Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

Conservatives like to complain about the Obama administration pointing out that they inherited the financial crisis and one of the worst recessions in our history from the Bush administration. Well I would love to see those assholes response to Mary Maitlin claiming that Bush inherited 9/11.

Yeah, personal responsibility and all that. Get the fuck outta here with that bullshit.

We Got The Little Hooker On Tape

Somebody should tell Liz and Dick Cheney that in the 21st Century regular citizen can pull up videos of the shit they have said in the past. Since the media won't do it, people like Jed Lewison will expose you and people like me will be oh so happy to spread the word.





Better step your game up.

Criminal Negligence.

Today in an appearnce at the National Press Club, Dick Cheney was asked about the criticism leveled at him by Richard Clarke in an op ed published in the Washington Post yesterday. In typical Dick Cheney fashion he avoided answering the actual charges that Mr. Clarke laid out against him, and instead decided to try to lay blame for 9-11 at the feet of Mr. Clarke. Anybody paying attention wouldn't be suprised by Dick Cheney's dickish behavior, hey that's who he is. But unfortunately for him the record is clear, if there was anybody who failed America leading up to 9-11 it was he and his idiot partner in crime President Bush.

From ThinkProgress:

In fact, it was Cheney who “missed” the warning signs, not Clarke. New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” reprinted some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to “roll back” al Qaeda — a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, “Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.” … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

And that is why we should never EVER let assholes like Dick Cheney get away with acting as if 9-11 didn't happen on their watch or that they had no clue it was coming. The information was in front of them, Richard Clarke was practically begging them to act, but they did nothing and look where that got us. Everytime he invokes the memory of 9-11 there should be someone around to remind him that he and the rest of Bush Administration failed the American people.

Holla His Name And Witness Game Official, Its So Sick

Let me just say that I have been calling for pundits to invoke the name Richard Clarke for weeks now whenever Dick Cheney or his daughter Liz decide to make one of their many appearances on Tee Vee. The reason being is that they keep trying to promote some Orwellian revisionist history about 9-11 whereby "nobody knew who attacked us". They use that propaganda to try to make their case for why torture was sanctioned for use on suspected terrorists at GITMO. But you see quite a while back Mr Clarke wrote a book laying out just how much was known about al qaeda before the attacks and just how hard he had been pressing the Bush Administration to take the attackc to Bin Ladin long before they struck on that fateful day in September of 2001. I even sent a tweet to Carlos Watson before his interview with Liz Cheney they other day yet asking him to press her about Mr Clarke's warnings should she bring that weaksauce again. Unfortunately it was all for naught and he declined to push her on the issue.

Well as the saying goes, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself and thankfully now Richard Clarke has spoken out in an op ed in the Washington Post. And the man goes hard!

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America."

I remember that morning, too. Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president's national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president's office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room. Many of us thought that we might not leave the White House alive. I remember the next day, too, when smoke still rose from the Pentagon as I sat in my office in the White House compound, a gas mask on my desk. The streets of Washington were empty, except for the armored vehicles, and the skies were clear, except for the F-15s on patrol. Every scene from those days is seared into my memory. I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.


Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

Richard Clarke makes the point here that I believe every mainstream media pundit has failed to make. And that is that had the members of the Bush Administration been paying attention to what their own national security team was telling them we would have either been able to prevent 9-11 or at the least been a helluva lot more prepared for it when it actually happened. Now that is just a fact and has nothing to do with partisan politics. Its impossible to buy the argument that Cheney et al didn't have a clue who al qaeda was in the days after 9-11 when we all know that President Clinton attempted to kill Bin Ladin shortly before leaving office. And if they really didn't know about al qaeda then the only possible explanation for that is that they simply weren't listening.

But Mr. Clarke makes another point that I haven't seen expressed or explored either in the mainstream media. And that is that the Bush Administration having not listened to their national security team before 9-11 and then being caught in a state of shock, never asked around about what techniques were most efficient at extracting information. Instead of bringing in the best interrogators from all of our intelligence services and asking their opinion, they just assumed that torture worked and embarked on an effort to legally justify it.

