Plot Thickens On Siegelman Prosecution and Air Force Tanker Deal

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has confirmed that his prosecution probably was driven partly by the prolonged battle over a massive Air Force tanker contract.

Andrew Kreig, executive director of the Justice Integrity Project, shines new light on the Siegelman case--and its ties to major national stories, in a new piece at OpEd News. Here is how Kreig summarizes the latest on the Siegelman story:

Imprisoned businessman Richard Scrushy, a defendant in the most controversial federal prosecution of the decade, last week repeated his call for the presiding judge to remove himself, even as the disputes widened to include reported Supreme Court contender Elena Kagan, up to $50 billion in scandal-ridden Air Force contracts, and Karl Rove's best-selling new memoir.

Scrushy, who was Siegelman's codefendant, renewed his call for trial judge Mark Fuller to remove himself from the case. Reports Kreig:

Scrushy, now serving a seven-year sentence for arranging $500,000 in donations to a non-profit at the request of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, requested last week that Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller of Montgomery rule on recusal requests filed last summer, or else withdraw.

Scrushy and Siegelman have argued that the judge is disqualified after being enriched by $300 million in Bush-era contracts via the judge's closely held company Doss Aviation for such services as refueling Air Force planes and training pilots.

Speaking of the Air Force, Kreig follows up on his report from last week about the Siegelman prosecution and its possible ties to a tanker contract that could be worth $50 billion. Alabama is expected to be the site of a major assembly plant if Europe-based EADS wins the contract over U.S.-based Boeing--and Kreig now provides insight from Siegelman himself. Writes Kreig:

The EADS-led plan would replace Boeing Corp., the previous tanker builder. Years ago, EADS used competitive intelligence agents to show that Boeing had bribed an Air Force procurement officer. My article noted that an EADS victory would enable an assembly plant in Alabama, as advocated by four European heads of state, major global financiers and some U.S. politicians.

"The ring of truth in the article," Siegelman wrote me last week after publication and follow-up, "is that Republicans wanted EADs, and I was close to Boeing because I had helped them expand their National Missile Defense Center in Huntsville and had them locate a manufacturing facility for the Delta IV and Delta II Rockets in Decatur, AL."

Kreig shows how the Siegelman case could have an impact on the process to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring John Paul Stevens. That's because one prominent contender, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, has taken controversial positions regarding the Siegelman matter. Writes Kreig:

A bipartisan group of 91 former state attorneys general from more than 40 states have since formed an unprecedented coalition filing a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court and arguing it should hear Siegelman's case because his actions did not constitute a crime.

But Kagan, now widely reported as a leading candidate to ascend from her post as Justice Department solicitor general to become her friend Obama's nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy, urged the high court in November to deny Siegelman a hearing.

She cited technical legal arguments devised with the assistance of DOJ's trial prosecutors. Since the 2006 convictions DOJ has withstood complaints that include: political prosecution with Rove, judge-shopping, jury tampering, lying about the recusal of Alabama's top prosecutor, firing a DOJ whistleblower, and suppressing evidence that DOJ tried to blackmail its central witness.

Karl Rove has stepped into the fray while promoting his new book. Writes Kreig:

Concurring with DOJ's view is former White House advisor Rove, now on book tour promoting his memoir "Courage and Consequence" that denies any improper role by him, others in the Bush White House, prosecutors or the judge.

Also, Rove mocks whistleblowers and congressional Democrats alike who have become involved in the Siegelman/Scrushy case.

One Rove target is California Congressman Adam Schiff, the House Judiciary Committee's chief interrogator last July asking Rove about his role in DOJ prosecutions. In his book, Rove says Schiff "was clearly not prepared."

Rove also attacks Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer who became a key whistleblower in the Siegelman case. Writes Kreig:

Rove wrote also in "Courage" that a Democratic committee staffer privately disparaged to him Republican whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson. She is an Alabama lawyer from rural Rainsville who had stepped forward to provide the committee in 2007 with sworn testimony and documentation of the court record on military contracting.

She alleged a plan by her fellow Republicans as early as 2002 to frame Siegelman, and later steer the case to Fuller. Her testimony said that Riley's son Robert confided to her in 2005 even before Siegelman was indicted in his second trial that Fuller hated Siegelman and would "hang" him. Robert Riley has issued a statement denying her claim, but has not been called to testify.

