Media Ho's treat UNCONSTITUTIONAL CRIMINALITY as "bold and daring, outside the box".....

Pretty self-explanatory here....


Treating Criminality As Daring Boldness: The Media on Bush
By David Swanson
Thu, 2006-09-28 13:23. Impeachment | Media
http://www.davidswanson.org/?q=node/606

Ron Brownstein wrote a column this week that illustrates exactly how far the corporate media will go in criticizing President Bush. Brownstein's criticism is not motivated by his own reflections. He has none, other than those that quietly shape his omissions and categorizations. He's a corporate journalist. In fact, he's what passes for a left-wing corporate journalist. Brownstein is not concerned by Bush's criminal actions, by his unpopularity in polls, by the passion of grassroots opposition, by the growing movement for impeachment, or even by the opposition of Democrats in Congress. Brownstein's column comments, rather, on growing opposition to Bush among former generals, big whigs, and Republican Senators.

It's only when others in power and on the right criticize Bush that we are supposed to pay attention to the criticism. This is a deeply ingrained bias in our corporate media. But worse is how Brownstein describes this opposition. He does not depict it as one of law breaker versus defenders of the law. Rather, he describes Bush as a daring rebel outsider taking on a bunch of timid traditionalists. It's cowboy Bush versus the Washington elite – though presumably not any longer the nation-building, foreign-entanglement-prone elite that Bush campaigned against in 2000.

Here's how Brownstein begins his column: "To President Bush's supporters, nothing is more exhilarating than his willingness, even eagerness, to challenge long-established assumptions and policies, especially in foreign policy."

Long established policies such as the Bill of Rights or Article II of the U.S. Constitution?

Brownstein "balances" his column by immediately adding that Bush's opponents object to his readiness to jettison traditional policies.

In reality, Bush is not a liberated innovator shaking off silly traditions, but a criminal offending people who have a respect for just and humane laws. Bush has launched an illegal war, lied to Congress to do so, and misused funds by beginning the war before asking for approval. Bush has targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and used illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a younger cousin of napalm. Bush has arbitrarily detained Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel. To call this criminal is merely to agree with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bush has authorized the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in some cases in death. He has had prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross and shipped to other nations and secret U.S. bases to be tortured. The U.S. Constitution, international treaties that are part of U.S. law, and other U.S. laws ban torture. When Congress recently redundantly banned torture, Bush signed the bill and added a signing statement explaining that he would not obey it.

Bush has openly confessed to engaging in illegal warrentless spying, and a federal court has found the practice criminal. Bush has overturned 800 acts of Congress with signing statements and is actively seeking to retroactively legalize his crimes, a process that will not make those crimes any less impeachable offenses.

This is the context in which conservative establishment types are beginning to express hesitations about supporting Bush's agenda. This is why Lt. Gen. William Odom proposed impeachment at Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's hearing on Iraq on Tuesday.

But Brownstein calls those who oppose Bush's challenging of assumptions the "prudence party." Brownstein claims that this group is made up of "top-level corporate and Wall Street executives, former diplomats, retired military officers, and some veteran legislators on Capitol Hill." Brownstein provides no names, except by indicating that he means to include the generals who supported John Kerry for President and those calling for Rumsfeld to resign, plus the Senators and others who have recently expressed support for the Geneva Conventions. Brownstein fails to include the Supreme Court or any federal judges in his list, much less the anti-war movement – the movement responsible for moving Congress to finally block spending on permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq (won't it be refreshingly bold when Bush keeps building them anyway?)

Members of the "prudence party," Brownstein says, "fear that Bush has too casually alienated world opinion in his pursuit of greater security for America." Has Brownstein seen the public sections of the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Bush is encouraging terrorism? On what grounds does Brownstein claim to know that Bush is pursuing greater security for America? A majority of Americans actually believe that Bush is making them less safe, as of course he is. Yet even the "left-wing" of the corporate media continues to "balance" any notice of Bush's ground-breaking policy changes (in plain English, steps toward fascism) with the idea that these changes are being pursued for the purpose of security.

Brownstein concludes thus: "Through 2008, Bush's dispute with these [right-wing] voices of restraint may shape America's national security decisions more than his arguments with the Democrats." What about his arguments with the American people? Don't we count for anything? If we do, it is not at all clear that Bush will be around through 2008.

Juan Cole deconstructs Chris Wallace's SWARMY LIES from the Clinton interview...

Thank you, Juan Cole, for DECONSTRUCTING the SWARMY LIES Chris Wallace made during his now infamous interview with President Clinton. And thanks, too, for posting the Google video of the interview, an all-in-one video that permits time stamping a critique of the interview.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9026120716999978732&q=Clinton+Wallace+Fox&hl=en

DECONSTRUCTING Chris Wallace's lies is as simple as paying attention to what he says, and when he says it.

Wallace: "IF YOU LOOK AT THE QUESTIONS HERE, you'll see that HALF of the questions are about the Clinton Global initiative... I DIDN'T THINK THAT THIS [questioning Clinton's efforts vs. Al Qaida] WOULD SET YOU OFF ON SUCH A TANGENT." (11:05 on the Google video)

BUT let's look at when Wallace FIRST BROKE IN to Clinton's discussion of his global fundraising initiative... there at FOUR MINUTES into a 15 minute interview! Wallace thinks he is being slick phrasing his question "Why didn't you, President Clinton, DO ENOUGH to capture bin Laden...OUR READERS sent in this question in surprising numbers" but, again, it starts at the FOUR MINUTE mark, LONG before half-way of a 15 minute interview, and long before Clinton had even gotten into anything but a brief outline of his initiative!

This is an unmistakable mark: Wallace is INTERRUPTING Clinton's discussion of his Global Initiative, to ambush him with "innocent questions" long, long before Clinton has had a chance to give a thorough discussion of his initiative.

Then, as Clinton is trying to answer part one of Wallace's multi-part, complex question ("why didn't you do enough to catch bin Laden..? what about Somalia..? what about..?) Wallace INTERRUPTS HIM YET AGAIN, this time around the early 7-minute mark, "Without you [Mr. President] GOING INTO [the events of 19]'93..."

That is, AFTER WALLACE BROUGHT UP "Osama bin Laden saw the USA RUN FROM Somalia, and took that to mean the US troops are afraid" and Clinton answers "Osama bin Laden HAD NOTHING TO DO with Blackhawk Down and the Somalia mission" WALLACE TRIES TO INTERRUPT Clinton's rational, explanatory answer!

Wallace next invokes "THE 9-11 COMMISSION, and that this is what THEY did talk about, NOT what the ABC revisionist TV drama tried to portray..." That is, Wallace is EQUATING Clinton's efforts against al Qaida to the end of the Clinton administration in January 2001, with what the Bush administration DID NOT DO between January 2001 and 9-11-2001.

To repeat, Chris Wallace had his 9-11 report and highlights handy, so when he DIVERTED the interview at the four-minute mark, he was PREPARED to GO IN DEPTH on the topic of his diversion (i.e. Clinton's incomplete hunt for Al Qaida).

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than the swarmy bushwhacking techniques and timeline of Chris Wallace's "GOTCHA! questions, "YOU, President Clinton, ARE TO BLAME for 9-11!" interview ambush, is Chris Wallace's other swarmy lie: THAT HE ASKS JUST AS TOUGH QUESTIONS of the Bush-Cheney administration, as he asks of President Clinton in the interview.

And that's where JUAN COLE's research illustrates what a SMARMY LIAR Chris Wallace truly is:

Juan Cole:
- - - Wallace maintained that he also asked tough questions about failure to tackle Bin Laden of Republican politicians.
HERE is Wallace interviewing Republican Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney on Bin Laden in February, 2005. Compare these softballs to the hatchet job he did on Clinton - - -
-------------------------

WALLACE: President Bush did not mention Osama bin Laden in his State of the Union address.
Do you have any idea where he is, even what country he's in?

CHENEY: That would be just speculation. And if I did know, I obviously couldn't talk about it.
WALLACE: I mean, the current speculation is that he's somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
CHENEY: I don't want to elaborate on where he might or might not be.
WALLACE: How much operational control do you believe he still has over al Qaeda? And 3 1/2 years after 9/11, why haven't we still caught him?
CHENEY: Well, we have done enormous damage to al Qaeda. The attacks that we've been able to mount, the work we've done with other nations, the Pakistanis, the Saudis and others, we've had an enormous and, I think, devastating impact on the organization -- captured or killed literally thousands of them around the world.
The organization, at this point, is, I think, very diffused. I don't think there's a hierarchical chain of command there; there never was much of one.
But I think nonetheless the threat's still out there. You see the kind of attacks that we had in Madrid, in Casablanca and elsewhere, Istanbul.
These oftentimes are attacks that are launched by what you might call affiliated, al Qaeda-affiliated groups, but they work on their own timetable, plan their own attacks. Some of them have been trained in Afghanistan and then go back, as is true of the group in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah. Then they go out, and sometimes with financial resources, but launch their own attacks.
In other words, attacks can occur without Osama bin Laden giving the order that an attack occur.
I think he is in hiding. I think he finds it very difficult to communicate with his organization.
WALLACE: Why can't we catch him?
CHENEY: Well, we're doing our level best, and I think eventually we will. But he's very good on his operational security, obviously. He's found good places to hide. And so far it's been a difficult task. But I think eventually we will get him.
WALLACE: Let me switch to another troubled part of that world.
----------------------------------------

Juan Cole wraps up his critque of Chris Wallace's miserable reporting with these illustrative comments:

<< Wallace LET CHENEY GET AWAY WITH MURDER in this interview. HE LET [Cheney] WALK ALL OVER HIM, and then ASKED HIM TO DO IT AGAIN WEARING spike heels.

