What We Should Have Learned From Bush

I think that Democrats in general and President Obama in particular have learned the wrong lessons from the Bush years. George W Bush made some horrendous decisions when it came to our economy and domestic policy. He also deboed us into a war in Iraq while we were already at war in Afghanistan. And yet he still was reelected (allegedly) and the Republicans maintained control of Congress for 6 of his 8 years in Congress.

Now imagine for a brief moment that instead of tax cuts in the middle of two wars, Bush was a progressive pushing for a stimulus package. Please recall that he had a few Republicans hitting him for proposing those tax cuts but he gave them the middle finger and passed that shit through reconciliation. Do you think HIS stimulus would have been watered down like the one Congress passed last year? Or do you think it would have been chocked full of infrastructure spending?

Imagine again that instead of pushing for the Iraq War, which if you recall drew tons of protesters, he was pushing for health care reform. Do you think he would have sat out the negotiations and allowed the process to go on this long with super majority in the Senate?

Here's the thing, if President Bush had President Obama's agenda he may have gone down as one of the greatest Presidents ever. No matter whatever else you want to say about the guy, he got shit done. It was just the wrong shit most of the time. But now its as if President Obama is so worried about being seen as "meddling" like Bush did that he is allowing his agenda to get flushed down the toilet. Bush didn't give a damn about public opinion. Hell if the polls weren't on his side he would make up a poll that showed the American people agreed with him.

I say all that to say, at some point President Obama is going to have to, in the immortal words of Malcolm X, stop singing and start swinging. I'm not just talking about rhetorically swinging. I'm talking about kicking members of his own party in the ass. Let me point out something, Michael Steele threatened Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins with primary challenges if they didn't start getting in line. Everybody in the media and many on the left thought he was bonkers for saying he would go after them, knowing full well the Democrats would welcome them with open arms. But you know what, after he threatened them they have become hard core Republicans ever since. They have joined with every filibuster and they have repeated every talking point, most recently with Susan Collins trying to hit President Obama over the underpants bomber.

You can bet your ass that several folks would have lost their gavels and been threatened with primaries by now if Bush had been in office and this health care fight would have dragged on this long. The American people want results and they could care less about who wins debates or summits or question times. Until a bill is signed they won't care at all except to hit Democrats for being too weak to govern. If President Obama has that steel spine Joe Biden said he had during the campaign, its about time he started showing it. And that's real

Please Give Me Some Of Whatever Giuliani Is Smoking!

Lets, for a moment, leave aside the fact that 9/11 happened under Bush. If Giuliani's point is that we had a terrorist attack under President Obama because of he underpants bomber, doesn't that mean we also had a terrorist attack under Bush with the shoe bomber? I mean, c'mon man, how fucking idiotic can you get?

But worse than that, why isn't the guy interviewing him pouncing all over his dumbass when he spouts this bullshit? I don't think anybody bought it, but got dammit why do we even HAVE a media anymore if they are unwilling or unable to call bullshit on such a blatant ass lie?

Stop The Name Calling You "Sick Puppies"

George H. W. Bush needs to sit his ass down somewhere. Just because you are old don't mean we forgot about Willie Horton asshole.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What Indoctrination REALLY Looks Like!

C'mon wingnuts, lets see you freak out over this!

What If He Was Muslim?

Cenk Uygur asks a very good and very relevant question. What if a Muslim had a gun in plain site outside a townhall for President Bush. Can you say GITMO?

Out In The Streets They Call It Murdah

The news on Blackwater, or Xe or whatever the hell they are calling themselves this week, just keeps getting worse:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

Its going to take years to unwind all of this mess in Iraq before we realize just how bad George Bush fucked over us for the last 8 years.

Frog March Alert!!!

Will we finally get to see this scene play out?

From the Washington Post:

Political adviser Karl Rove and other high-ranking figures in the Bush White House played a greater role than previously understood in the firing of federal prosecutors almost three years ago, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, in a scandal that led to mass Justice Department resignations and an ongoing criminal probe.