Simpson responds that the facts would become obvious if Congress for the first time summoned witnesses for a public hearing under oath, or if the Supreme Court would examine the court filings on Fuller's conflicts. Siegelman, released on bond in 2008 by federal appeals court Democrats promptly after CBS 60 Minutes alleged GOP misconduct, also seeks Supreme Court review and a first-ever congressional hearing.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Steele Allies Point Fingers At Rove --

 Say Former RNC Team Fanning Flames

Christina Bellantoni | April 15, 2010, 11:11AM

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Karl Rove, former President George Bush, and Michael Steele

Seems like just about everyone is irritated with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele these days, but both friends and foes of the embattled party leader think allies of Karl Rove and former Bush-era RNC staffers are fanning the flames to make Steele's problems worse.

Republicans told me in interviews that Rove's team got cozy at the RNC during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and feathers were ruffled when Steele was elected and cleaned house. They admitted Steele has dug himself into a deep hole, but the spate of recent death watch stories on national television and gracing the nation's front pages seemed like a calculated effort to trash the chairman as revenge.

The GOP universe isn't huge -- consultants who worked with the RNC decades ago are
bound to pop up again and hop from campaign to campaign. But some people tied to Rove, George W. Bush's right-hand man, were "badly, badly hurt when Michael came in," an RNC member told me in an interview. "It's no surprise he's got a collection of enemies."

Republicans said that when taking over in 2009, Steele "emptied out the building" of about 100 consultants and top aides who closely coordinated with Rove at the White House from 2001 until President Obama took office. A Republican familiar with the inner-workings of the RNC told me that Steele made a mistake asking for resignations from the old guard so quickly. Had Steele gone "more cautiously" and kept one or two members of the Rove team on board it might have avoided the bad blood, the source said.

"We built in some pretty vocal critics right from the start. It would have been easy to overcome had the chairman not been hit with a gaffe a minute," the Republican said.

It's worth a reminder that Rove put the brakes on an effort to elect Steele chairman in 2006. Steele told The Washington Times last year that when elected, Rove did not send congratulations like other former top Bush White House and campaign officials.

The aides who left under Steele's takeover aren't household names, and many quickly found work on campaigns across the country or within the other party committees in Washington.
The intra-party spat is even more relevant as Rove and former RNC officials Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie have formed a new 527 group they say has received pledges worth $30 million from big donors to help with the 2010 elections. Top Republicans annoyed with Steele's leadership have said groups like the "American Crossroads" 527 might fill a void left during this troublesome period at the RNC.

We tried to reach out to Rove, the American Crossroads group and Bush White House aides who might speak about the story, but have so far been unsuccessful.

The RNC member said few are willing to criticize Rove specifically since he's still working with hundreds of Republicans nationally, but said it has seemed obvious to Steele allies that it's the old guard talking smack about the chairman. "When you get a new sheriff and the old guys all know the reporters and they all have an axe to grind, this happens," the member said.

The Republicans I interviewed said Rove's team should have known better, since historically this is the way it goes. When a party loses the White House, someone new comes in and makes it their own shop. GOPers say that's done to signal regime change, not create bad blood. One Republican suggested that since Rove and his crew weren't as familiar with the pre-Bush Washington he was taken aback by the changes.

"Of course the guy who comes in put his own team in. For anyone to act like that somehow was a horrible thing just completely disregards the history of the place," the Republican said.
But Steele critics note that some of the fired RNC aides helped run a steady ship for years and could have been useful during this period of turmoil.

Politico also explored this topic recently, with sources telling them that Steele replaced the Rove team with rookies who made the mistakes leading to his problems. Among those, the approval of a reimbursement request for a staffer who spent nearly $2,000 at a bondage-themed Los Angeles night club.

The Politico story said there is grumbling that Steele has brought in his own team from his days in Maryland state politics. It also highlighted that Steele fired Jay Banning, "someone
 known as a frugal and meticulous bookkeeper," and replaced him with a pal.

Another big question is what will happen come January. Steele's allies say he's definitely planning to seek a second term and we've reported about members thinking that Steele may not get fired, but will definitely be toast next year even if the GOP puts big wins on the board in the midterm elections.

A Steele foe thinks the chairman will definitely try for another term, telling me: "He loves being chairman. Even with all the troubles he's had he loves it."

An RNC spokesman declined to comment for this story but said the party offers full support for groups like Rove's new American Crossroads. "Such groups will help all Republicans as we move towards November," spokesman Doug Heye said.

As if Steele didn't have enough enemies, some Republicans have suggested the most vocal critics calling for Steele's ouster are tied to one another. For example, after the nightclub expense mishap, chief of staff Ken McKay was ousted. Curt Anderson, a GOP consultant who helped recruit McKay, followed him out the door. That firm did work in North Carolina for Tom Fetzer, the first RNC member to call for Steele's ouster last week. Also pals with the group? Alex Castellanos, the strategist who publicly severed ties with Steele on CNN last week.

Those involved say that's ridiculous since many Republicans work together.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Ghosts of preznits past.....

