durbin’s fear that soldiers should not take the fall for superiors’ decisions: “We just need to make sure that what we do in terms of promotion, of a civilian, who was part of policies that have led to military members being prosecuted and having their careers ruined, needs to be thoughtfully considered.”

WaPo: Bush judicial nominee struggles to win Senate OK

Smirky McChimp Tells Another Lie

What Bush said at his joint press conference with Bliar (no, that's not a typo) last night:

Q Mr. President, you spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq. Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here -- saying "bring it on," kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, "wanted dead or alive," that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq is Abu Ghraib. We've been paying for that for a long period of time. And it's -- unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice. They've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.

The look on his face after he said it:



What a journalist who observed the whole thing had to say.

... the big giveaway was at the end of that answer, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but the President flashed a big grin to those of us sitting in the front rows. It didn't seem that he was quite as contrite as his performance.

- Richard Wolffe, Newsweek.

Vile excuse of a human being.

Incompetent Idiot Liar

Want to know why the Pew Research poll found "liar" the #4 word Americans associate with George W. Bush? Here's one reason:

"One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms."
George W. Bush, Jan. 12, 2004

New York Times, March 20, 2006, the three-year anniversary of Bush's disastrous War in Iraq:

Task Force 6-26
Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

You Have to Go to Another Country to Learn the Truth About the USA

From Der Spiegel (Germany) the horrifying story of Sergeant Javal Davis, one of the young American soldiers ordered to "soften up" Iraqu prisoners, then charged, imprisoned and dishonorably discharged for doing so; and Ali al-Shalal Abbas, nicknamed Hajj Ali, a local leader, who ended up being the prisoner in the iconic image of the hooded Iraqi, hands in the Jesus position, perched on a box.

THE PRISONER AND THE GUARD

A Tale of Two Lives Destroyed by Abu Ghraib

By Marian Blasberg and Anita Blasberg

With Lynndie England's conviction earlier this week, nine US soldiers have now been sentenced for their role in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. But is it enough? DER SPIEGEL looks at two lives destroyed by Abu Ghraib. One, an Iraqi community leader -- the other, his American guard.

The fact that this story was not written by a US journalist is a searing indictment of the prostrate corporate media.

We Must Leave Iraq Now

I made the mistake of going to nowthatsfuckedup.com, the website mentioned in Billmon's article. The pictures posted there, under the caption

"Pictures From Iraq And Afghanistan - Gory
Pictures in this forum are submitted by U.S. Soldiers from over in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably be a little gory. So if you get sick easy or have a problem with dead terrorists please don't look here.",

by American soldiers, are revolting. I felt sick and immediately clicked off. The pictures are so much worse than the Abu Ghraib pictures that were released. What are we doing there? How does so much carnage change anything?

Heart of Darkness

But something happened on my way to a confession: I came across the Nation article on nowthatsfuckedup.com, which meant I had to take a good, hard look at the psychopathic side of the American spirit, and consider its implications not just for the war on terrorism and the occupation of Iraq, but its role in the emergence of an authentically fascist movement in American politics, one which feeds on violence and the glorification of violence, and which has found an audience not just in the U.S. military (where I think -- or at least hope -- it's still a relatively small fringe) but in the culture as a whole.

I don't have time at the moment to explain fully why and how this peek at the banality of evil changed my thinking, although I'll try to cover it in a future post. Suffice it to say that my visit to nowthatsfuckedup.com was a reminder of the genocidal skeletons hanging in the American closet. It left me with the conviction -- or at least an intuitive suspicion -- that an open-ended war in Iraq (or in the broader Islamic world) will bring nothing but misery and death to them, and creeping (or galloping) authoritarianism to us.

We have to get out -- not because withdrawal will head off civil war in Iraq or keep the country from fallling under Iran's control (it won't) but because the only way we can stop those things from happening is by killing people on a massive scale, probably even more massive than the tragedy we supposedly would be trying to prevent.

To Win a Fight, You Have to Fight

Late Friday night I caught part of the replay of British Member of Parliament George's Galloway's appearance before the Senate subcommittee investigating the UN "Oil for Food" scandal. The subcommittee is headed by the loathesome Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. It's hard to believe that a seat that was once held by such greats as Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale is now occupied by this preening, sleazy, empty-headed idiot. (gratuitous before and after pictures of his teeth from his dentist's website here. Yup, he illegally got the teeth for free while Mayor of St. Paul, then quickly paid for them when the dentist's website was discovered by blogtopia.) Oh yeah, Minnesota is the same state that elected Jesse Ventura, professional wrestler, as its governor. I wonder what kind of crap is in their water?

I digress. This post is about George Galloway. The committee had already assembled a dossier (sinister Soviet music should be playing in your head) of its evidence indicting Galloway as a collaborator with Saddam Hussein. They brought Galloway in to put his head on a pike. But he turned the tables. He made mincemeat of them. If you get a chance to view it, you should. But at least read his testimony. Listen for his Scottish accent as you read.