In Lexis Nexis, I could only find one place where Wallace's name even came up in connection with Bush's own failure to capture Bin Laden, at Tora Bora in December of 2001. And that was where he gave Brit Hume an opportunity to dismiss the importance of that lapse. >>

We won't include the rest of Juan's comment to keep this entry shorter, but jump over to it, and to the Google video, to see for yourself JUST HOW CRAVEN a PRESSTITUTE Chris Wallace is for the Emperor (and his Black Lord Darth Vader) who wears no clothes.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/wallace-bin-laden-republicans-and.html

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9026120716999978732&q=Clinton+Wallace+Fox&hl=en

DC press corps is so Soviet Propagandesque, that it is comical....

The Whore Post / Lyin' NY Times led DC press corps is so Soviet Propagandesque, that it is comical....

In this case, the DC press corpse lapping up the Bush regime's DISINFORMATION campaign, Bush and Karl Rove sending RICHARD ARMITAGE out to MUDDY THE WATERS of the Rove-Libby-Cheney efforts to PUBLICIZE the undercover identity of CIA "NOC" spy Valerie Plame, in an effort to SMEAR and intimidate Plame, her husband, and any other potential whistleblowers in the government who dared to oppose the Bush White House's LIES_to_WAR agenda in early 2003.

[note: "NOC" is CIA terminology for "NON OFFICIAL COVER," i.e. a spy with NO FORMAL TIES to the US Government, and therefore completely at the mercy of a foreign government should that NOC undercover CIA spy be arrested for spying by that foreign government. In "OUTING" Valerie Plame, the Bush White House (Rove, Cheney, Libby) also effectively "OUTED" the ENTIRE COVER COMPANY "Brewster-Jennings Energy Consultants" - and every CIA agent who ever worked for it, possibly subjecting dozens of CIA informants and "assets" in foreign countries to arrest, torture, and murder by foreign regimes.]

<< Richard Armitage's STORY SOUNDS AS PHONY AS a ten-dollar Rolex, SO NATURALLY the [whore] WASHINGTON PRESS CORPS ATE IT UP. The former No. 2 State Department diplomat claims his disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA status was "inadvertent", which is shorthand for saying he forgot the "classified" labels on the memo prepared for the damage control effort against Joseph Wilson. >>

We'll let David Fiderer pick up the gory details of the DC press corpse slavishly applauding their Stalinist masters:

======================================

How Is Richard Armitage's Story Dishonest? Let's Count the Many Ways
David Fiderer
09.27.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/how-is-richard-armitages_b_30409.html


Richard Armitage's story sounds as phony as a ten-dollar Rolex, so naturally the Washington press corps ate it up. The former No. 2 State Department diplomat claims his disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA status was "inadvertent", which is shorthand for saying he forgot the "classified" labels on the memo prepared for the damage control effort against Joseph Wilson.

But the memo identifying Wilson's wife also alerted Armitage and others in the Administration that Plame herself could endanger their campaign to squelch criticism of the case for Iraq's WMDs. By labeling her a "WMD managerial type" the memo directed Armitage, and others who could easily find out, to Plame's actual job - operations chief for the clandestine Joint Task Force on Iraq overseeing espionage operations for gathering intelligence on Saddam's supposed WMDs. Surely she knew where bodies were buried in the trumped up case for war. The Administration, still trying to keep a lid on the WMD scam, had reason to worry if Plame ever stooped to divulge government secrets with the same reckless indifference shown by Armitage, Libby and Rove.

Armitage "forgot" about the classified warnings twice, each time right after the Washington Post and the New York Times published Joseph Wilson's allegation- that the so-called intelligence about Niger's uranium sale was never credible. Each time, Armitage passed on the information as digressive chitchat to a prominent Washington reporter.

The suspicious timing, by itself, proves little. But there's plenty more. First, Armitage explained his lapses with words that were carefully parsed and highly deceitful. For instance, he told David Martin of CBS News that, though the document was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified."

That's a red herring with an overpowering smell. Read the memo yourself. If you're smart enough to read it, you can't be dumb enough to overlook the obvious warnings that everything in the memo is secret and classified. Before every paragraph, at the top and bottom of every page and every attachment, are reminders as obvious as neon lights saying everything in the memo is secret and classified. Taken together, all those warnings - I counted 17 - are hard to forget.

Under the law, Armitage has no leeway to presume something is not classified "if he reason to believe" otherwise. His leaks are textbook violations of the Espionage Act . Under 18 United States Code Sec. 793(d):

Whoever, lawfully having possession of... any document... or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, ... to any person not entitled to receive it, ...Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
To spell it out,

1. Armitage had lawful possession of the document or information related to the national defense. (Fitzgerald's indictment of Libby removes all doubt that Plame's employment status was classified and not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.)
2. Armitage had reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, (those "classified" and "secret" labels are the memo are hard to miss), and
3. Woodward was not entitled to receive it.

Note what the statue does not require. It does not require specific knowledge that the information was harmful to the United States; nor must the specific act cause actual harm to the United States (though the harm to national security was significant since Plame also did covert work in Iran).

Then there's the Foreign Intelligence and Identities Act. The burden of proof is higher under this statute, though there's sufficient evidence for a plausible case, (see Whom Should I Believe? Victoria Toensing or My Own Lying Eyes?)

Patrick Fitzgerald pursued no criminal action against Armitage, probably because the Deputy Secretary volunteered his full cooperation right from the start. Armitage's apparent good faith must have lent plausibility to his claim that, over the one-month interval between publication of the memo (June 10, 2003) and the leak to Bob Novak (July 8, 2003), Armitage "forgot" the 17 warnings that the information was classified.

But Armitage also "forgot" about his first leak to Bob Woodward, until his memory was jogged by Woodward years later. Following the Scooter Libby indictment, Woodward reminded Armitage that he leaked Plame's identity to Woodward on June 13, 2003. The timing of the first leak, 72 hours after the publication of the memo with 17 warnings, is far more incriminating.

Imagine you were Richard Armitage. Having worked in the military and high government posts for 40 years, your job is to regularly review and retain the contents of classified memos. You read the subject memo, which was published on June 10, 2003. On June 12, 2003, the Washington Post publishes the story "CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data Bush Used Report Of Uranium Bid". (Wilson, then an unnamed source of reporter Walter Pincus, affirms the contents of the State Department memo, which says the Niger intelligence was too far-fetched for serious consideration.) On June 13, 2003 you meet with Bob Woodward and, like some gossiping schoolgirl, casually mention the employment of Joe Wilson's wife because you forgot that the information was classified. Please. Let's return to planet earth. Any clerk in a corporate personnel department knows he'll be immediately fired if caught blurting out confidential employee information. Armitage could not do his job if his 72-hour memory were that much of a sieve.

Robert Parry, reporting in Consortium News, also raises doubts about Armitage's feigned obliviousness. Parry writes, "When I asked my well-placed conservative source about [Armitage's] scenario, he laughed and said, 'Armitage isn't a gossip, but he is a leaker. There's a difference.'"

Armitage made other deceptive remarks to insinuate that the Plame leak was an honest mistake. "I had never seen a covert agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he said to David Martin and to the Associated Press, which, legally, is à propos to nothing and almost certainly false, because many State Department employees work as covert agents for the CIA. (For example, in 1989 Valerie Plame "worked" as a State Department officer at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, though her covert mission was to recruit agents for the CIA.)

The memo's contents also put Armitage on notice that any details in the memo may not be 100% accurate. The very first paragraph (like all others, marked "S [ecret[//N[ot for] F[oreign Governments]") makes clear that the contents are based on the notes of State Department staffers who were "involved at the margin" of Joe Wilson's Niger trip, but were not available to help prepare the memo. Consequently, any reader with a security clearance knows better than to presume the sensitivity of Mrs. Wilson's role within the CIA.

But the staffer's reference to Mrs. Wilson as a "WMD management type" signaled her potential proximity to the broad WMD effort in Iraq. At the time, the Chief of Staff for State Department Undersecretary John Bolton was Frederick Fleitz,, who concurrently worked in the CIA's section for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control as a senior CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control. Fleitz could have easily alerted Bolton and others regarding Plame's role in gathering WMD intelligence for Iraq.

Armitage had another line that, to put it charitably, strains credulity. Though he says he remembers leaking to Novak, Armitage didn't realize that he was the leaker. Hmm. The supposed time sequence is as follows: Armitage leaks to Novak on July 8, 2003. Novak publishes his column on July 14, 2003. On July 21, 2003, Joe Wilson argues that his family is subject to a smear campaign. The Democrats insist on an investigation (a request stymied by the Republicans). But Richard Armitage, the gossip who forgets what's classified and what isn't, never realizes that he might be Novak's source. Only later, on October 1, 2003, when Novak writes a follow-up column stating that his primary source was "no partisan gunslinger", does it occur to Armitage that he might be Novak's source.

If Murray Waas' reporting for the National Journal proves to be true, the timing of Novak's column, and Armitage's sudden awareness, are extremely suspicious. Waas reports that Novak telephoned Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, "according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men." (Al Hunt, of the Capital Gang, described Rove and Novak as "intimately close.") The date of the call was September 29, 2003, three days after the public knew of the CIA request to the Justice Department to investigate the Plame leak, Two days after that alleged phone call, Novak published his column describing the leaker as "no partisan gunslinger" ( i.e. not Rove), and suddenly Armitage figures out that the leaker is he himself. On October 2, 2003, Armitage was interviewed by the FBI.