On detention, the Bush team leaped to the assumption that U.S. courts and prisons would not work. Before the terrorist attacks, the U.S. counterterrorism program of the 1990s had arrested al-Qaeda terrorists and others around the world and had a 100 percent conviction rate in the U.S. justice system. Yet the American system was abandoned, again as part of a pattern of immediately adopting the most extreme response available. Camps were established around the world, notably in Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners were held without being charged or tried. They became symbols of American overreach, held up as proof that al-Qaeda's anti-American propaganda was right.

Similarly, with regard to interrogation, administration officials conducted no meaningful professional analysis of which techniques worked and which did not. The FBI, which had successfully questioned al-Qaeda terrorists, was effectively excluded from interrogations. Instead, there was the immediate and unwarranted assumption that extreme measures -- such as waterboarding one detainee 183 times -- would be the most effective.

You haven't heard Dick Cheney speak one word on how he decided that torture or his euphemistic Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were chosen to be used on detainees other than the process by which they were deemed legal. Where are the memos on meetings inside the Bush Administration to discuss what techniques were most efficient? Why haven't any of Cheney's most ferverent defenders ever brought up any such discussions that might have happened? We saw in the release of the OLC memo page after page of studies that were falsely presented as evidence that the torture techniques that were chosen didn't cause long term damage, but where are any other studies that the Bush Administration comissioned to determine why those techniques would work any better than say presenting a detainee with sugar free cookies?

We don't hear about it because they probably don't exist.

However out of all of these misguided discussions cable news stations engage in every single day about whether torture was effective or not, nobody questions how the Bush Administration came to the conclusion that they were most effective BEFOREHAND.

I would like to think that perhaps after people read Mr. Clarke's column tomorrow that this will end up being a part of the discussion but as anybody who reads my blog regularly knows I don't have a lot of faith in our mainstream media these days. So if they won't do it then its up to us as private citizens. The next time you are around any friends or family members who believe that you "do what you have to do" when it comes to preventing attacks, press them on the point about how Cheney determined that torture was most effective. Write letters to the editors of your local paper asking them the same question. Send emails to cable news anchors and ask them to ask any pro torturists who come on the show to answer that question. I know we sometimes feel like there is not a lot we can do to press for accountability from the people who ordered torture, but these are little things we CAN do to try to at least shape public opinion on the subect. If enough people start demanding accountability then President Obama and his administration will be forced to give it to us. We can not put this ugly chapter behind us as a nation until we do a little looking backward to hold peoples' feet to the fire.

The "Duel" That Wasn't

Jon Stewart breaks down media created faux debate between President Obama and Dick Cheney yesterday.

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GITMO And Transparency

Today President Obama delivered a speech on National Security. Here is the video.

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Here are what I thought were the high points of the speech.

First President Obama led of the speech by going through all of the measures he has initiated since assuming office that helps our national security including redirecting resources to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, investing in 21st century technology to help with intelligence, working on nuclear non proliferation that will attempt to track down all "loose nukes" within the next four years, protecting the border, renewing alliances in the war on terror and renewed diplomacy. He said our fundamental values are what help keep us safe and that the founding documents of our country are what we need to cling to in our search for liberty and justice. He made the point that we can't turn our back on those values just for expediency sake.

He made the point that in the past WE were the ones who shut down torture chambers from all over the world.

He made the point that post 9-11 we had to come up with new tools in order to prevent attacks along with prosecuting them after they had been committed or attempted.

He said in the past (see during the Bush Administration) we made national security decisions out of fear rather than facts for expediency's sake.

"We went off course"

Obama made the point that both he and Senator John McCain called for the closing of GITMO and the voters in both parties made them their general election candidates which indicates they agree.

The President before he came into office we were working with an ad hoc legal approach to fight terrorism which was neither effective nor sustainable.

I liked that President Obama used the phrasing "so called" in reference to EITs which most of us know is just a euphemism for torture.

President Obama said HE is the one who sees all of the intelligence and he categorically rejects the notion that waterboarding was or is the most effective method of gaining information and that it undermines the rule of law, is a recruitment tool for terrorists, increases the will of our enemies who will no longer surrender because they believe we will torture them, puts our troops' lives in danger, and did not advance our war on terror.

He made note of the fact that Senator McCain has also spoken out about the propaganda value of torture for terrorists trying to recruit more people into their ranks.

Obama shifted to closing GITMO. He talked about the fact that the Military Commisions have only convicted 3 detainees in 7 years.