The e-mails and new interviews with key participants reflect contacts among Rove, aides in the Bush political affairs office and White House lawyers about the dismissal of three of the nine U.S. attorneys fired in 2006: New Mexico's David C. Iglesias, the focus of ire from GOP lawmakers; Missouri's Todd Graves, who had clashed with one of Rove's former clients; and Arkansas's Bud Cummins, who was pushed out to make way for a Rove protege.

The documents and interviews provide new information about efforts by political aides in the Bush White House, for example, to push a former colleague as a favored candidate for one of the U.S. attorney posts. They also reflect the intensity of efforts by lawmakers and party officials in New Mexico to unseat the top prosecutor there. Rove described himself as merely passing along complaints by senators and state party officials to White House lawyers.

The e-mails emerged as Rove finished his second day of closed-door-testimony Thursday about the firings to the House Judiciary Committee. For years, Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers had rejected efforts by lawmakers to obtain their testimony and their correspondence about the issue, citing executive privilege. The House of Representatives sued, igniting a court fight that was resolved this year after discussions among lawyers for former president George W. Bush and President Obama.

Man oh man if they can throw that asshole in jail I think that in and of itself will make my vote worth it last fall.

Run Chickenhawk Run

I am frikking loving Jesse Ventura these days. His newest victim was Brian Kilmeade oon Fox And Friends. Jesse Ventura kept pummelling his feeble little brain with facts until Kilmeade pulled the ultimate bitch move and stormed off the set. Its amazing how wingnuts run for the hills whenever they get called out on their bullshit. I only wish we had more voices like Jesse Ventura to tell it like it is.

Get Your Story Straight

Joe Scarborough can't seem to decide if he believes the CIA leaks information or not.

Cheney Denied Torture Docs By Bush

Stephen Hayes of the Weakly Low Standard broke the story this afternoon that Dick Cheney's request to declassify two reports that he says validates torture was denied. Here is how Hayes characterized the denial.

Although Obama decided yesterday to block the public release of photos depicting prisoner abuse, he has promised to run the most transparent administration in history. The day after he took office, Obama issued a memorandum for executive branch departments and agencies.

He proclaimed: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears…All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

A senior Bush administration official points to the irony of Obama administration’s position -- using a FOIA technicality to block the public disclosure of information.

“So, because Amnesty International has filed a broad FOIA request for detainee related materials, the American people are unable to see memos that document the effectiveness of our detainee program. Wouldn’t the legal memos previously released also, presumably, have been subject to this FOIA? Why wasn’t their release blocked under the same provision?”

Now mind you Stephen Hayes starts off his post referring to the rejection letter. However he doesn't allow his readers to see the actual letter. Well a REAL journalist, Greg Sargent, actually posted the contents of the letter. Here is the pertinent passage.

As you are aware, a request for Mandatory Declassification Review is governed by Executive Order 12958, as amended, which was signed and executed by the President on March 25, 2003. Under section 3.5.(a)(3) of that Executive Order, a document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review if that document contains information that is the subject of pending litigation. This provision ensures that the Mandatory Declassification Review process is not used to disrupt simultaneous litigation proceedings that are already pending. In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the requested document, which contains this information, is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review.

What that means, obviously, is that President Bush actually the one who signed the Executive Order in 2003 that does not allow the CIA to declassify the reports that Dick Cheney is requesting. Basically, its all Bush's fault. Again. Seriously. But Hayes and his merry band of wingnuts would have you believe it was all President Obama's doing. Now I am not going to go too far into the thought that Dick Cheney probably already knew the rules and knew he wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting the reports which is why he started grandstanding in the first place, but thats a discussion for another day. I won't also point out that the OLC memos that are referred to in Hayes' post that President Obama were released IN RESPONSE TO a FOIA request. For now I say just marvel at how shitty of a journalist Stephen Hayes really is.

62%

According to USA Today a new Gallup poll reveals that 62% of Americans want some kind of investigation into Bush Co's abuses of office.