So if you add up:
1. The suspicious timing of the leaks that coincided with Wilson's published allegations,
2. The implausibility that Armitage would forget that the info was classified three days after reading the memo with 17 warnings,
3. The dishonest claims that "not every sentence is classified ' or that
4. "he'd never seen a covert agent's name in a memo",
5. The implausibility of Armitage not realizing that he was Novak's source in a column published six days after the leak,
6. The signal to Armitage that Wilson's wife may know far more information undermining the case for war,
7. The implausibility that Armitage would relay information from a classified memo to Bob Woodward without an agenda beyond gossipy chit-chat, and
8. The standard negotiating ploy of doing a mea culpa on one leak but forgetting the first, far more incriminating, leak,

then it looks like:

a. Armitage was engaged in precisely the same activity as Libby, in terms of conducting a stealth smear campaign on both Joseph and Valerie Wilson; and/or
b. Armitage conscientiously devised an "I'm-innocent-but-I-remembered-this-and-forgot-that" scenario as a means of providing cover for anyone else, like Libby.

Murray Waas' reporting, above, reinforces the second hypothesis.

Robert Parry writes that his "well-placed conservative source", who knows both Rove and Armitage, said that "the two men are much closer than many Washington insiders understand, that they developed a friendship and a working relationship when Bush was recruiting Colin Powell to be Secretary of State."

I think Mr. Parry is on to something.

David Broder: The penultimate DC press whore?

OK, we admit... DAVID BRODER - the "senior statesman" of the DC press corpse, currently decomposing at that whore of an institution, the WASHINGTON POST - does have some stiff competition. In our previous post we took Marc Fisher to task, and even far more qualified than Marc Fisher is the Post's resident "legendary" investigative reporter, BOB WOODWARD, now turned to Bush family hagiographer as he abandons the principles of his former career to "speak truth to power."

But Broder, like the Post, SPECIALIZES in heaping snooty, condescending SCORN on everyone who doesn't toe to HIS "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" party line. Indeed, Broder is SYNONYMOUS with Washington D.C. "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" - no matter how ABSURD that "wisdom" may be.

The Bush administration presents CARTOONS - artist's drawing - of "Iraqi mobile bio-labs" as "PROOF" of Iraq's WMD threat??!

"NO PROBLEM THERE... LET'S START A WAR!" says David Broder, Dean of the DC "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" press corpse.

==============================================

Why I'm mad: An open letter to David Broder from a fellow journalist
By Will Bunch
26 Sept. 2006
http://www.attytood.com/archives/003769.html

This is an open letter that I am sending today to columnist David Broder of the Washington Post, the so-called "dean of American journalism." I am hoping that others will read it, because it touches on many of the important issues of a free press and democracy that I so frequently deal with here. -- Will Bunch (Note: includes minor edits for grammar, etc.

Dear David Broder,

I am writing in response to your recent columns in the Washington Post, embracing the make-believe "independence party" of an American political center that doesn't really much exist anymore -- except in your mind and the fantasies of a few like-minded D.C. pundit types . In one column, you managed to dismiss the ideas of millions of Americans who share little except great alarm at where America and its values have been heading the last six years, lumping them – us, actually – all together as simply "the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left."

I know you’ve heard back from a few of them. But you haven’t heard yet from someone like me. Like you, I am a newspaper reporter, and I share some of your core values, including a commitment to journalistic digging and hard work, and an unwillingness to accept the pat and partisan answers at face value.

And yet, I am also a blogger – professionally, and I guess by temperament. And when I see what is coming out of your hometown in 2006 -- ugly politics driven by fear, the chucking of the constitution and our deep-seated judicial principles such as the writ of habeas corpus – it can indeed make me very angry, so angry that there are times when, yes, I must sound “vituperative” on occasion.

I am writing to you to explain why that is.

Mad? Often. "Vituperative"?...sometimes, but "foul mouthed" never. I know some people have said and even sent some nasty things to you – I don’t endorse that. I would not and will not insult you; in fact, there was a time in my life when I very much wanted to be you, when I was a young man who wanted your seat one day as one of "the boys on the bus," covering the Making of the Next President. And you were very much a man for those times, the 1970s, when the rise of TV advertising meant that spin would complete the war to replace substance. America needed people like you then – with the right kind of cynicism to cut through all the crap on both sides of the aisle.

But what we used to call "a healthy dose of cynicism" eventually became toxic, for you and for so many of your "gang of 500" inside the Beltway. Somehow, exposing the lies of the system during the Watergate era, when you won a deserved Pulitzer, grew into benign acceptance that politics is pretty much a sport – a sport where, well, everybody lies.

And while you and your new lunch pals at the Palm knew you still had to expose the occasional lie, or at least get worked up about it, to maintain your journalistic credibility, you only went for the low-hanging fruit, the “objective lie,“ the DNA test on a blue dress from the Gap, not the elusive but ultimately false premises that would kill tens of thousands on a bloody war far from most Americans’ sight. Monica Lewinsky allowed you and your friends to prove that journalism was still about exposing...well, exposing something or other.

You, and your colleague Bob Woodward, and so many others, grew to admire the callous art of spincraft you'd been trained to expose -- so much so that when Hurricane Katrina devastated an American city and betrayed a stunning indifference to the fate of the nation's poorest, you could only write that Katrina "opens new opportunities for [Bush]to regain his standing with the public."

Your cynicism hardened as it grew -- to the point where your most famous quote is that "anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office." Ideas didn’t matter. Do you even remember what you wrote in 2000, when Al Gore gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. You said:

I have to confess, my attention wandered as he went on through page after page of other swell ideas, and somewhere between hate crimes legislation and a crime victim's constitutional amendment, I almost nodded off.

And when “the dean of American journalism” writes that, no wonder that so many voters thought that Gore and George W. Bush were Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or that a protest vote for Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan in what proved to be the closest presidential election in modern American history wouldn’t matter.

But it did matter, didn’t it?

Everything changed, starting on Jan. 20, 2001 and for good just eight months later. You didn’t seem to notice. But some Americans did…even a few journalists.

It’s not like anyone become “vituperative” overnight. When Bush smudged the memory of 9/11 got Congress to almost unanimously pass a bill to curb civil liberties with the Orwellian name of the Patriot Act, I and many others were just mildly “concerned.” When I began to read in your own newspaper that the attack by al-Qaeda would be used to justify an unprovoked “pre-emptive” war on an oil-rich nation that has nothing to do with 9/11, that’s when I -- and the millions of others you so blithely dismissed -- began to become “alarmed.” Even then, we weren’t “mad“; I know I wasn’t, for anger is not part of my basic nature.

The night I became angry came in March 2003, the night that your friends and colleagues in the White House press room took a dive at a nationally televised press conference, and refused to challenge the president’s specious grounds for war. I was furious over what my profession -- the one where you had once inspired me a generation ago -- had now become. And frankly, a lot of people on the left side became angry, too -- because, frankly, nobody was listening when they were nice. Protest marches of half a million got inside-the-A-section type coverage; at least a little vitriol finally got your attention, Mr. Broder.

And this was all before so much else happened -- the made-up terror alerts, the chucking of the Geneva Convention and the torture and abuse that followed, the illegal spying, the willful defiance of laws enacted by Congress, the ignoring of the fundamental right of habeas corpus. I won’t waste a lot of space chronicling it all, because you know it all. You know it all…and yet you have done nothing.

That’s because your cynicism is degenerative disease, and it leads to paralysis. You were the dean overseeing the Great Game of American politics, and then some bad guys came along and changed all the rules, and you tried so very hard not to notice. Now that the unlawful nature of this presidency is becoming recognized by a majority, you are praying for a deus ex machina, this fictional “independence party” that will not just save America but most importantly save you, save you from having to make a choice.

It’s too late for that now, Mr. Broder. I do not blame you; I did not want to make this choice either; it chose me. I would have been much happier, frankly, spending my 40s the way that you spent your 40s, fighting for a Pulitzer Prize instead of fighting to preserve the basics of a democracy and a free press, the things that you and I and America were able to take for granted for so long. Nor do I expect you to join us; frankly, if that happens, it would probably would not happen until America has already fallen into the abyss, and I hope and pray that it does not come to that.

In the meantime, this journalist will use every weapon in his arsenal to preserve the values that allowed our craft to flourish in America -- including the weapon of anger. That may offend you from time to time; I guess on some level I hope that it doesn’t.

Either way, don’t expect me to apologize for it.

Because I won’t.

blah blah... Typical snoty, condescending WP editorial by Marc Fisher....

"WHO?" indeed!

Marc Fisher, editorialist for the terminally corrupt and arrogant (and useless) WASHINGTON POST, asks of VA Senator George Allen's critics "WHO ARE THEY?" and "WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN?" (In his headline, no less.)

WELL, Mr. Fisher, we might ask, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU, and WHERE HAVE *YOU* been, as Republithugs in Congress and in certain connected Republican-owned companies have instituted DIEBOLD, ES&S, and SEQUOIA VOTING MACHINES throughout the nation, on the taxpayer dime and mandated by the federal government... VOTE COUNTING MACHINES that WOULD NOT PASS MUSTER of a routine software integrity inspection performed by state auditors on TENS of THOUSANDS of gambling slot-machines every year?"

(A few lines inserted into a slot machine's program can SKIM OFF a few dollars a day or month... a few VOTES, SKIMMED off a no-audit, no-oversight, NO VERIFICATION voting machine, is MUCH MORE of a crap-shoot than a manipulated slot machine, for vote-counting machines determine WHO WILL CONTROL - BILLIONS of dollars - of federal tax-and-spend powers, and literally LIFE and DEATH legislative and executive decisions on everything from prenatal and premature pregnancies, to job safety, to wars, to job outstourcing overseas, to heavy metal toxins in the food and water supply, and to whether or not women can access safe and accurate medical advice for their pregnancies, wanted or unwanted).