Spirit of Rove and Dubya Lingers in the Department of Justice

If you live in Alabama and care about justice issues, it's as if George W. Bush and Karl Rove never left the White House.

The latest evidence of that came Thursday when federal investigators met with members of the Alabama Legislature and said they are looking into corruption surrounding an electronic-bingo bill that passed the Senate earlier in the week.

Democrats, who tended to favor the bill, immediately pointed a finger at Republican Governor Bob Riley, who has been using a task force and pre-dawn raids to try to shut down bingo facilities in the state. Democrats say Riley's crusade has been driven by the desires of Mississippi Choctaw gaming interests, who reportedly spent $13 million to help get him elected in 2002.

An FBI agent based in Alabama said the bingo investigation is being driven by prosecutors in Washington. But a close examination of the circumstances surrounding the inquiry indicate that almost certainly isn't true. And it shows that President Barack Obama, now that health-care reform has passed, needs to exert control over a Justice Department that remains alarmingly dysfunctional.

Experts in criminal justice said the meeting on Thursday with legislative officials was "virtually unprecedented" and violated standard FBI procedures. "I can't think of a legitimate law-enforcement purpose to do something like this," one said.

That's because the meeting almost certainly was not held for a legitimate law-enforcement purpose--it was designed to intimidate.

Consider a couple of key factors surrounding the latest bizarre events in Alabama:

* The bingo bill passed on a 21-13 vote in the Alabama Senate on Tuesday;

* Federal investigators arrived at 8 a.m. the following day at the home of Jarrod Massey, a lobbyist for the Country Crossing development near Dothan, which includes an electronic-bingo pavilion. Massey, according to his attorney, was harassed and threatened with arrest and told he had until the end of the day to cooperate and "save" himself.

* The bill is set to go to the Alabama House of Representatives, and if OK'd there, would allow voters to go to the polls in November to decided whether to allow electronic bingo.

* According to press reports, representatives from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama played a key role in Thursday's meeting. Bush appointee Leura Canary, who oversaw the prosecution of former Democratic governor and Bob Riley opponent Don Siegelman, remains in the charge of that office. Alabama's two Republican U.S. Senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, have scuttled various Obama nominees for the position, and the White House, so far, has chosen not to fight for the two candidates (Michel Nicrosi and Joseph Van Heest) favored by Democrats.

Canary's lingering presence in office almost certainly is driving the bingo investigation. Angela Tobon, an FBI special agent in Mobile, Alabama, told The Birmingham News that the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of the Justice Department is leading the inquiry. Tobon refused to elaborate when contacted by a reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser.

PIN was a notorious cesspool during the Bush years, playing key roles in the political prosecutions of Don Siegelman in Alabama and Paul Minor in Mississippi. Six lawyers from PIN have been under investigation for failure to turn over evidence in the prosecution of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).

To make matters worse, PIN has been without a permanent leader since last October, when news broke of probable misconduct in the Stevens case. Jack Smith, a career federal prosecutor out of Brooklyn, New York, was named on March 11 to become permanent head of PIN.

News of Smith's appointment drew positive reaction in the justice community. But he has been serving with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, and is not likely to take over full-time at PIN for a while.

Does that mean Leura Canary was able to take advantage of a leaderless organization, contacting "loyal Bushies" still embedded in the Justice Department to help get PIN involved in a bogus Alabama operation?

It sure looks that way.

And that appears to be the thinking of lawyers for Jarrod Massey, the targeted lobbyist. They already have filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility and asked that Canary be prohibited from taking part in the probe. Reports mainjustice.com:

“We strongly agree that, if there is any evidence of wrongdoing in regards to SB380, then it must be investigated,” Jarrod Massey’s lawyers wrote in a letter to the DOJ, according to The Birmingham News. “However, the investigation should not be performed under the direction of the current U.S. attorney, with her close political ties to Gov. Bob Riley, but rather by Main Justice in order to remove any hint of political influence.”

Let The Sun Shine In......

Karl Rove Heckeled at book event

But no one threw rocks or threatened to kill him or his family.

Former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove was heckled and branded a 'war criminal' at a book signing in Beverly Hills, California, Monday night.

Rove, who served as senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, was at the Saban Theater to discuss his new book, "Courage and Consequences: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," to an audience of about 100 people who paid up to $40 to hear him.
 
But the audience members were unable to get their copies of the book signed after Rove was shouted down and forced to leave the stage, reported CNN affiliate KCAL-TV.

The event was heated from the onset as several anti-war protesters interrupted Rove's talk to accuse him and his administration of lying to Americans about the threat Iraq posed to the United States - and thus, taking the country into war.