Frog March

Frog March

Frog March

Frog March

Frog March

Torture Investigation Petition

If you want the Bush administration investigated Amnesty International has an online petition for you to sign.

The Liberator

A special monument to President Bush from his friends in Iraq.

What About The WHY?

The New York Times has a front page story today about former Guantanamo Bay detainee Said Ali al-Shihri and how he has now risen to the number two Al Queda figure in Yemen. The first line of the article goes like this.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

Now I for one was puzzled by such a pronouncement. For one President Obama's executive order says absolutely nothing about releasing detainees. He and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs both stated that a plan is still being formulated to deal with the disposition of the detainees. But bigger than that al-Shihri was released by the Bush Administration. If he went back to terrorism shouldn't that instead be an indictment of THEIR policy with respect to detainees?

Now I realize that there are some detainees at GITMO that have become causes for the ACLU and other civil libertarion groups. However most of those cases involved people being detained without much if any credible evidence to support the arrest. And to my knowledge there was not a single solitary civil libertarian group working to free al-Shiri. So I was very interested to see what his story was. Was he an obviously innoncent person who was radicalized by his detention? Not from the story the NYTimes tells.

Mr. Shihri, 35, trained in urban warfare tactics at a camp north of Kabul, Afghanistan, according to documents released by the Pentagon as part of his Guantánamo dossier. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan, and he later told American investigators that his intention was to do relief work, the documents say. He was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month and a half recovering in a hospital in Pakistan.

The documents state that Mr. Shihri met with a group of “extremists” in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan. They also say he was accused of trying to arrange the assassination of a writer, in accordance with a fatwa, or religious order, issued by an extremist cleric.

So to recap, this guy was suspected of attending terrorist training camps, meeting with extremists in Iran and helping them get into Afghanistan and attempting to have a journalist killed. That is pretty heavy stuff. Now I don't know how credible their evidence was or wasn't but something compelled them to detain the guy in the first place. Now the biggest question that came to my mind was why did they release him if he supposedly did all of these terrorist activities? Well as far as I can tell from the article, it was because he used "I didn't do it" defense.

However, under a heading describing reasons for Mr. Shihri’s possible release from Guantánamo, the documents say he claimed that he traveled to Iran “to purchase carpets for his store” in Saudi Arabia. They also say that he denied knowledge of any terrorists or terrorist activities, and that he “related that if released, he would like to return to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, wherein he would reunite with his family.”

“The detainee stated he would attempt to work at his family’s furniture store if it is still in business,” the documents say.

Well the ironic thing is, of course, that damn near every criminal uses that same defense. And what makes it worse is that there are "enemy combatants" STILL detained at GITMO who have a helluva lot more evidence that they didn't commit the crimes they are being held for. So what gives? And my question to the NYTimes why didn't they more vigorously try to get to the bottom of it?

What would have compelled the Bush Administration to release this man? Was he tortured? Did he give up information? And why didn't the NYTimes purse that question? Its unthinkable to me for them to write the article without it occuring to them that maybe the bigger story is how the guy got out in the first place. I realize that the wingnuts wouldn't be interested in the focus not being on how some how this case reflects badly on President Obama but you would think the "grey lady" would have a different motivation.

As John Cole points out this story is more of an indictment of the Bush Administration than it is any statement about President Obama's executive orders. Hopefully someone out there reading this will start asking some of the same questions that I have.

UN Calls On The U.S. To Prosecute Bush Co.

I don't know how President Obama and his administration can overlook a call from the United Nations to investigate and prosecute members of the Bush Administration for torture. Kinda makes that whole "we just want to look forward" look moot at this point. What will happen if this pronouncements keep coming from around the globe? Will we ever get our reputation back as a morally upstanding country if we do not prosecute wrong doing by those in power? I don't see how we can. If we are supposed to believe that no one is above the law, its time for us to start proving it.

From RawStory:

The UN's special torture rapporteur called on the US Tuesday to pursue former president George W. Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany's ZDF television Tuesday evening.

He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

"We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld," against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.