The President pointed out that in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the Military Court system.

He points out that the whole premise of opening GITMO was to put detainees somewhere that the Bush Administration felt they could hold them beyond the law and that the Supreme court rejected that notion.

He says GITMO itself helped to weaken our National Security.

President Obama asserts that the costs of keeping GITMO open far exceed any complications from closing it.

Obama also pointed out that he was cleaning up a mess that he hadn't created.

He says the problems that exists aren't from GITMO closing, they are from GITMO opening in the first place.

He refuses to pass this problem off to the next President.

He calls out those who have politicized the issue of closing GITMO with fear mongering. He said that those who would do this are using their words to scare people rather than solve the problem.

Unequivical statement that he will not release anyone who threatens national security and or the American people.

He points out that some detainees will end up in SuperMax prisons where nobody has ever escaped in the history of this country.

He references a statement from Senator Lindsey Graham where he said the notion that we couldn't handle these detainees in American jails is ridiculous.

President Obama put detainees into 5 categories.

1. Those that will be tried in federal courts. Points out we have tried many terrorists in federal courts for a long time.

2. Those who have violated the laws of war will be tried into the military commisions courts which have been a tradition in this country. He points out that this is not a reversal of his position and that in 2006 he wanted reform of the military commission that did not happen but he didn't reject the institution outright. He further stated that he will put in the reforms now that he called for then to make them compliant.

3. Those who have been ordered released by the courts of which there are 21 people who fall into that category now. 19 of those 21 were ordered released before he got into office. Because we are a nation of laws he has to respect the courts' decisions.

4. Those who can be tranferred to another country. Fifty people so far fit into that category.

5. Those who can't be prosecuted but also can't be released because they are dangerous. He says he will exhaust all legal avenues to insure they never get out.

President Obama acknowledges the political difficulties of closing GITMO. He references fear mongering 30 second Tee Vee ads and direct mailings. But he says we can't govern out of fear and the American people want him to get it right, not political posturing.

Then President Obama shifted to Security and Transparency. He contrasted his decision to release the 4 OLC memos recently with his decision to block the release of the torture photos. Makes the case that sometimes its appropriate to keep some things secret if members of the military's lives are at stake.

But he says that he will insist on oversight from both the Congress and Judicial branches of government. He says someone must always watch over the watchers.

He is concerned about overuse of the states secrets doctrine but has to be used at times.

He says he will not hold back information from the public just because it reveals an illegal act or something that is embarrassing.

He wants a stricter legal test for invoking states secrets.

Obama once again says he will focus on bringing more oversight from "co equal" branches of government.

He then talks about how some people still want to relitigate debates they have lost. IE Dick Cheney still advocating torture.

He is more interested in the Congress and DOJ investigating wrong doing from the Bush Administration than an independent commission.

President Obama talks about the two differing sides on torture on the extremes. On the left those who think we should reveal even our most important intelligence secrets. On the right there are those who, in President Obama's words, think "anything goes". Those who think the President can do whatever they want provided its a President they agree with. He says both sides in that debate are wrong.

Maybe the strongest part of the speech was the ending where President Obama said national security has to be an issue that brings us together not something that divides us. He talks about how some people (*cough*Republicans*cough) try to use national security as a wedge issue. But this is a time for the American people to come together to insure all of our safety.


I thought the speech while not necessarily strong on details of how he will ultimately deal with GITMO was pitch perfect for the American people and what a lot of people in the middle needed to hear from them. We simply can not allow fearmongering to take hold again in this country when we are talking about the serious task of keeping us all safe.

Lazy Ass Journalists

All yesterday the MSM hyped the national security speech by President Obama and Dick Cheney's Cover His Ass speech today as a duel. Give me a fucking break. You had the President talking about how we will go forward on national security issues including closing GITMO and having as much transparency as he is able to give the American people. On the other hand you had Dick Cheney solely focused on trying to justify his actions after 9-11 making pronunciations about liberals and the media and out and out lies about what President Obama has said and is saying. This was a bunch of bullshit from the start. Now you have jack asses like Chris Cilliza asking people to go "sound off on who won". Seriously. This is how and why our print media is failing and cable news won't be far behind. I will post video of President Obama's speech when it becomes available and my commentary on this but I just had to vent about the sorry assed state of our media.