Rove called one heckler a "lunatic." He told another to "get the heck out here."
At one point, Jodie Evans, the co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, rushed toward Rove waving a pair of handcuffs - saying she was there to make a citizen's arrest.

"Look what you did ... you lied to take us to war. You ruined a country. You totally ruined a country," she shouted.

As organizers tried to keep Evans at bay, another woman stood up and yelled, "The only comfort I take is that you're going to rot in hell."

Rove, who defended his administration's stance on several controversial issues in heated exchanges with other critics, said the interruptions reflected the "totalitarianism of the left."

Let The Sun Shine In......

The GOP's Double Standard on Anger

By Nat Parry
March 27, 2010

In the wake of the bitter health-care debate and some ugly incidents of violence against Democratic members of Congress, there have been some belated – and halfhearted – appeals from Republican leaders to tamp down the fiery rhetoric on the Right.  

In a statement on Wednesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner said the recent wave of violence and physical threats against Democrats is “unacceptable” – but he was quick to point out that he sympathized with the motivations:

“I know many Americans are angry over this health-care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening. But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable.”

While stumping for Sen. John McCain’s reelection in Arizona on Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also dialed back from the implications of her own recent comments, like telling her backers to “reload” and putting crosshairs on the districts of endangered Democrats.

“We know violence isn’t the answer,” Palin said. “When we take up our arms, we’re talking about our vote.”

She also blamed the controversy on “this BS coming from the lame-stream media, lately, about us inciting violence.”

So, while Republican leaders may be disavowing specific acts of political violence, their broader message appears to be that these feelings of anger are a healthy and legitimate response to objectionable Democratic policies.

This lenient attitude toward expressions of anger may come as a surprise to many progressives who remember that several years ago anger over President George W. Bush’s actions, such as having his political allies on the U.S. Supreme Court put him in the White House and his launching an unprovoked war in Iraq, was dismissed as a sign of mental illness.

Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer (a onetime psychiatrist) dubbed it “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” a term he coined to describe “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency – nay – the very existence of George W. Bush.”

The term was picked up by commentators in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Fox News and the blogosphere.

While Krauthammer came up with his diagnosis of angry liberals in 2003, its origins could be traced to the earliest days of the Bush administration, when Americans were told they must unite behind the new President despite the fact that he had assumed the White House after losing the national popular vote and stopping the counting of ballots in Florida.

On Inauguration Day 2001, as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators protested in the streets, Bush promised to usher in a new era of civility in Washington. Most of the press corps and congressional Democrats took him at his word. Those Americans who were still bitter about the outcome of Election 2000 were told to “get over it.”

Anger on the Left

This pressure to forget the circumstances behind Bush's "victory" became overwhelming after the 9/11 terror attacks with the American people rallying behind the President in a show of solidarity. But anger on the Left persisted, demonstrated by a flourishing of anti-Bush Web sites.

As the months wore on -- and Bush led the nation toward war with Iraq -- these Web sites provided a daily alternative source of information that proved invaluable. Readers of these sites were more likely to question the rationale for invading Iraq and the legitimacy of Bush’s claims about Iraq’s WMD, contributing to an unprecedented pre-war protest movement that brought millions into the streets of American cities.

In March 2003, when Bush launched the war despite these voices calling for restraint, many Americans experienced anger and despondency, which seemed like a natural response to a government disregarding their concerns.

When no WMD stockpiles were found after the invasion, anti-Bush anger grew among those who had opposed the war, but so too did the conventional wisdom that the “angry left” was delusional, irrational and unreasonable.

Heading into the 2004 presidential campaign, “liberal anger” was considered an albatross that could pull down any Democratic politician who was tied to it. An early victim was former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Although Dean emerged as an early favorite in the Democratic primaries, his fiery speeches were considered by some commentators as “too angry.”

“Mainstream America,” pundits warned, would not relate to Dean’s “angry persona,” an argument that contributed to the collapse of his candidacy and the selection of the calmer John Kerry, who was considered more “electable.”

The avoidance of anger was taken to absurd extremes at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where the Kerry camp ordered speakers not to criticize Bush harshly or even at all. The keynote address by then-Senate candidate Barack Obama didn’t even mention Bush’s name, stressing instead a positive message about America’s traditions and potential.

Supposedly polarizing figures, such as documentarian Michael Moore who had produced the anti-Bush film “Fahrenheit 9-11,” were kept at arm’s length.

Despite -- or perhaps because -- the Democrats showed such equanimity, Bush retained the White House in 2004. Still, the “angry” label kept dogging the Democratic Party, which continued trying to mute harsh rank-and-file criticism of Bush’s policies on Iraq and many other issues.