"WHERE HAVE *YOU* BEEN, Mr. Marc Fisher, as the Bush-Cheney administration turns * FEMA * - America's DISASTER MANAGEMENT AGENCY - into yet another dumping ground for incompetent, partisan hacks and Bush cronies?

"WHERE HAVE *YOU* BEEN, Mr. Fisher, as Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld PUT TAX CUTS for the hyper-wealthy (people who will never have to worry about paying the bills for the basics in life) AHEAD OF body-armor, Humvee armor, and other necessities for combat troops in Iraq?

"WHERE HAVE *YOU* BEEN, Mr. Fisher, as the Bush-Cheney administration used ARTIST's DRAWINGS of alleged "Iraqi bio-weapons facilities" as "PROOF" of Iraq's WMD program, among many other fraudulent-on-their face lies (up to and including the Rove-Cheney-Libby White House "outing" AN ENTIRE CIA UNDERCOVER OPERATION as means of smearing and intimidating a goverment whistleblower, in that case Ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband to CIA undercover spy Valerie Plame, who in turn was ONLY ONE "NOC" member ("non-official cover," i.e. NO, ZERO, ZIP US government protection if arrested in a foreign country) of the CIA cover company, "Brewster-Jennings Energy Consultants"?

"WHERE HAVE *YOU* BEEN, Mr. Fisher, as the Bush administration spends BILLIONS on their New Orleans crony-enrichment, er, reconstruction plan, WITHOUT AN OVERALL long-term ENVIRONMENTAL PLAN, and target for local neighborhoods and local homeowner involvement? As we all know (except the derelict editors and writers of the Washington Post), if you spend BILLIONS for a reconstruction project without an overall plan, you are probably WASTING money and DUPLICATING alot of the work/spending.

"WHERE HAVE *YOU* BEEN, Mr. Fisher, as the "religious" forces closely allied to the Bush-Cheney administration SEEK TO BAN, PROHIBIT, CENSOR the teaching of EVOLUTION from America's public schools? (Among many other Right-Wing Jihad goals in American public and private life.)

[note: prior to WWII, it was almost impossible to drive from the East coast to the West coast. Out west, for thousands of miles the only available roads were dirt roads that often washed out or were otherwise impassable during bad weather. WWII changed all that, and made America Number-One in the world for.. SYNONYMOUS WITH... HIGH TECHNOLOGY. Using British radar,decoding, computing, and jet engine science, European nuclear science and physics, and German chemical and rocket science, after WWII we Americans electrified even rural America, and led the entire world into 'the space age.' Today, cocksure and arrogant from the nuclear genie that all that FOREIGN technology has brought to America, "Reactionary America" wants to bow down to the gods of ignorance, regression, adn reaction, up to and including the BANNING, or CENSORSHIP, of science courses in public classrooms! Putting man on the moon required orbital calculations that take into consideration the pull of planets on dozen-year-orbits, and the placement of stars millions of light-years away. A galactic year is well over a 200 million years, the time it takes the solar system to orbit the galaxy. But in a raw pursuit of power based on religious clan-like identity, some substantial numbers of Americans - numbering into the millions - want to insist that the world is ONLY 6,000 years old, and that any science to the contrary MUST BE BANNED FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS!]

We could run straight down the list of anti-American goals and platforms of the Radical Right-Wing agenda (which is to say the Bush-Rove-Cheney agenda), and ask "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, Mr. Fisher?"

Living off the fat of the land, collecting that big-shot WASHINGTON POST paycheck, WITHOUT ASKING THE TOUGH or unpopular questions of REAL JOURNALISM, is more than likely where Mr. Marc Fisher has been these last 5 years.

================================================

Who Are George Allen's Critics and Where Have They Been?
Marc Fisher
26 Sept. 2006
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2006/09/who_are_george_allens_critics.html

The crumbling of George Allen's political career is taking place before our eyes and Virginians ought to try to understand why this is happening.

This is a classic snowballing political story. Set off by a gaffe (the macaca incident), the story gathered speed because the candidate stumbled and wandered and lurched from explanation to explanation (macaca referred to on e thing, then another, then the senator had never heard the word before), and then another badly-handled situation came along (the Jewish question.) And through it all, reporters have been hearing from readers, Virginians and people who knew the Allen family in some way over the decades--all with stories that seem to connect to one or another of Allen's apparent flaws. By now, his honesty, his straightforwardness, his basic humanity all seem to be in doubt.

How could this happen to someone who has been in elective politics for more than two decades, to someone who ran for and was elected to the jobs of governor and senator, and was--for a few moments at least--a leading candidate for president of the United States?

Where are these people coming from who now say that they have known for years about Allen's racist attitudes, racist speech, racist actions? Who are these people who suddenly knew for decades about the Allen family's secret--a secret so essential to Allen's mother that she didn't tell it to her son until well into his late middle age?

Since last week, I have talked to half a dozen people who knew Allen's mother decades ago and somehow figured, or thought they knew, that she was Jewish. In that context, how does the senator's protestation of ignorance stand up?

Here's a sample of the kind of notes and calls I've been getting, both from random readers and from Virginians who have been close enough to the Allen family to have seen Etty Allen socially:

From Elaine Schwartzbach:


"Decades ago, when George Allen's father was coach of the Redskins, my husband and I (along with several other couples) were guests in the coach's private box. When Mrs. Allen (the Senator's mother) appeared, several people, upon noticing her Mediterranean coloring, wondered what her ethnic background was. We were informed she had been born in either Morocco or Tunisia, and that she was Jewish. A fair number of the guests were also Jewish, and nothing further was discussed. It was simply a matter of "cocktail party" chit-chat. However, I was so naive in those years, that I assumed the coach was also Jewish, since he had a Jewish wife! How could comparative strangers know a fact that Mrs. Allen's children were not aware of?
Here's what a Virginian who knew the Allens through the Redskins in the early 1970s says:

"Everyone figured Etty was Jewish. There wasn't much discussion about it, but it was just what everyone knew about her, and nobody thought it was a secret. There was no idea that the family was hush-hush about it."

These are either raw political opportunists or people who knew stuff but didn't think it was important enough for them to go out on a limb--until now. How are we to judge the motives and actions of all these people?

On one hand, there are several of them. They are political people (UVa professor Larry Sabato, no shrinking violet, now says that he knows for a fact that George Allen used the N-word when he was a student at the university in Charlottesville) and they are non-politicals, such as the former football teammates who have come forward to accuse Allen of racist language and actions. Also lending them credibility is the fact that several of these people have attached their names to their comments, opening themselves to considerable abuse from defenders of Sen. Allen. (Sabato told the Virginian-Pilot last night that he knows about Allen's use of the racial slur from Allen's classmates: "My sources are former classmates who came to me with stories that matched up," Sabato told the paper. "I never solicited them. They came to me during the past few months.")

On the other side of the ledger, where were all these people over all these years? If they knew this stuff, why didn't they come forward when he entered politics, or when he ran for governor, or when he was on the road to unseating a U.S. Senator? And what about those teammates who say Allen was no such bigot and did no such things? Sure, their comments have been solicited and touted by the Allen campaign, but they too have attached their names.

Each voter will have to assess the players in this burgeoning circus for themselves, but here's where I am so far: I am by nature suspicious of people who suddenly appear with untold stories of bad deeds from long ago. But in the natural cycle of news stories, there is a force that builds behind stories that connect to the pre-existing misgivings citizens have about our elected leaders. The various Clinton infidelity scandals would have died early deaths had they not struck people of most political backgrounds as "oh yeah, that's him" moments; people kept emerging to tell stories, perhaps for politically motivated reasons, but the continuing drumbeat of those stories over the years fit in with what we already knew or thought we knew about Bill Clinton.

Similarly, threads of this new coat that has been wrapped around George Allen have been around for many years. The racist trappings, the anti-Martin Luther King holiday position, the support for Confederate heritage causes, the noose in his office, the rebel flag he put up--it had all been reported over the years. So too had there been some early reports about Allen's Jewish heritage.

All of that fuels the current fire. All of that lends credibility to those who are now speaking out.

Is this a distraction from the serious debate over Iraq that Allen and Jim Webb had been having? Absolutely. Don't voters deserve a real campaign focused on those essential questions? You bet. But picking a senator is about both policy and personality; we decide on people based not only on what they believe in, but on who they are, because we need to know how they are likely to decide on issues that haven't even come along yet.

Where, I want to know, is that unflappable, likable, confident George Allen I had come to enjoy over the years? Why has he permitted these potentially tangential issues to take over his campaign? Here's my bottom line question: If that affable, amiable guy is the real George Allen, then why, in this testing time, have we instead seen a guy who is flitting from story to story, a man who is snappish, smart-alecky, and utterly insensitive? Have we somehow stumbled to the core and found a man with no center?

Media Whores CAUGHT IN THE ACT: Video of Bill Clinton saying "You ask ME why *I* LET bin Laden get away? WHY DON'T YOU ASK BUSH what HE did pre-9-11?"

Our headline (link) takes you to the NewsHounds.US site, which has three YouTube videos of the entire Chris Wallace interview of President Clinton. As President Clinton states, "YOU FALSELY ACCUSE ME OF GIVING AID and COMFORT to Al Qaida by not killing or capturing him. WHY HAVEN'T YOU ASKED THAT SAME QUESTION of anyone in the Bush administration, President Bush DID NOTHING for EIGHT MONTHS to get bin Laden. I TRIED and failed, but at least I tried." Whereas THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DID NOT TRY - "They had THREE TIMES AS MUCH TIME TO GET bin LADEN AS I DID, and they DIDN'T EVEN TRY."

