So, now Cheney tells us, and a Obama military adviser (Adm. Dennis Blair) supports that using those "harsh" interrogation methods lead to "high value" information.
Banned Techniques Yielded 'High Value Information,' Memo Says "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
In fact, we saved Liberty Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast!
A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers
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To sweeten the plot:
1. The indictments have not yet been signed by the presiding judge, Manuel Banales of the Fifth Administrative Judicial Region.
2. Also indicted were
A second batch of indictments targeted public officials connected to Guerra's own legal battles.
Willacy County Clerk Gilbert Lozano, District judges Janet Leal and Migdalia Lopez, and special prosecutors Mervyn Mosbacker Jr. - a former U.S. attorney - and Gustavo Garza - a long-time political opponent of Guerra - were all indicted on charges of official abuse of official capacity and official oppression.
(All hands to stations. We have an election to win-from the courthouse to the White House. Leave it all on the road. - promoted by boadicea)
Sarah Palin is the epitome of the Republican feaux-populist, culture-war politics that came out in the open and poisoned American democracy with its noxious toxic waste 40 years ago in the speeches of Nixon's running mate and vice president, Spiro Agnew.
Palin is the accumulation of Agnew, Nixon, Reagan, Buchanan, Quayle, Rove, Bush Jr., Cheney, Falwell, Robertson and all their lesser surrogates and courtiers combined, congealed, and sharpened to its ultimate sinister pitch.
Our good old American democracy, after taking 8 years of hammering at the hands of the Bushite gang of thugs,
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., Chair
House Committee on the Judiciary
Fax: 202-225-0072
Dear Chairman Conyers,
Probably more than most, you are obviously aware of the egregious pretensions of George Bush and Dick Cheney to virtually unlimited executive power at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches. Over and over again George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their agents have told the country that the presidency is above the rule of law, indeed that the president is the law unto himself, subject to check by nobody.
I am old enough to have lived through Tricky Dick's assault on the Constitution. I agree with John Dean that the Bushites are much worse.
The victims of Bush-authorized torture are being tortured to be kept alive so they can be tortured. When they are finally released - and they will be, eventually - they will lead generations against us. Tempered by the fire of injustice, they will be hardened fanatics.
And we continue to allow Shrub to do this in our name. The (admitted) First Felon continues to burn through the Constitution as if there were no tomorrow. Does he know something we don't, or is this merely the result of too much blue-blood inbreeding combined with oxygen deprivation?
So, Microsoft can use its operating system to harm a rival , Google and the states should just back off and not take them on about this, cause a former attorney for Microsoft works at justice now and he says they should back off. Right.
link
WASHINGTON — Nearly a decade after the Clinton administration began a landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has adopted a different course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anti-competitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google.
The policy shift reflects a substantially different view of antitrust policy, as well as a recognition of major changes in the marketplace. The battlefront among technology companies has shifted from computer desktop software, a category that Microsoft dominates, to Internet search and Web-based software programs that allow users to bypass products made by Microsoft.
In the most striking recent example of the shift, the top Justice Department antitrust official last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft's behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google's desktop search program, lawyers in the case said.
* The official, Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at Covington & Burlington, the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes.
According to the political science I was taught the national government has 3 branched: executive, judicial and legislative. Some people would add the bureaucracy as the fourth given its powers to shape policy using its unique permancy. Well....
We already knew that VP Cheney thought he was above the law. Did you know that he has claimed the VP office to be a co-equal branch of government, the fifth branch of government? Read on:
Watching congress do whatever it is that they do is like watching my screen saver, a lot of movement, a bit of color, a little cheap entertainment but ultimately a waste of time.
I would like to have 10 percent of the monetary value of the man hours expended by members of the House, the Senate, and their respective staffs that was piled atop the redolent heap of history's wasted gestures in the recent exercise in futility that was the fight over the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill.
Republicans joined with Democrats in making a spectacle of themselves as ineffectual windbags without a cause, proving publicly, once again, that most of them have no respect for this republic, it's people or the business they are paid so handsomely to conduct.
Knowing that the eminently hardheaded little man who occupies the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue would veto any bill which included deadlines for troop withdrawals, and knowing that the same cynical little man would use the pork content of the bill against them, they made him a gift of a bill that he could veto and look "presidential" while doing it. They gave Bush exactly what he wanted.