"But obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this," added Nowak, who authored a UN investigation report on the Guantanamo prison.

That last line is particularly damning. It pretty much casts a cloud over the leadership in Congress in that it is saying because they knew and know what happened, there shouldn't be any question that an investigation SHOULD be forthcoming. If it isn't the spotlight won't be just on Bush Co, it will also shift to the people who enabled them. Dangerous ground if you ask me.

Yeah, What Keith Said

Keith Olbermann special comment on prosecuting Bush Co.

Like Nostradamus

Over at FireDogLake emptywheel has a post up about the Bush Department of Justice's decision not to prosecute White House Chief of Staff Andy Card's cousin for acting as an agent of Iraq before we started the war. Now I kinda figured that this post was just another in a long line exposing the cronyism inherent with President Bush's administration. But as I usually do I ended up clicking through the links and I ended up reading the letter that Card's cousin, Susan Lindauer, wrote to Card and Secretary of State Colin Powell that got her in trouble in the first place. Emptywheel's post in and of itself is an interesting read and you should definitely check it out, but I think what Lindauer writes in the letter about the prospects of negotiating with Saddam to avoid the war as well as her predicitions about what would happen in the aftermath is a must read. I wish I could excerpt it here but its not set up in that kind of format as it was scanned into a pdf instead of being typed in. For that reason I am asking that you click the link and read her letter. I think you will thank emptywheel for providing this info if you hadn't already heard about it like I hadn't.

Those Who Forget History Are Doomed To Repeat It

Update: Read Glenzilla on the topic also...


In the NYTimes today Paul Krugman makes a very strong case as for why the Bush Administration needs to be investigated and where warrented prosecuted for the abuses they perpetrated while in office. As you can tell from some of my recent postings I totally agree with Krugman on this. He makes some very salient points in his article and I will exerpt just a few:

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Can anybody credibly argue against him on this point? Krugman addresses two of the going memes put forth by mostly conservative talking heads about why we shouldn't investigate.

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

Amen and Amen. History tells us that in the past when we have chosen to look forward and not back all it has led to is more abuses by our Commander in Chief and really who could blame them? Why WOULDN'T you abuse your office if there is historical precedent that you will never be held to account if you do so? Witness exhibit A.

In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

And now people are wondering how we ended up in these messes we are in 8 years later. Its because 16 years prior we were hearing the same advice from the same jackasses being handed out now about letting bygones be bygones and not offending anyone's delicate sensibilities. Well its about time somebody stood up and said FUCK THAT! How many times do you have to see the same episode before you decide its time to change the channel. We have done the "just let it go" dance before and now we see to disasterous effect. If we as Americans REALLY believe in the rule of law and the Constitution how does that jibe with letting people off the hook simply because "its too divisive". If we don't have the courage to stand up for the justice then what does that say about us as a country?

Now, it’s true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we’ll guarantee that they will happen again.

When was the last time you heard that we should let a killer get away with murder becuase it might divide the country? When was the last time you heard someone say we should let a crook get away with robbing people because we just need to focus on making sure nobody gets robbed again? Never. Never would you hear such talk of leniency for some random nobody who commits a crime. And if we aren't pushing for them to get away with their crimes then we for damn sure shouldn't be pushing for our leaders to get away with theirs.

One thing that bothers me is that in my own personal life I haven't encountered anyone, even any conservatives who have said they don't want the Bush Administration investigated. So why is it that every pundit is trying to make it seem like the world would come to an end? Are we really supposed to believe that because it might be hard thats a good enough reason not to do it? Is that what America is about now adays?

Its also very curious to me that you will see poll after poll released these days about approval ratings on different issues, but I have yet to see a national poll about how the populous feels about whether Bush and his cronines should be investigated. I wonder why that is. I imagine because if those poll numbers came in and the will of the majority of people fell on the side of investigating the Bush administration then there would be no way to justify the lack of doing so. And of course the pundits wouldn't want that, would they?