Here's MORE of the Media WHORING for insane, incomptent, corrupt, and grossly negligent Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld 'leadership" in Iraq and Afghan wars, and re countering terror here in America:

[That is, THESE headlines are accurate, but demonstrate how far the press/media has allowed the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld propaganda to drown out the credible facts from generals, national security analysts, and experts in the field]:


#1. Retired Military Officers Take Aim at Rumsfeld
By DAVID ESPO, AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 26) - Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.
http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/retired-military-officers-take-aim-at/20060925071309990008?ncid=NWS00010000000001

-----------------------------

#2l [headline SHOULD read: "Bush SLASHES Anti-Terror funding for Protecting California Ports"]

Anti-terror funds to protect big California ports decreasing
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/09/25/state/n202444D64.DTL&type=politics

--------------------------------

#3. Note: In this article Condoleeza Rice says "what we did against Al Qaida was AT LEAST AS AGRESSIVE as what Clinton did.."

BUT SHE WON'T or CAN'T point to ONE SINGLE THING! SHE or President Bush did!**

Rice Challenges Clinton on Terror Record
AP news
26 Sept. 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060926/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_clinton;_ylt=Apt4.zgkCpAnr0tp6wTV6s2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

NEW YORK - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue Osama bin Laden, and she accused President Bush's predecessor of leaving no comprehensive plan to fight al-Qaida.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said Monday during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

**note:
[Bush-Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld DID NOTHING about bin Laden in the early months of 2001....BESIDES DEMOTE Richard Clarke from the HEAD of the US Counter Terror program, thereby taking the wind OUT of his efforts to catch/kill bin Laden. Stopping/killing/bringing to justice Osama bin Laden after the October 2000 al Qaida attack on the USS Cole SHOULD HAVE BEEN *NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR* Condoleeza Rice's NUMBER ONE PRIORITY, and now she, in cowardly fashion, tries to duck, dodge and avoid responsibility, and instead SHIFT it on to those UNDER her authority... people that SHE_PREVENTED_FROM_DOING_MORE to get bin Laden.]

LIAR Charles Krauthammer, wp, WHORES for Right-Wing agenda and Neo-Con war-lust....

Well, thanks to the WASHINGTON POST for today's CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER editorial, a TEXT-BOOK exposition of the Post's tendency to rght-wing bias if ever there was one.

Sentence one, Krauthammer complains that "Religious fanatics have no sense of humor."

Would that include the Pharisees, Macabees, and Zealots of the Jewish faith, Mr. Krauthammer? How about the Israeli "justices" who approved of the 18 year prison sentence for Israel's nuclear-arsenal whistleblower Mordachai Vanunu?
(The Macabees were the heroes of Hanukah, who resisted the heirs of Alexander's Greek Army; the Zealots had less luck, committing suicide en-masse after the Romans crushed their fortress at Massadah.)

From his "humor" sentence, Mr. Krauthammer launches into his diatribe about "religious sensitivity" and Muslim violence, particulariy Muslim violence against Christian churches in the Mideast.

HELLO? Mr. Krauthammer and Washington Post?

Under Saddam's (brutal) regime, women were FREE TO BE SEEN IN PUBLIC, hold high offices (much less routine jobs), and CHRISTIAN CHURCHES WERE PROTECTED and relatively 'free' to practice their faith. All that has changed since George W. Bush has led the attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq - an attack, invasion, and occupation the POST and Mr. Krauthammer HAVE SUPPORTED EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.

(And the Bush administration's conduct of the AFGHANISTAN WAR is equally nightmarish... Shah Massoud was able to hold-off the Saudi-financed, Pakistan-supported Taliban FOR YEARS, WITHOUT A LICK of US support, and now Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld HAVE BOTCHED the Afghanistan occupation in three years flat.)

Mr. Krauthammer complains of an Italian nun being "shot dead, execution style" in Somalia. HOW MANY IRAQI, Afghan, or Lebanese WOMEN have been shot dead by America bullets, Mr. Krauthammer? We hear of WEDDING PARTIES in both Iraq and Afghanistan being FLATTENED by US bombs, but we don't hear any CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER OUTRAGE over those deaths.

And what about the larger picture here in America?

WHERE IS Mr. KRAUTHAMMER's OUTRAGE over the THEOCRATIC POLARIZATION here in America... the attempts to FORCE teaching of evoutionary sciences OUT of America's class rooms; the attempts of the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Republicans to DISSOLVE the barriers between CHURCH and STATE; the SUCCESSFUL attempts by the Bush-Rove White House to send MILLIONS of TAXPAYER DOLLARS to "faith-based" charities (with who-knows how much skimmed off the top for 'administrative expenses'); the ability of the theocratic forces to OUTLAW ABORTION and proclaim "RIGHT TO LIFE!" even as we Americans IGNORE the "collateral damage" civilian body count from our bombs and bullets in Afghanistan and Iraq? Mr. Kruathammer complains of Christian churches attacked by Muslim mobs... he neglects to mention that TWO Muslim nations have been INVADED by "Judeo-Christian" America, and that Judeo-Christian America FINANCED THE BOMBING of LEBANON, as well!

"Intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob.."

INDEED!

That PERFECTLY describes the horrors in America of young women and girls GETTING PREGNANT because of rape and/or incest, or because BIRTH CONTROL and THE MORNING AFTER PILL ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO THEM. Women FORCED to carry to term a child they are not prepared to, or are unable to raise, or women forced to endure a CRIMNALIZING process in so many states as they try to obtain a legal and/or safe abortion, Krauthammer, you hypocritical ghoul! Not to mention the SUPPORT from within the conservative American "right to life" community given to OLYMPIC BOMBER Eric Rudolph, who according to a CNN report "apologized Monday to his victims and their families for his 1996 bombing of Centennial Olympic Park, in which one person died and more than 100 were wounded" but who "DID NOT apologize for any of his other attacks, including the bombing of a family planning clinic."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/22/rudolph.sentenced/

Krauthammer writes:

<< "How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation. >>

But here in America, the PATRIOT ACT has long ago given the American President (currently George W. Bush) NAZIESQUE SS powers of UNLIMITED ARREST and INDEFINITE INCARCERATION, and just this week the president 'won' almost complete legislative approval for his unlimited, no-oversight, too-bad-if-you-die GESTAPO TORTURE methods!

That is, Krauthammer is complaining about violent Islamic censorship and reprisals by Muslims, while here in America HE PROMOTES the censorship, indefinite detention, TORTURE, and SUMMARY EXECUTION powers of the PATRIOT ACT under the rubric "war on terror"!

And EVERYONE knows that in "the war on terror" as run by the Bush administration, you can be rounded up and shipped off to America's gulags simply because -
A.) some informant a got paid to by American CIA operatives to come up with 'terror suspects'... as WE KNOW has happened in Afghanistan, which is why SO MANY detainees in Guantanamo have NOT been charged - literally, innocent goat-herders caught up in various US-Afghan warlord dragnets; or
B.) some American or Pakistani/Afghan/Saudi/Iraqi officials doen't like someone; or
C.) because someone can be accused of being "A TERRORIST" by a jealous neighbor, and like the Venetian Republic's STAR CHAMBER, OFF the pour soul goes, gone forever due to an ANONYMOUS tip!

And finally, what about THE LARGEST PICTURE:

<< The fact is that all three monotheistic religions HAVE in THEIR LONG HISTORIES wielded THE SWORD. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war. >>

Well, yeah... and:

<< Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.
And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism? >>


BUT WHAT Krauthammer neglects to mention... is that "THE PROMISED LAND" is only "promised" to the rampaging Jewish tribes under Moses and Joshua (who, remember, had just a generation or two previously SOUGHT and RECEIVED *MERCY* from the Egyptians when God sent a famine on Israel) ON THE CONDITION THAT THEY EXTERMINATE those tribes already present in Palestine and the Promised Land!

Of which JERICHO is only the most famous biblical city EXTERMINATED by the Jewish tribes; the Kingdom of Ai and twelve others among those tribes put-to-sword, every man, WOMAN, AND CHILD, SO GOD COULD grant his precious "PROMISED land" to his precious "CHOOSEN people."

And don't forget yet another tribe EXTERMINATED by the rampaging armies of Moses and Joshua: that would be the MIDIANITES... MOSES's IN-LAWS, the tribe of his wife and her father! The very tribe that SAVED Moses from a sure fate in the wilderness, BETRAYED and MASSACRED by Moses not even a generation later, using, of course, some theocratic shred of an excuse to justify an insane, violent, treacherous blood-lust.

And don't forget "THE GREAT SIN" of King Saul, the "SIN" whereby he is damned, doomed, and kills hundreds of INNOCENT bystanders trying to AVOID the FATE of GOD's PUNISHMENT!

WHAT was Saul's GREAT 'SIN' that damned him to doom?

We'll take Wikipedia's explanation instead of posting a dozen paragraphs from the bible:

<< Samuel orders Saul to EXTERMINATE [the kingdom of] Amalek, but although Saul subsequently SLAUGHTERS the Amalekites, he doesn't slaughter the animals, and captures the king, Agag, alive. Saul also erects a trophy at Carmel in his own honour. Samuel berates him for NOT_CARRYING_OUT_THE_MASS_EXTERMINATION_COMPLETELY, so Saul repents and begs Samuel to go with him. Samuel refuses, and leaves, but Saul grabs at him, tearing part of Samuel's mantle, for which Samuel says that part of Saul's kingdom will be torn off and given to another. SAMUEL KILLS AGAG HIMSELF, by HACKING HIM into pieces. (wa-yeshassef). >>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Samuel

Now, Mr. Krauthammer, WHAT IS YOUR CRITICISM of Islam again?