The GOP so frequently painted Democrats as irrationally angry that the criticism took on the appearance of a national political strategy.

At his 2006 State of the Union address, for example, Bush warned that “our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger.” The next month Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on ABC News that Hillary Clinton “seems to have a lot of anger.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, denounced Democrats’ criticism of Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove as “more of the same kind of anger and lashing out that has become the substitute for bipartisan action and progress.”

Deviant Emotion

In those days, anger was considered dangerously subversive, a deviant emotion that contradicted the essence of what it means to be an American. Real Americans simply don’t get angry, the message seemed to be, and if you do, you should probably seek professional help.

The Republican strategy of insisting that the Democrats play nice proved very effective through the first six years of Bush’s presidency. Indeed, the only time anger seemed justified was when right-wing voices on talk radio and Fox News were excoriating Bush's critics for displaying even relatively mild disapproval of the President.

Ironically, it wasn’t until Campaign 2006 – when Democrats sharpened their criticism of Bush over the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and other bungled policies – that the party began its comeback with a stunning congressional victory in November 2006.

Still, the anti-Bush rhetoric and protests never reached the level of today’s right-wing fury against President Obama.

And just compare the Republican attitudes toward political “anger” during the Bush years with their new-found appreciation for anger today. The anger now is fully justified because “Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” John Boehner maintains.

In other words, if you were angry about Bush’s actions, you were irrational, but if you’re furious about Obama’s policies on health reform, your fury is considered “understandable.”

Even while calling for some restraint, Republicans have continued to feed the right-wing anger by putting the blame for the anger back on the Democrats. In a blaming-the-victim twist, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor accused Democrats of provoking violence by complaining about violence.

"It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain," the Virginia Republican said, specifically faulting Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine for "dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon."

Cantor said, "By ratcheting up the rhetoric some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels."

Riding the Tiger

The Republican leadership appears to want it both ways, riding the tiger of right-wing political anger to victories in November while blaming the Democrats for any damage the tiger might cause.

This Republican strategy – and its possible consequences – are surely keeping Democrats awake at night, wondering if the death threats they’ve been receiving are empty bluster, or a serious cause for concern.

Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Virginia, whose brother’s home suffered a cut gas line after two Virginia Tea Party activists mistakenly listed it as Perriello’s home address, is not satisfied with Minority Leader Boehner ’s limited reprimand of the right-wing extremists.

“What he was saying was, for those of you who are threatening people’s children, we want you to channel that anger into the campaign,” said Perriello. “No, we want those people to go to jail.”

But it may be difficult for Republicans to abandon the anger on the Right that they helped foment. Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, Republicans have been hyping charges of creeping socialism and a loss of American liberties.

Those are fighting words for many Americans on the Right. And as this right-wing anger has escalated following the health-care vote, U.S. law enforcement agencies will start to take a closer look at right-wing movements.

When the FBI begins investigating, conservative paranoia over Obama could fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which heavily armed right-wingers feel persecuted and strike out in even greater anger.

It’s a violent cycle that was last seen in the United States during the early years of Democrat Bill Clinton’s presidency -- when angry Republican rhetoric about his legitimacy gave rise to armed militias and to talk about "black helicopters" and plots to eradicate American sovereignty. That contributed to Timothy McVeigh and a couple of other right-wing extremists getting together to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people.

With that history in mind, it might be time to heed Bush’s 2006 warning, whether disingenuous or not, that “our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger.”

Nat Parry is the co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Action Alert: Pick Up The Phone

Pick Up the Phone: Don't Let the GOP/Tea Party Mobs Get Away With Fabricating Our Wants, Needs & Desires -- Barbara's Daily Buzz

 

• Barbara's Daily Buzz

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

Call your Congressmen/women, call your Senators, tell them we the people want healthcare. We want the healthcare reform bill to pass! Let them know how we the people really feel! Don't let the Repuglicans and the tea party mobs get away with fabricating our wants, needs and desires!

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SHOCKING: Teabaggers mock and scorn man w/ Parkinson's:

Video shot by the Columbus Dispatch from today's Honk and Wave in Support of Health Care at Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy's district office contains a segment wherein the teabaggers mock and scorn an apparent Parkinsen's victim telling him "he's in the wrong end of town to ask for handouts", calling him a communist and throwing money at him to "pay for his health care".   

Not making this up. Outside of Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy's district office, teabaggers heckled, cursed at, and threw money at a man suffering from Parkinson's disease...

The shear heartlessness of the moment is heartbreaking.

Many people in this nation have become common hate-mongers. These "tea party" venues are nothing more than opportunities for mobs to spew their hatred!