Please vote in my unscientific and thoroughly useless straw poll over there --->

"We Do Not Torture", Except When We Do

The Washington Post today has published a story where a senior Bush official has admitted to our country's torturing of a detainee at GITMO. It is important to remember that torture is against Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and is in fact a War Crime. I don't see how President Elect Barack Obama can now decline to have the Bush Administration investigated from head to toe. The evidence was already miles high that war crimes were committed on President Bush's watch and even perhaps at his direction. To now have confirmation of that fact should be the final straw. From the article:

This is part is excerpted out of order but I think its important to focus on because in all of the talking heads extolling the virtues of torture we need to remember why, even in a ticking bomb scenario, it hurts more than helps us when we engage in such reprehensible behavior.

In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

back in order

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Notice the third paragraph with her conservative bonafides. I guarantee you the wingnuts and Joe Scarborough will still try to paint her as a soft lefty librul.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.

What were some of those "combinations of things" you ask?

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

But as usual Dick Cheney has different thoughts on the matter. See he thinks only liberals and left wing types think torture actually occured.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have said that interrogations never involved torture. "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values," Bush asserted on Sept. 6, 2006, when 14 high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons. And in a interview last week with the Weekly Standard, Cheney said, "And I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party, there are some people who believe that we really tortured."

But what does he make of this statement from the imminently conservative card carrying Republican Judge Crawford?

"I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."

Let there be no doubt about this, we HAVE tortured in the name of protecting this country and it DID come from the top down. We now have the Senate Arms Service report , a documentary on our torture from PBS, and the word of a conservative judge brought in to oversee the military tribunals to confirm this. Now again I know the wingnuts are going to try to move the goal posts and instead of denying torture they will now say it was necessary but what does that say about us as a country if we simply accept that. How do we regain our stature as a beacon of democracy if those who perpetrated these crimes are never held to account.

I personally believe that in the end Obama will in fact have the Justice Department do the investigation and that his rhetoric so far is just to keep himself at arms length so as to not look like he is politicizing the situation. But I will say this right here and right now. If President Elect Obama in fact does not investigate the Bush Administration for their crimes we should and must protest LOUDLY and often. I can't honestly say that I would vote for a Republican in 2012 behind this but I will say that he runs the risk of losing my vote four years from now if Bush & Co. are allowed to get away scott free. If we really are a nation of laws then no one should be above it, especially those who are expected to lead us.

Spittin Hot Fiya

A word to the wise.

Don't fuck with John Conyers!


Man, Congressman Conyers isn't buying any of this "bipartisanship" bullshit when it comes to Barack Obama's rhetoric about "looking forward not backward" in respect to investigating the Bush Administration. He didn't seem to get that memo. As chairman of the House Judicial committee he has just released a damn near 500 page report recommending entitled “REINING IN THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY” which is an intense review of Bush's controversial decisions and actions over the last 8 years in addition. I can't excerpt from that many pages but I will hit you with the high points from the executive summary and I encourage you to read the whole thing even if you do it just a little bit at a time.

This Report has been prepared at the direction of Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. It was drafted to itemize and document the various abuses that occurred during the Bush Administration relating to the Committee’s review and jurisdiction, and to develop a comprehensive set of recommendations to prevent the recurrence of these or similar abuses in the future.

snip

The next five sections of the Report describe specific abuses of the Imperial Presidency relating to Judiciary Committee inquiries. Section 1, “Politicization of the Department of Justice,” describes the Committee’s U.S. Attorneys investigation and concerns relating to the politicization of the Civil Rights Division in general and the Voting Rights Division in particular. Even as this report is being released, the Justice Department’s Offices of the Inspector General and Professional Responsibility have released a report further documenting politicized hiring and politicized decision-making in the Division. Section 2, “Assault on Individual Liberties,” broadly details Bush Administration policies relating to detention, enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, ghosting and black sites, warrantless domestic surveillance, and the issuance of national security and exigent letters. Section 3, “Misuse of Executive Branch Authority,” describes concerns relating to signing statements and misuse of regulatory authorities. Section 4, “Retribution against Critics,” details the facts ascertained relating to the outing of former intelligence agent Valerie Plame Wilson, and other instances of improper retribution by the Bush Administration against its critics. Section 5, “Government in the Shadows,” describes multifaceted efforts of the Bush Administration to avoid accountability and culpability through a variety of legal techniques, including broad and unprecedented assertions of executive privilege, withholding testimony and information without formal assertion of privilege, extraordinary assertions of state secrets, broad uses of classification authorities, and unduly narrow construction of the Freedom of Information Act, as well as manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Each of these sections includes a comprehensive set of findings detailing specific legal and factual conclusions drawn from the review.