Are you aware that a so-called "PROPHET" of the bible, took it upon himself to HACK A CAPTURED, helpless PRISONER.... TO DEATH?

Does that sound "God-like" or "Holy" or "TOLERANT", Mr. Krauthammer?

Don't forget, the CONDEMNATION (damnation) and DEATH OF SAUL were the PREREQUISITES for David's murderous reign, a reign that starts with David on a genocidal, mercenary run from a demented, murderous Saul, and ends with David exterminating half of his own kingdom, putting down a rebellion, Saddam Hussein style, every bit as demented and murderous as Saul, except a tad more successful.

(To repeat, ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, Saul is CONDEMNED and DAMNED to lose his kingdom, because, #1.) he didn't wait long enough for Samuel to arrive to give the blessing for the army (Saul made the sacrifice on the 7th day; Samuel arrived on the 8th); #2.) commanded to EXTERMINATE the Amalekites, Saul spares the animals and the sole survivor, King Agag. #3.) Having scorned Saul for Saul's small tinge of mercy, "God's prophet" Samuel next HACKS the defenseless Agog to pieces... a murderous zealot of a genocidal theocracy who is today considered "A PROPHET" of the bible, from an era that is CENTRAL to the very Jewish faith, and central to the Jewish claim for a holy homeland in the MiddleEast.

SO, Mr. Krauthammer... WHICH PART of theological violence and "mobs" and a religion or people "IMPOSING THEMSELVE BY THE SWORD" is it that you reject?

And here is an even more mundane example of ATROCITIES committed in the name of God, the bible, and the Jewish Kingdom:

<< And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.... And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well.... Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. -- 1 Samuel 18:25-27 >>

(Thanks to "The Bible's war on Marriage; Encourage the buying and selling of wives.")
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/06/bibles-war-on-marriage.html

Clearly, Mr. Krauthammer is using the old Nazi propaganda technique, "SELECTIVE OUTRAGE."

"Jewish terrorists surrounded and rounded up by our valiant counter-terror soldiers" was EXACTLY, the word-for-word euphamism used by Nazi press to describe THE EXTERMINATION of entire Jewish towns and villages in Eastern Poland and Russia and the Ukraine.

And IF you want to be all outraged over the VIOLENCE inherent in the "Sword of Islam," WHY DON'T YOU FIRST CRITICIZE the VIOLENCE INHERENT in the Bible, and ESPECIALLY the GENOCIDAL EXTERMINATIONS upon which the entire "PROMISED LAND" theological homeland and faith is based, Mr. Krauthammer?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P.S.: Krauthammer does another one of his "selective outrage" moments criticizing the Madona rock concert for appropriating the religious symbol of an execution by crucifixion into her show. Uhh... Mr. Kruathammer, in the world as God saw fit to create it, INNOCENT PEOPLE as well as guilty criminals are EXECUTED all the time.... GET OVER IT!
- #1. IF you hold that God is "all powerful, all knowing" then 'He' is as responsible for the deaths of "innocent" prisoners and execution victims (much less entire peoples put to the sword by rampaging conquerers) as are the human authorities who condemn and execute that prisoner.
- #2. The Christian faith APPROPRIATED the crucifix symbol and means of execution FROM THE ROMANS and their victims... people, both good and bad, who lost their lives on the cross long before Christ, and long before Christianity made it a holy icon. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU, Mr. Krauthammer, HAVE, TO CONDEMN an artistic use of a symbol of execution, that was appropriated by a religion as a symbol of God's "compassion," when it takes a hell of a lot of artistic license to turn a symbol of cruelty into a symbol of religious compassion ("For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son...") in the first place?

(P.P.S: Kruathammer DOESN'T seem to find a lick of outrage in Virginia Senator George Allen's pro-CCC and veiled racist campaign and history, a history that includes open association with violence-supporting racists... or the fact that Allen denied until recently his mother's Jewish birth and upbringing, in most sneering and scorning manner.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060921/ts_alt_afp/usvoterepublicanallen

Neo-con blood must be thicker than water, as long as 'the mutual enemy' is on distant shores, ehh, Mr. Krauthammer?

Well, we have to thank the Post and their resident editorial LIAR in chief, Charles Krauthammer.

THANKS, Charles Krauthammer, for the TEXT BOOK exposition of SELECTIVE OUTRAGE and SUPPORT of neo-con RACISTS and avowed neo-con imperialist saber-rattlers and possible war-crimes criminals.

THANKS, Post, for making the assinine argument that somehow Islamic protests against the Pope have NOTHING to to with the Judeo-Christian invasions of two Muslim countries, and the massive bombing of a third.

Maybe if we're lucky, we can witness Krauthammer and Safire and Kristol and Suzlberger and Fineman and Kurtz and Blitzer and King and Koppel and Weiner practice what they preach - drenching themselves in blood by HACKING DEFENSELESS PRISONERS to bits as the "prophet" Samuel once did, proving their dedication to "tolerance" and "justice" and journalistic integrity, as only we Americans can know them!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P.S.: Krauthammer does another one of his "selective outrage" moments criticizing the Madona rock concert for appropriating the religious symbol of an execution by crucifixion into her show. Uhh... Mr. Kruathammer, in the world as God saw fit to create it, INNOCENT PEOPLE as well as guilty criminals are EXECUTED all the time.... GET OVER IT!
- #1. IF you hold that God is "all powerful, all knowing" then 'He' is as responsible for the deaths of "innocent" prisoners and execution victims (much less entire peoples put to the sword by rampaging conquerers) as are the human authorities who condemn and execute that prisoner.
- #2. The Christian faith APPROPRIATED the crucifix symbol and means of execution FROM THE ROMANS and their victims... people, both good and bad, who lost their lives on the cross long before Christ, and long before Christianity made it a holy icon. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU, Mr. Krauthammer, HAVE, TO CONDEMN an artistic use of a symbol of execution, that was appropriated by a religion as a symbol of God's "compassion," when it takes a hell of a lot of artistic license to turn a symbol of cruelty into a symbol of religious compassion ("For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son...") in the first place?

(P.P.S: Kruathammer DOESN'T seem to find a lick of outrage in Virginia Senator George Allen's pro-CCC and veiled racist campaign and history, a history that includes open association with violence-supporting racists... or the fact that Allen denied until recently his mother's Jewish birth and upbringing, in most sneering and scorning manner.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060921/ts_alt_afp/usvoterepublicanallen

Neo-con blood must be thicker than water, as long as 'the mutual enemy' is on distant shores, ehh, Mr. Krauthammer?

Well, we have to thank the Post and their resident editorial LIAR in chief, Charles Krauthammer.

THANKS, Charles Krauthammer, for the TEXT BOOK exposition of SELECTIVE OUTRAGE and SUPPORT of neo-con RACISTS and avowed neo-con imperialist saber-rattlers and possible war-crimes criminals.

THANKS, Post, for making the assinine argument that somehow Islamic protests against the Pope have NOTHING to to with the Judeo-Christian invasions of two Muslim countries, and the massive bombing of a third.

Maybe if we're lucky, we can witness Krauthammer and Safire and Suzlberger and Fineman and Kurtz and Blitzer and King and Koppel practice what they preach - drenching themselves in blood by HACKING DEFENSELESS PRISONERS to bits as the "prophet" Samuel once did, proving their dedication to "tolerance" and "justice" and journalistic integrity, as only we Americans can know them!

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Tolerance: A Two-Way Street
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 22, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101513.html

Religious fanatics, regardless of what name they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking a joke well.

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:
Tolerance: A Two-Way Street
» Charles Krauthammer In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.

· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.

· In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.

· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in German at a German university by the pope.

And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight of her latest concert tour.

In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.

The fact is that all three monotheistic religions have in their long histories wielded the sword. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war.

Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.

And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism?

However, the inconvenient truth is that after centuries of religious wars, Christendom long ago gave it up. It is a simple and undeniable fact that the violent purveyors of monotheistic religion today are self-proclaimed warriors for Islam who shout "God is great" as they slit the throats of infidels -- such as those of the flight crews on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and are then celebrated as heroes and martyrs.

Just one month ago, two journalists were kidnapped in Gaza and were released only after their forced conversion to Islam. Where were the protests in the Islamic world at that act -- rather than the charge -- of forced conversion?

Where is the protest over the constant stream of vilification of Christianity and Judaism issuing from the official newspapers, mosques and religious authorities of Arab nations? When Sheik 'Atiyyah Saqr issues a fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs"? When Sheik Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, professor of Islamic law, says on Saudi TV that "someone who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one-third of a trinity. . . . Don't you hate the faith of such a polytheist?"

Where are the demonstrations, where are the parliamentary resolutions, where are the demands for retraction when the Mufti Sheik Ali Gum'a incites readers of al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, against "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers . . . who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood"?

The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin al-Shura Council in Iraq declares that it "will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the 'jizya' [head] tax; then the only thing acceptable is conversion or the sword." This to protest the accusation that Islam might be spread by the sword.

As I said. No sense of irony.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

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Bush GETS HIS TORTURE. Press WHORES spin the issue as no more than a political tiff....

An exception to the PRESS WHORES at the Post, Dan Fromkin actually writes an understandable article:

<< Pay NO ATTENTION to the 'news' stories suggesting that the White House caved in yesterday.