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More on the Netanyahu/Hagee lovefest:

The occasion was Hagee’s Night To Honor Israel, an event the far-right Texas-based preacher arranged to tout his ministry’s millions in donations to Israeli organizations and to level bellicose rhetoric against Israel’s perceived enemies.  At the gathering, Hagee called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the Hitler of the Middle East” and denounced the Goldstone Report as “character assassination by an unbiased and uninformed committee.”

You have to wonder, is Hagee doing his very best to light the flames and bring on World War III? Is it his intention to bring on Armageddon? Does he really believe these are the actions that will pave his way to everlasting life in heaven?

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Can Dubya apologists handle the truth?

Conservative apologists for the George W. Bush crew are swinging hard these days to defend their man -- and themselves -- from the charge that W. and his gang misled the nation into war.

Key word here is "themselves"!  They're all doing their best to change reality. They're afraid of being exposed and held legally responsible for the biggest mess Repuglicans ever created for America, sadly more than 4,700 American soldiers and untold numbers of innocent Iraqis died because "Bush lied"!     

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Don't look too closely:

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.  The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

When the truth can no longer be hidden, and it finally comes out,truth cannot be labeled a "conspiracy theory"!

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PNAC called it "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (RAD), but it was actually a Repuglican roadmap to hell:

The building of Pax Americana has become possible, claims "RAD," because the fall of the Soviet Union has given the U.S. status as the world's singular superpower. It must now work hard not only to maintain that position, but to spread its influence into geographic areas that are ideologically opposed to our influence. Decrying reductions in defense spending during the Clinton years "RAD" propounds the theory that the only way to preserve peace in the coming era will be to increase military forces for the purpose of waging multiple wars to subdue countries which may stand in the way of U.S. global preeminence.

And that, folks, is how hell began!

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

Let The Sun Shine In......

Would Karl Rove Lie About His Own Name?

Me thinks he would, but doubt it would work. Most people in the world would recognize the fat, pink frog.

Rove Falsely Claims Bush Administration Never Said Iraqi Oil Revenue Would Help Pay For War

In his new book and in recent media appearances promoting it, former top Bush aide Karl Rove has been revising the history of the Iraq war, particularly regarding the issue of Saddam Hussien’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, Rove continued with his Iraq war history revision campaign. Noting that the Bush administration had mishandled the management of the war, host Tom Brokaw mentioned that “the cost of the war skyrocketed almost from the beginning. There was not a sharing of the oil revenue that a lot of people had promised.” But Rove flatly denied that the Bush administration said Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for the war:

ROVE: No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war. … [T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, “We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resource and pay for the war” is not accurate.

Rove’s claim is simply not true. In fact, days after the U.S. invasion, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstructing the country, i.e. a cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

One month before the war, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Iraq “is a rather wealthy country. … And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Since the start of the Iraq war, the U.S. has spent tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction costs.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Rightwing Declares War On Everybody

Nothing new about the war, just more examples of it everyday; uglier examples, like this one. 


I mean, can one imagine the chilling effect this will have on college professors. Me thinks that is the reason for this new right-wing tactic. 


It might, however, have another kind of effect. College campuses could explode again, like they did in the '60s, but instead of an anti-authoritarian tilt, it could have the effect of turning campuses into hotbeds of civil war.




RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST LAUNCHES COLLEGE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE TO COUNTER 'LEFTIST ABUSE' AND 'SMASH LEFT-WING SCUM': Campus Progress reports that Morton Blackwell, founder of the right-wing young adult organization the Leadership Institute (LI), has launched a new social-networking site for young conservatives, called CampusReform. The site is dedicated to exposing supposed "bias" in universities that are "completely dominated by the left" and giving students a forum to report and organize against liberal professors. The site allows students struggling to meet the rising cost of tuition during the economic recession the opportunity to make money by reporting examples of "leftist abuse" by professors. Blackwell claims the site was born out of his "long-term awareness of how the campuses have become left-wing indoctrination centers." Even as LI spent $4.6 million last year to "conduct training seminars for college students and to assist with launching right-leaning newspapers on campus," Blackwell claims that CampusReform is "largest program ever created" in his organization's history. CampusReform's staff consists of 11 regional organizers, all providing services and resources to campuses across the country. LI has already bred conservative leaders like GOP strategist Karl Rove, Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson (R-SC), and Grover Norquist, head of Americans For Tax Reform. CampusReform also proudly points out that James O'Keefe, the filmmaker who posed as the pimp that led to the ACORN scandal, attended 10 different LI schools in addition to receiving funding from the Institute.
 


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Let The Sun Shine In......

More of what we knew years ago....

.....but could not prove in a court of law. 

So, now it can be proven. Is Rove ever going to be prosecuted for even one of his many crimes against the Constitution and the Democratic Republic we are supposed to be willing to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic? 