Section 6 of the Report sets forth a comprehensive set of 47 policy recommendations designed to respond to the abuses and excesses of the Bush Imperial Presidency. The list begins with three major threshold recommendations:

• First, that the Judiciary Committee pursue its document requests and subpoenas pending at the end of the 110th Congress.

• Second, that Congress create an independent blue ribbon commission or similar body to investigate the host of previously unreviewable activities of the Bush Administration, including detention, enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, ghosting and black sites, and warrantless domestic electronic
surveillance.

• Third, that the new Administration conduct an independent criminal inquiry into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities.

In this regard, the Report firmly rejects the notion that we should move on from these matters simply because a new Administration is set to take office. This is because there never has been an independent, comprehensive review of these very serious allegations with a full report to the American public. The investigations to date have either been limited in scope or authority, hidden from the public and the Congress, or stonewalled or obstructed by the outgoing Administration behind impenetrable walls of classification and privilege. The purpose of the above-described investigations is not payback, but to uphold the rule of law, allow us to learn from our national mistakes, and prevent them from recurring. Such an effort would be a welcome sign to our friends, and a warning to our foes, that this Nation can indeed serve as a beacon of liberty and freedom without weakening our ability to combat terrorism or other threats.

snip

The Report makes clear that even after scores of hearings, investigations, and reports, Congress and the American public still do not have answers to some of the most fundamental questions concerning the Bush Imperial Presidency. These include the following:

1. Who created the U.S. Attorney firing list, and how were specific U.S. Attorneys included or excluded from the list?

After more than 13 House and Senate Judiciary committee hearings and depositions with over 12 witnesses, we still do not know who created the U.S. Attorney firing list and why.

snip

2. Were any Laws Broken as a Result of the Enhanced Interrogation Tactics Engaged in by the Bush Administration?

Notwithstanding various internal reports by the Bush Administration and a number of investigations and hearings in the Congress (limited and constrained in many cases by Administration obstruction), there never has been a full and independent inquiry into whether there have been criminal violations of federal statutes prohibiting torture and war crimes.

snip

3. Were any Laws Broken as a Result of the Extraordinary Rendition Tactics Engaged in by the Bush Administration?

The Committee has uncovered considerable evidence of potential criminal culpability relating to the rendition of Maher Arar.

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4. Were any Laws Broken as a Result of the the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and related activities?

There have been numerous efforts to obtain a judicial determination of the legality of the President’s warrantless domestic surveillance program.

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5. To what extent were President Bush and Vice President Cheney involved in the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and its aftermath?

There is considerable evidence that culpability for the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and subsequent obstruction goes above and beyond Scooter Libby.

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Given that so many significant questions remain unanswered relating to these core constitutional and legal matters, many of which implicate basic premises of our national honor, it seems clear that our country cannot simply move on. As easy or convenient as it would be to turn the page, our Nation’s respect for the rule of law and its role as a moral leader in the world demand that we finally and without obstruction conduct and complete these inquiries. This can and should be done without rancor or partisanship.

Yep it sounds like the Bushies just might go down after all. And I for one think Congressman Conyers should be applauded for not just letting it go. The mere fact that none of our recent Presidents have ever spent a day in jail for their transgressions in office in my opinion is the main reason why they continue to abuse their power at will. And the only way to stop that cycle is to finally hold someone to account and I can't think of anyone more deserving than Bush and his homeboys.

(h/t Thinkprogress)