On the central issue of whether the CIA should continue using interrogation methods on suspected terrorists that many say CONSTITUTE TORTURE, the White House GOT ITS WAY, winning agreement from the "maverick" Republican senators who had refused to go along with AN OVERT UNDOING of the Geneva Conventions. >>

===========================================

Bush Gets His Way
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 22, 2006; 12:42 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html


Pay no attention to the news stories suggesting that the White House caved in yesterday.

On the central issue of whether the CIA should continue using interrogation methods on suspected terrorists that many say constitute torture, the White House got its way, winning agreement from the "maverick" Republican senators who had refused to go along with an overt undoing of the Geneva Conventions.

The "compromise"? The Republican senators essentially agreed to look the other way.

Once again (see Monday's column ) there was so much disingenuousness flying through the airwaves that straight news reporting simply wasn't up to the task of conveying the real meaning of the day.

So let's go to the editorials and opinion columns.

Editorials and Opinions

The Washington Post editorial board writes: "Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.

"In short, it's hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.' In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. . . .

"[T]he senators who have fought to rein in the administration's excesses -- led by Sens. McCain, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) -- failed to break Mr. Bush's commitment to 'alternative' methods that virtually every senior officer of the U.S. military regards as unreliable, counterproductive and dangerous for Americans who may be captured by hostile governments. . . .

"Mr. Bush wanted Congress to formally approve these practices and to declare them consistent with the Geneva Conventions. It will not. But it will not stop him either, if the legislation is passed in the form agreed on yesterday."

The New York Times editorial board writes: "The deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the White House agreed to a list of 'grave breaches' of the conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes, it stipulated that the president could decide on his own what actions might be a lesser breach of the Geneva Conventions and what interrogation techniques he considered permissible. It's not clear how much the public will ultimately learn about those decisions."

David Ignatius 's Washington Post opinion column today chronicles the administration's astonishing and undercovered torture-related legal wranglings, which date back to the decision to rough up terror suspect Abu Zubaida in 2002.

"From the outset the CIA officers wanted written assurance that what they were doing was legal. The Justice Department prepared an initial (and now infamous) August 2002 memo from Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, with the chilling advice that techniques were permissible if they didn't produce pain equivalent to that caused by 'organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.' The Bybee torture memo was withdrawn, but the Justice Department offered a broad assurance in 2002 that because the program would operate outside U.S. jurisdiction, at secret sites abroad, interrogators would not be subject to U.S. law. Justice officials also argued that because captives were illegal 'enemy combatants,' they didn't have protections under the Geneva Conventions. That didn't satisfy the CIA officers running the program, especially after the uproar over Abu Ghraib, so they pressed Justice for a more detailed written opinion. It finally arrived in spring 2005.

"The real crunch came when McCain began pushing in mid-2005 for a law that would explicitly ban harsh interrogation methods. The initial response of some CIA officers staffing the program was to accept the McCain amendment, since Justice had ruled that the techniques they were using were legal. But Vice President Cheney preferred to fight McCain, and several months of bitter negotiation produced a legislative history that in CIA officers' minds removed any ambiguity -- McCain viewed the program as illegal under his new statute.

"What came next remains murky, even to those most closely involved. Rep. Duncan Hunter, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, demanded an assurance that the McCain amendment wouldn't harm the CIA's anti-terrorism efforts. He received a letter of assurance from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, even though CIA officers had advised Negroponte that the amendment would undermine the existing program. Meanwhile, President Bush signed the law but appended a signing statement that said it didn't alter the president's inherent powers, which in Cheney's view included the right to authorize the program. The administration, in other words, wanted it both ways.

"Without clear legal guidance, CIA officers suspended interrogations in December 2005. . . .

"The administration began tinkering with the program this spring, discarding some of the most extreme techniques, in an effort to make it comply with the McCain amendment."

Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times: "[T]ake any of the 'alternative' methods that Bush wants to use on U.S. detainees and imagine someone using those methods on your son or daughter. If the bad guys captured your son and tossed him, naked, into a cell kept at a temperature just slightly higher than an average refrigerator, then repeatedly doused him with ice water to induce hypothermia, would that be okay? What if they shackled him to a wall for days so he couldn't sit or lie down without hanging his whole body weight on his arms? What if they threatened to rape and kill his wife, or pretended they were burying him alive? What if they did all these things by turns? Would you have any problem deciding that these methods are cruel? . . .

"[T]hough the word 'accountability' isn't in the White House dictionary, there's a long entry under 'CYA -- covering your ass.'

"Bush isn't stupid. He understands that it's far too late for him to leave a legacy that won't be a source of shame to future generations. So he's going for second best: a congressionally delivered 'get-out-of-jail-free' card."

Questions the Press Should Ask

Members of the traditional press were paying scant attention to the issue of state-sanctioned torture until a rift appeared within the Republican party itself. That, in Washington, qualifies as high drama.

And now that the rift has been papered over, most reporters' tendencies will be to cover the issue mostly from the angle of its effectiveness as a political cudgel in the mid-term elections.

But the American public deserves to hear a full and open debate on this important moral issue. And if Congress won't host it, then it's up to the Fourth Estate to rise to the challenge.

Step one would be some actual reporting into the CIA interrogation program, including aggressive truth-squadding of the assertions coming from the White House. President Bush, for instance, yesterday called the program the "most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks."

Can he back that up? What little investigative reporting I've seen on the program thus far, by Ron Suskind among others, suggests that Bush's assertion is exaggerated or just plain wrong -- and that in fact the use of torture or near-torture has produced little or no valuable information. It's imperative that the media give the public a better sense of whether Bush is credible on this issue.

Here's a question reporters should be asking: If, as Suskind has alleged, the administration is aware that those harsh CIA interrogation tactics don't really work -- and no one is currently in CIA detention anyway -- then why is this such an important issue for the White House? One possible answer: That this has nothing to do with the future; that it's about giving them cover for their actions in the past.

Here's another question reporters should be asking: Have the senators been assured that Vice President Cheney won't get Bush to attach a "signing statement" to this bill, asserting his inherent powers, as he did the last time he signed torture legislation?

Finally, as the White House gears up to use detainee policy as a political issue, it is incumbent on the press to remind the public that there are not only two choices: Doing it Bush's way and letting terrorists go free. Even if the Democrats aren't coherent about other alternatives, the press should be.

The Coverage

It's the penultimate paragraph of R. Jeffrey Smith and Charles Babington 's article in The Washington Post this morning that tells the story in a nutshell: "A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides to maintain their concerns were addressed. 'We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there,' the official said."

(Interestingly enough, Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, gave a nearly identical quote on the record to the New York Times .)

Smith and Babington write: "Yesterday's final marathon talks occurred in Vice President Cheney's little-known office on the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. . . .

"The agreement coalesced around two crucial issues: the GOP senators' insistence that Bush not be allowed to reinterpret the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, and the White House's insistence that CIA agents not be subject to prosecution for aggressive interrogation techniques -- tactics that did not constitute torture but were more aggressive than 'simple assault.'

"The biggest hurdle, Senate sources said, was convincing administration officials that lawmakers never would accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. Once that was settled, they said, the White House poured most of its energy into defining 'cruel or inhuman treatment' that would constitute crimes under the War Crimes Act."

Rick Klein writes in the Boston Globe: "Unlike the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act is an American law that applies only to U.S. officials and is not part of an international treaty. Rewriting the War Crimes Act to outlaw specific acts -- and implicitly permitting others -- does not erode the Geneva Conventions, which broadly state that countries can't engage in 'outrages upon personal dignity,' said Senator Lindsey O. Graham, Republican of South Carolina."

Margaret Talev writes for McClatchy Newspapers that Graham "said he believed the compromise would prohibit simulated drowning, or 'water-boarding' as a CIA interrogation technique.

"But Graham didn't rule out other aggressive techniques such as sleep deprivation or playing loud music. He said the legislation wouldn't spell out which 'alternative interrogation techniques' are permitted and which are prohibited. . . .

"Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Association of Military Justice, which serves as a watchdog over military prosecutions, said details of the deal were too scant to render an analysis. He sharply criticized the closed-door negotiations, saying the terms should have been the subject of public Senate hearings."

Julian E. Barnes and Richard Simon write in the Los Angeles Times (in a story headlined, "Bush Bows to Senators on Detainees"): "A Senate staffer involved in negotiations said [the language of the accord] would ban the most outrageous of CIA methods, including water boarding -- a tactic in which detainees are made to feel as if they're drowning -- and mock executions."

And here's precisely the kind of story to watch out for:

Anne Plummer Flaherty writes for the Associated Press: "Republicans hope that an accord reached between the Bush administration and GOP senators on the treatment of terror-war detainees means the party can go on a campaign-season offensive on the issue of protecting the country. . . .

"The agreement was hailed by human rights groups and seen by many as the president caving in when his usual Republican support crumbled."

Hadley Speaks

Here's the transcript of an extraordinarily unhelpful telephone briefing from national security adviser Steve Hadley yesterday afternoon.

He expressed delight about the accord and how "all Republicans coming together," and repeatedly referred to a new legal "clarity" -- that he wouldn't clarify. Among the questions he dodged:

* "Does that mean that every single technique used in interrogation up until now is, as you see it, permissible under this agreement?"

* "Just to follow up, is it conceivable that a technique that was used in the past would not be permissible henceforth after this process is finished?"

* "What did the administration give up in this negotiation? Because it seems like you got everything that you asked for."

ACLU Watch

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington office released this statement : "This is a compromise of America's commitment to the rule of law. The proposal would make the core protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions irrelevant and unenforceable. It deliberately provides a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' to the administration's top torture officials, and backdates that card nine years. These are tactics expected of repressive regimes, not the American government.