Let me add that defense of the Constitution does not necessarily mean violence against other Americans or co-citizens of our planet. Let us hope that it does not come to that, again. Let us have the courage to pledge non-violence, even in the face of the ugliest intimidation, angry faces and vile threats.

While the far right in America waves guns and shouts down others, in public acts of intimidation and threats of assassination, the so-called Left, in the last 40 years, has grown older and wiser. At least I devoutly hope so. 

Give a fool enough rope and he will hang himself every time.

Rove Implicated in Prosecutor Firings

By Jason Leopold
August 12, 2009

Political adviser Karl Rove and other officials inside George W. Bush’s White House pushed for the firing of a key federal prosecutor because he wasn’t cooperating with Republican plans for indicting Democrats and their allies before the 2006 election, according to internal documents and depositions.

The evidence, which House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers released Tuesday and turned over to a special prosecutor, contradicts claims by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials that the White House played only a minimal role in the firing of David Iglesias and eight other U.S. Attorneys, who were deemed by a Justice Department official as not “loyal Bushies.”

In a recent interview with the New York Times and Washington Post, Rove downplayed his role in the firings, saying he only acted as a “conduit” for complaints that Republican Party officials and GOP lawmakers sent to him about the federal prosecutors. But the documents tell a different story.

The documents reveal that Rove, his White House aides and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers actively participated in the decision to oust New Mexico U.S. Attorney Iglesias because Republicans wanted him to bring charges against Democrats regarding alleged voter fraud and other issues.

According to Miers’s closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, a “very agitated” Rove phoned her from New Mexico, apparently in September 2006, and told her that Iglesias was “a serious problem and he wanted something done about it.”

At the time of the phone call, Rove had just met with New Mexico Republican Party officials angry at Iglesias, who was refusing to proceed with voter fraud cases because he felt the evidence was weak and because pre-election indictments would violate Justice Department guidelines.

Miers said she responded to Rove’s call by getting on the phone to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and passing along the message that Rove "is getting lots of complaints." Miers added, "it was a problem." 

About one month later, Iglesias was added to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be removed.

But the documents show that White House dissatisfaction with Iglesias over his resistance to bringing politically motivated cases against Democrats had been building for more than a year. On June 28, 2005, Scott Jennings, one of Rove’s aides, sent an e-mail to Tim Griffin, another Rove aide, asking what could be done to remove Iglesias.

“I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY,” Jennings wrote, complaining that “Iglesias has done nothing” on prosecuting voter fraud cases and adding: “We’re getting killed out there.”

‘Driving Force’

In a statement on Tuesday, accompanying release of more than 5,000 pages of documents, including transcripts of the recent interviews with Rove and Miers, Conyers said the revelations warrant further inspection by special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who has spent nearly a year conducting a criminal probe into the firings.

"After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin, this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons,” Conyers said.

A Justice Department watchdog report concluded last year that a majority of the prosecutor firings were politically motivated. The U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, was pushed out, so Rove's aide, Tim Griffin, could be given the job. But -- in the face of the growing scandal -- Griffin bowed out.

For months, Rove and Miers had dodged congressional subpoenas seeking their testimony in the matter, citing George W. Bush’s broad claims of executive privilege. But the Obama administration brokered a deal that had Rove and Miers testify behind closed doors.

Besides the Bush White House pressure for ousting Iglesias, powerful New Mexico Republicans also weighed in.

In October 2006, a month before the midterm elections that cost Republicans control of the Congress, an e-mail chain started by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, faulted Iglesias for not using his office in a manner that would help Wilson in her reelection campaign.

Wilson’s e-mail included a news report about an FBI probe of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, as an example of criminal investigations proceeding close to election day.

Steve Bell, chief of staff to New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, forwarded the e-mail to Jennings at Rove’s White House shop, with a note, saying it "seems like other U.S. attorneys can do their work even in election season. And the FBI has already admitted they have turned over their evidence [in a federal corruption probe] to the [U.S. Attorney] in [New Mexico] and are merely awaiting his action."

Jennings then passed along the e-mail to Rove, saying Iglesias was “shy about doing his job on [Patricia] Madrid,” a Democratic congressional candidate who would lose the 2006 election to Wilson by only 800 votes.

Last year, Wilson told Justice Department watchdogs investigating the U.S. Attorney purge that the context of her e-mail was more of a "heads up" to the recipients. She said that if she were asked by reporters about an FBI investigation into Madrid, she would confirm it. Madrid was New Mexico's former attorney general who was involved with a political action committee that was allegedly under scrutiny.