1st Armored Division Soldiers conduct a combat patrol in Tal Afar, Iraq in their M2 Bradley fighting vehicle. Photo by Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon
Editors note: The photograph above was taken in February 2006 at a time when Bush was reporting Tall Afar as an Iraqi success story. I think Bush saw the city as an example of the Iraqi version of "no child left behind."
The headline reads:"Gunmen Go On Rampage In Iraqi City" above a story by Joshua Partlow in this morning's Washington Post. It seems that the Malaki/Bush/Cheney/Halliburton Democracy left a few legal and procedural fundamentals out of their Police Academy training manual or perhaps they are using a revised Middle Eastern version of the Chicago Police manual which allows for the summary execution of Sunni suspects following violent episodes.
In the Chicago version you're only allowed to beat them up, in Tall Afar though, this is civil wartime, and the Shiite police and their auxiliaries have gone on yet another orgy of reprisal and revenge, killing as many as 70 Sunni suspects, men, women and children, some as young as fifteen, with a bullet to the back of the head in the Mesopotamian democratic tradition so reminiscent of other great democratic leaders like Saddam and Stalin.
Hmmmm...This is what living under a totalitarian regime spawns. Once happy-go-lucky folks like me whose main thought was getting her kids into college and making sure there was enough tequila in the house, start to read the figures on top of Lenin's tomb - or the American equivalent, which is "Where Is Cheney Today?". So, I read this about his leg (not that one!) again, and wonder if his blood clot might be telling us something really interesting. Like, is the motherfucker on his way out, either upright or feet first?
(Diary edited - to demonstrate my vast power!!! Mu. HA. HA. HA. HA. - promoted by krazypuppy)
Washington, D.C. - In a startling move today, Vice-President Dick Cheney has announced he will step down due to medical reasons and once again take the helm as CEO of Halliburton. Though wildly cheered throughout progressive and liberal segments of American society, new concern has risen over the structure and purpose of Halliburton's move to the notorious pirate port of Dubai.
While it was widely known that the Houston-based international conglomerate was moving its CEO and headquarters to the United Arab Emirates, the business and political world was shocked to learn that Cheney would be once again take the helm. And as plans for what is now known as Dick Island, located at the world-famous The World development, comes to light, anxiety is filtering out among the world.
(Edited for the front page. This is a thoughtful reflection on how far from our better senses we have come since WWII and Korea..... - promoted by lightseeker)
Appeasing The Gods Of The Shareholders
There was a time when, as a matter of policy, America went to war only as a response to an attack by an aggressor. In 1962 John Kennedy had every reason to make war with Cuba and Russia when Kruschev talked Fidel into parking several dozen Soviet nuclear missiles ten minutes from Washington and 90 miles from spring break.
Most of the Joint Chiefs, especially Curtis Lemay,(General Bat Guano?) along with a sizable faction of Kennedy's closest advisers urged the President to invade. Lemay wanted to send his B52s, (presumably not to drop leaflets) while others preferred a massive land invasion, perhaps to restore the Cosa Nostra to control of Cuban Casinos, the way God intended.
There is an apocryphal story told that Marine Commandant David Shoup (under whom I served at the time) presented the assemblage of top level civilian and military advisers with an easel containing a map of Cuba, over which he had placed an acetate overlay of a tiny Pacific atoll named Tarawa. Tarawa, which the Marines had invaded early in WW2 was shown graphically as a small speck against the background of Castro's Caribbean worker's paradise.
He then proceeded to inform the gathering that the insignificant speck had not been at all pacific, having cost the lives of over 1000 Marines and the wounding of 2200 others, creating a great storm of protest at home over what was seen as a needless squandering of lives to gain a tiny piece of real estate. Tarawa, he is reported to have explained, was defended by 4500 Japanese while Castro would field 150,000, and perhaps as many more.
Bulldog has been writing about this since January. You can read him hitting this topicall over this site because it is probably the subject closest to his heart that he can't just go in, roll up his sleeves, take off his tie, and just fucking fix.
The Financial Times reporter, Philip Stephens, provided some pertinent comments (3/2/07) about the Cheney/Rice power struggle. To quote,
The balance of power in Washington has shifted. Vice-president Dick Cheney, the standard-bearer of muscular unilateralism, is looking increasingly out of place. His power has been undercut by Donald Rumsfeld's replacement at the Pentagon with Robert Gates and the rising influence of the State department's Condoleezza Rice.
Mr Cheney has been wounded too by the prosecution of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his former chief of staff. The White House, meanwhile, has taken the opportunity to redefine the national interest in terms of international engagement.