"Also under the proposal, the president would have the authority to declare what is -- and what is not -- a grave breach of the War Crimes Act, making the president his own judge and jury. This provision would give him unilateral authority to declare certain torture and abuse legal and sound. In a telling move, during a call with reporters today, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley would not even answer a question about whether waterboarding would be permitted under the agreement."

Lederman Watch

Georgetown Law School professor and blogger Marty Lederman has the complete language of the accord, and concludes: "It's not subtle at all, and it only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the senators have capitulated entirely, that the U.S. will hereafter violate the Geneva Conventions by engaging in cold cell, long time standing, etc., and that there will be very little pretense about it. In addition to the elimination of habeas rights in section 6, the bill would delegate to the president the authority to interpret 'the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions' 'for the United States,' except that the bill itself would define certain 'grave breaches' of Common Article 3 to be war crimes. Some Senators apparently are taking comfort in the fact that the Administration's interpretation would have to be made, and defended, publicly. That's a small consolation, I suppose; but I'm confident the creative folks in my former shop at [the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel] -- you know, those who concluded that waterboarding is not torture -- will come up with something."

Remember Habeas

Warren Richey writes in the Christian Science Monitor: "In a significant but little-discussed move, the Bush administration is asking Congress to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases brought by Guantánamo detainees challenging the legality of their confinement. . . .

"Legal analysts say the measure has sparked surprisingly little debate among lawmakers. For example, the main alternative to the administration's bill, legislation sponsored by Sens. John Warner (R) of Virginia and Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina, also calls for withdrawing federal court jurisdiction to hear such cases.

"Nonetheless, there is opposition.

"'We are told this legislation is important to the ineffable demands of national security, and that permitting the courts to play their traditional role will somehow undermine the military's effort in fighting terrorism. But this concern is simply misplaced,' writes a group of prominent retired federal appeals court judges, in an open letter to members of Congress. . . .

"The judges say the proposed legislation may violate the Constitution's mandate that 'the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'

"The so-called Great Writ is a bedrock principle of liberty dating to 1215 and the Magna Carta. It entitles a prisoner to demand to be brought before a neutral judge to force the government to prove the legality of his or her detention or be set free. It is the quintessential check on executive power."

A New Battle Cry

Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times: "President Bush began a blistering new political offensive on Thursday, asserting that if Democrats won control of Congress from Republicans it would mean higher taxes, less money in the pockets of working families and damage to the economy.

"The speech by Mr. Bush here, in which he belittled Democrats as 'the party of high taxes,' signaled what Republicans described as a new phase of the White House's fall campaign, as Republicans begin to combine their emphasis on national security with a tough new emphasis on the issue that unites them more than any other, taxes."

October Surprise?

Ronald Kessler writes for the right-wing Newsmax Web site: "In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an 'October surprise' to help win the November congressional elections. . . .

"Rove is not saying what the October surprise will be."

Rove told Kessler: "I'd rather let the balance [of plans for the elections] unroll on its own."

Poll Watch

The White House that officially doesn't give a hoot about polls . . . sent out an e-mail to reporters this morning trumpeting Bush's bump in approval ratings.

"Presidential Job Approval Ratings Continue To Rise" says the release from the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Graymail Watch

Could a Scooter Libby graymail attempt work? His legal team won a potentially significant legal victory yesterday, over his ability to use classified materials in his trial in the CIA leak case.

Matt Apuzzo writes for the Associated Press: "Prosecutors have said Libby is trying to torpedo the case by demanding documents that are too sensitive to be released at trial. It's a tactic known as 'graymail' and the goal is to get a case dismissed. . . .

"Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald proposed a strict legal test that would have forced Libby to prove that his need for the records outweighed the government's need to keep them secret.

"U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton rejected the prosecutor's proposal. When considering what classified information should be admissible at trial in Libby's defense, Walton said he'll apply the standard rules of evidence, which generally provide defendants documents that are relevant and helpful. . . .

"Walton . . . said the government must weigh the importance of prosecuting the case against the need to keep state secrets.

"If secrecy is more important, the government can withhold any documents it chooses, Walton said, even though that might mean the case is dismissed."

Clinton Watch, Part I

Former president Bill Clinton on Iraq, in an interview with CNN's Larry King Wednesday night:

"KING: Vice President Cheney said, knowing all he knows, he'd still go back. Would you?

"CLINTON: Of course he would. No, I never was in favor of doing it before the U.N. inspectors finished. I had a totally different take on this. I . . . .

"KING: Why would you say 'of course he would'?

"CLINTON: Because they didn't -- because the evidence has made clear now that he and the other proponents of the Iraq war did not care whether he had weapons of mass destruction, did not care whether he was involved with Sept. 11, did not care whether the evidence showed any of this or not, that they had made their mind up in advance that this was the thing to do, that it would help to make a new Middle East, it would strengthen America's leverage against Iran; it would, you know, shake up the authoritarian regimes and increase our leverage to create peace between the Israelis and the Pakistanis -- Palestinians.

"And I think they thought it might clean their own skirts a little, since most of what Saddam did that was really terrible he did when he had the full support of the Republican administration of the '80s, of which Dick Cheney was a part."

Clinton Watch, Part II

Glenn Thrush writes for Newsday: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign is daring President George W. Bush to stump in New York for her Republican opponent -- joking that Clinton would even consider paying for Bush's airfare if he stumped in Dubya-phobic Gotham. . . .

"White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore responded, 'There are a number of places we're confident that Republican candidates would be willing to pay for Hillary to campaign.'"

Froomkin on the Radio

ANOTHER Anne Plummer Flaherty AP article that SHOULD read "Bush GETS his TORTURE powers wish"!

Yet ANOTHER example of AP, the American 'news' media, and Anne Plummer Flaherty TRYING TO MISLEAD, and MISINFORM readers!

In this case, a quick glance at the headline gives NO_INDICATION that this is a story about granting TORTURE POWERS to the US president (George W. Bush), unless one were already familiar with the 'news' of the past few weeks.

Notice how Republican Senators who STAND UP FOR over 100 years of American jurisprudence - that TORTURE is illegal, immoral, and un-American - are labelled as "REBELS," inherently giving a "SPIN" factor that Mr. Bush is in the mainstream or righteous position.

Well, Ms. Plummer-Flaherty demonstrates how "freedom" in America now means no more than "freedom" in any dictatorship or totalitarian regime... the "FREEDOM" to kow-tow to those in authority, and to spin a web of lies on their behalf.

Ms. Plummer-Flaherty may be writing the article as if the TORTURE powers that Mr. Bush is requesting are "CHRISTIAN" and within the framework of American jurisprudence, but almost certainly SHE would not want to be accidentally arrested - perhaps betrayed by a jealous neighbor or have her name shouted out by some other hapless torture victim trying to escape the pain and terror and saying the first names that came to mind - detained, tortured, and incarcerated INDEFINITELY, BEYOND THE REACH of law, judges, lawyers, or even her own family, as Mr. Bush is requesting the UN-CONTESTABLE POWER to do to ANYONE HE SO DESIRES.

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Bush, GOP rebels said to be near accord
By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer
21 Sept. 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060921/ap_on_go_co/congress_terrorism


WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and rebellious GOP senators neared agreement Thursday on legislation setting terms for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror, congressional officials said.

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These officials said Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, was meeting with key Republicans in hopes of sealing an agreement that could allow the legislation to clear Congress before lawmakers adjourn for elections.

President Bush's call for legislation has been deadlocked in an intraparty dispute, with Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seeking a provision to make it clear that torture of suspects is barred.

Also at issue was whether suspects and their lawyers would be permitted to see any classified evidence in the cases against them.

Warner, McCain, Graham and Hadley met at mid-afternoon with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the Capitol. The session came a few hours after Frist phoned the lawmakers and strongly urged them to reach a compromise after more than a week of Republican discord.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in an e-mail there was not yet an agreement, but added, "Good trajectory. Stand by for confirmation."

No details of the emerging compromise were immediately available.

Nor was it clear how Senate Democrats might react.

An accord would fulfill a Republican political and legislative imperative — pre-election party unity on an issue related to the war on terror, and possible enactment of one of Bush's top remaining priorities of the year.

The evident compromise came less than a week after Bush emphatically warned lawmakers at a news conference he would shut down the interrogation of terror suspects unless legislation was sent to his desk. "Time's running out," he said.

The White House shifted its tone from combative to compromising within 48 hours, though, and officials began talking of a need for an agreement that all sides would be comfortable with.

Whatever the outcome, the controversy has handed critics of the president's conduct of the war on terror election-year ammunition.

Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell, dismayed the administration when he sided with Warner, McCain and Graham. He said Bush's plan, which would have formally changed the U.S. view of the Geneva Conventions on rules of warfare, would cause the world "to doubt the moral basis" of the fight against terror and "put our own troops at risk."

The handling of suspects is one of two administration priorities relating to the war on terror.

The other involves the president's request for legislation to explicitly allow wiretapping without a court warrant on international calls and e-mails between suspected terrorists in the United States and abroad. One official said Republicans had narrowed their differences with the White House over that issue, as well, and hoped for an agreement by day's end.

Republican leaders have said they intend to adjourn Congress by the end of the month to give lawmakers time to campaign for re-election.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that Bush's plan for trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.

The court, in a 5-3 ruling, found that Congress had not given Bush the authority to create the special type of military trial and that the president did not provide a valid reason for the new system. The justices also said the proposed trials did not provide for minimum legal protections under international law.

About 450 terrorism suspects, most of them captured in Afghanistan and none of them in the U.S., are being held by military authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ten have been charged with crimes.