This is how we must fight the lies of the right. You can't be moderate in your opposition to liars. You have to fight to win. When you are right, when you are speaking the truth, you will persuade. You will win.

Since the subcommittee has removed Mr. Galloway's testimony from its website, his opening statement is reproduced below in its entirety.

Published on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by the Times Online (UK)
Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

* * * * *

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely @#%#*-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

Freedom is on the march

Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

Abu Ghraib is our most recent example of this axiom.

As a result, Donald Rumsfield & his top deputy Stephen Cambone cannot travel to Germany where they will be arrested for war crimes.

What goes around, comes around.

They Hate Us

LINK Deepening anti-U.S. rage casts doubt on Iraq leaders' ability to restore order


This Knight-Ridder report says the Iraqi security forces have melted away again. Therefore Allawi's Iraq government calls on the hated US military to restore order. And why do they hate us so?

LINK Abu Ghraib Victims Speak: Alleged Victim Calls U.S. Jailer ‘Disgrace to All Civilized and Democratic Values’

Maybe because, as in this quote from the ABC News article linked above:

"Most recent polls show between 80 percent and 90 percent of Iraqis call
Americans not liberators, but occupiers. And by a clear majority, Iraqis
want Americans to leave the country as soon as possible.

How did America lose the Iraqis' support? For many Iraqis, the answer
is Abu Ghraib."

Or maybe it's because we've killed over 10,000 Iraqis and the killing continues?

LINK Fighting spreads as U.S. troops kill 350 Iraqis

"The fighting in Najaf has included American F-15 fighter jets dropping
bombs, U.S. Apache helicopters shooting missiles and American tanks letting
loose with barrages of fire. "

LINK Clashes and Churches

A must-read post by River at Baghdad Burning. Here are the first two paragraphs:

"300+ dead in a matter of days in Najaf and Al Sadir City. Of course, they
are all being called 'insurgents'. The woman on TV wrapped in the abaya, lying
sprawled in the middle of the street must have been one of them too. Several
explosions rocked Baghdad today- some government employees were told not to go
to work tomorrow.

So is this a part of the reconstruction effort promised to the Shi'a in the
south of the country? Najaf is considered the holiest city in Iraq. It is
visited by Shi'a from all over the world, and yet, during the last two days, it
has seen a rain of bombs and shells from none other than the 'saviors' of the
oppressed Shi'a- the Americans. So is this the 'Sunni Triangle' too? It's deja
vu- corpses in the streets, people mourning their dead and dying and buildings
up in flames. The images flash by on the television screen and it's Falluja all
over again. Twenty years from now who will be blamed for the mass graves being
dug today?"

So, here's the big question: Why has the SCLM stopped covering the war in Iraq? More Americans were killed in July than in June, yet the war virtually disappeared from the television screens. We will hit the 1000 American death mark sometime in September yet those deaths are not marked or solemnized by the mainstream media.

Torture Works!

What to make of today's Justice Department press conference detailing Jose Padilla's supposed intent to blow up apartment buildings and hotels in the United States? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Justice is terrified of losing Padilla's appeal before the Supreme Court, especially after the Deputy Solicitor General arguing before the Supremes claimed the U.S doesn't torture prisoners -- just hours before the Abu Ghraib pictures were released? LINK

The Abu Ghraib revelations also clashed with remarks Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement made to the court during oral argument in the Padilla case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg posed a scenario for Clement's response: "Suppose the executive says mild torture, we think, will help get this information," she said. "It's not a soldier who does something against the code of military justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information."

"Well, our executive doesn't," Clement, the administration's second-ranking Supreme Court advocate, replied. "Where the government is on a war footing . . . you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that."

In today's Padilla case press conference, Deputy Attorney General James Comey said the majority of the information in the Justice Department's case against Padilla came from interrogation of Padilla and other prisoners, and they've been dying to tell us about it:

Comey said his announcement followed an intensive government effort to declassify information gained from the interrogation of Padilla and others.

LINK

Translation: The new rules of interrogation worked with Padilla. He told us how bad he was. So you see? Torture works! Torture good! Quit complaining about that quaint old Geneva Conventions and get off our backs!

Can't wait to hear Padilla's lawyers press conference.

Bush's job creation for high school grads

The New York Times reports we have guys with high school degrees interrogating prisoners in Iraq:

The CACI Corporation employed all of the contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib, including Stephen Stefanowicz, who is the other contractor implicated in the scandal......Education among all the contract employees varied. Most had some college education; 18 of the 44 had a four-year degree, or more; seven had only a high school diploma. Six of those were CACI employees.

Do you suppose they learned Arabic, or Kurdish, at their high schools? Bet they were making good money, though. Much more than we are paying our military who are doing the same job.

Of course, with nicknames like these, I doubt they are more conversant with the English language than Prances in Flightsuit:

The forms asked the workers if they used aliases, and several offered fearsome ones. Kevin Bloodworth, an Air Force veteran from Great Fall, Mont., who is serving as an interrogator, said he was known as Blood. And Timothy Duggan, an interrogator from Pataskala, Ohio, who said he was 6 feet tall and weighed 225 pounds, offered his alias, Big Dog.

Bush vows to tear down what's-that-name-again prison

So why couldn't the dumb f**k pronounce the name of the prison correctly? Abu Ghraib, we've heard the name literally hundreds of times in the past two weeks, and Mr. "The Buck Stops with Buck Privates" can't even pronounce it?

Now, there have been three distinct pronunciations: Aa-boo Grabe, Aaboo Grub, and Aaboo Gra-heeb. He could have picked any of these. Maybe it was having too many choices that was his undoing.

I remember, in the distant recesses of my middle-aged mind, reading an article about Bush's mangling of language. The gist of it was, when Bush really believes in and cares deeply about what he is saying the words flow from his mouth with ease. It's when he is forced to say something that he doesn't care about that he begins to garble.

I guess he thinks destroying America's credibility vis-a-vis human rights issues in the world isn't a big deal. I'm lookin' at the big picture, see?

Bushit Translation: If we have to tear down that Ahh-boo G-g-gruh prison to get you people focused on my re-election, OK, then, we'll do it. Bring 'em on. Mission Accomplished.

Good thing he didn't have to talk about the Taguba report.

Others who find this annoying: No More Mister Nice Blog, Hammerdown

From Atrios Speech Comments thread:

why no makeup over left eyebrow? is that where the tamping rod was extracted?
"abu ..garummmP"phineas gage | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:28 pm | #

How distracting is his tennis-game back-and-forth between right/center/left teleprompters? Talk about phoning it in. Abu Ga - wait a sec, let me find my place - raib.
Enoch | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:28 pm | #

He can't even pronounce Abu Ghraib right...is he slurring his words more than usual?
ellroon | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:28 pm | #

he can't even f**king say "abu ghraib". I wonder if anyone has even told him about it.
jason. | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:29 pm | #


Did Bush just say Abu-Gah-Rape?
The Fool | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:30 pm | #

aboo garub-du-dub ... eh, nevermind.
a**-head foot-mouth | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:30 pm | #

Holy Cow! Did you see his life flash in front of his eyes when he couldn't pronounce AbuGraib? LMAO The name of the prison that killed his political career, and he can't pronounce it not *once* but *twice.* I think everyone was just clapping cuz he pronounced it right the third time. I have no clue what he said about it, I was laughing too hard.
Humanitarian Do-Gooder | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:31 pm | #

Uh oh. Bush can't pronounce Abu Ghraib. Bad, really bad. How embarrassing. I wonder how many times he practiced it.
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:31 pm | #

Ah-boo gah-rape; ah-boo gary; abu gravy

3 tries not a one of them even close. I honestly thought he was having a stroke with the first one.
attaturk | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:32 pm | #

So far I'm enormously heartened by hearing Bush say again everything he's already said that hasn't happened yet. I am, however, disappointed to hear that we have another prison scandal to contend with. Apparently there has been dishonorable conduct at Abu Garoob as well!
Palmer Eldritch | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:34 pm | #

Let's remind you guys that these thar bad guys are evil doers. Evil doers like Aboo Gra uh Grai uh Grub bad guys evil evil bad bad. Vote for me cuz I am War President and I am a good doer not a evil doer.
ellroon | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:38 pm | #

It's amazing how consistent Bush is in being unable to get words out of his mouth when the words are associated in his mind with mistake or failure. Thus: Abu Ghraib, mangled.
Tena | Email | Homepage | 05.24.04 - 8:47 pm | #

i hope it's cool in blogtopia for me to have copied some posts from Atrio's comments page....I'm sure someone will let me know if it's not....

Bill Buckner in Iraq???

Now I know why we're losing.

From today's Times article, Dogs and Other Harsh Tactics Linked to Military Intelligence:

A new time line provided by an Army spokesman also showed that the involvement of military intelligence personnel in abuses at Abu Ghraib began in October 2003. The first reported episode involved soldiers assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, months before the major criminal investigation initiated in January into misconduct at the prison, which focused on the involvement by military police.

Three enlisted soldiers from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion were fined and demoted in the incident, whose broad outlines have been reported previously. An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, declined to identify the soldiers involved or the details of the incident, citing privacy concerns.

Why didn't we put in Stapleton? Was McNamara asleep at the wheel again?

5/23/04 Here he is again: A spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, in Fort Bragg, N.C., identified Captain Wood as having been sent to Afghanistan in July 2002 as Company A's interrogation platoon leader, and having later assumed the duties of "operations officer in charge of the Bagram Collection Point." In a written statement sent Friday, that spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, said Captain Woods had been assigned to the 519th Battalion at Abu Ghraib. But other Army officers have described her as having served as the officer in charge of the interrogation center there, under Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, a reservist who served as its director.