Domenici’s Intervention

Domenici also intervened, personally lobbying Bush’s top aides to fire Iglesias, according to the documents. Between September 2005 and April 2006, Domenici called Attorney General Alberto Gonzales three times to complain about Iglesias’s handling of voter fraud and corruption probes and to ask that he be fired.

Gonzales testified to Congress that he did not recall Domenici ever making such a request. Gonzales resigned in August 2007 amid the political fallout from the prosecutor-firing scandal.

On Oct. 4, 2006, Domenici also called Deputy Attorney General McNulty “expressing concern about Iglesias’s lack of fitness for the job of U.S. Attorney.”  

At one point, according to Rove’s testimony, Domenici wanted to speak with President Bush to press his case, but Rove talked him out of it. However, in October 2006, the senator personally asked Bush’s chief of staff Josh Bolten to replace Iglesias, according to White House phone logs and e-mails.

In congressional testimony, Iglesias said he also received telephone calls from Domenici and Wilson in October 2006 inquiring about the timing of an indictment against former state senator Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and other Democrats who were involved in a courthouse construction project.

Domenici’s interventions prompted a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, which resulted last year in a letter of reprimand for creating an “appearance of impropriety.” Special prosecutor Dannehy is probing possible obstruction of justice charges against Domenici and his former aide Bell.

Dannehy secured the testimony last April of Scott O’Neal, the assistant FBI special agent in charge of the Albuquerque field office, who reportedly informed Domenici or his aide Bell about the status of the FBI’s investigation of alleged Democratic wrongdoing, according to legal sources who requested anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the probe.

In an interview, former U.S. Attorney Iglesias said the briefing to Domenici and/or Bell, if it did take place, would be significant because it would have required approval from himself or his former colleagues who never received a formal request from O’Neal or his FBI superiors.

The U.S. Attorney’s manual states that “personnel of the Department of Justice shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress, including such things as the issuance or serving of a subpoena, prior to the public filing of the document.”

Rove’s Fingerprints

 

Regarding Tuesday’s revelations, Iglesias said he had long suspected that Rove’s “fingerprints were all over this.”

 

In an interview with me two years ago, Iglesias said he believed “somewhere on an RNC computer – on some server somewhere – there’s an e-mail from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed.” He added that he believed a “smoking gun” would eventually surface and lead directly to Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

“The e-mail timing [in October 2006] corroborates what I suspected,” Iglesias said Tuesday. Domenici and other New Mexico Republican Party officials “wanted me to file indictments and [Wilson] would benefit. They wanted to use me and my office as a political tool.”

 

Iglesias said Dannehy has access to “a lot of the facts” and “there still may be obstruction of justice charges” filed.  He added, “I can’t believe Gonzales did not know what was going on,” suggesting that the former attorney general may be one of Dannehy’s targets.

Domenici retired from the Senate and Wilson also left Congress in 2009 after unsuccessfully seeking the Republican nomination to fill Domenici’s seat, which is now held by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall.

Deputy Attorney General McNulty testified before Congress in February 2007 that the prosecutor firings were “performance related,” though that testimony also now appears to be in question.

Documents released by the Justice Department showed that Gonzales and McNulty participated in an hour-long meeting with Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who compiled the list of prosecutors to be fired, a group he famously designated as not “loyal Bushies.”

The documents, along with Rove's and Miers’s testimony, contradict numerous public statements made by White House spokespersons Tony Snow and Dana Perino in the aftermath of the December 2006 firings. Snow and Perino insisted that the White House did nothing wrong and didn't oust prosecutors for political reasons.

Yet, upon being informed in November 2006 via e-mail of the plan to fire the U.S Attorneys, Perino responded: “Someone get me the oxygen can!” When told the firings included some U.S. Attorneys who were actively investigating GOP lawmakers who were alleged to be involved in corruption, Perino added: “Give me a double shot — I can’t breathe.”

The newly released documents also show that Kansas City U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was removed in a deal between the White House and Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri that appears to have been personally approved by Rove.

According to the documents, Bond agreed to lift his hold on an Arkansas judge nominated to the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court in exchange for Graves’s firing. A White House e-mail sent to Miers stated that “Karl is fine” with the proposal.

Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Rove In The Crosshairs, Again

Prosecutors to Question Rove on US Attorney Firings

Thursday 14 May 2009

by: Carrie Johnson  |  Visit article original @ The Washington Post

 

Karl Rove will be questioned by a US attorney as part of an investigation into the firing of several US attorneys. (Photo: AP)

   
Former top White House official Karl Rove will be interviewed tomorrow as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys during the Bush administration, according to two sources familiar with the appointment.
   
Rove has remained in the news as a commentator and political analyst since departing the White House. In an essay in today's Wall Street Journal, he criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), arguing that she may have misled the public about her knowledge of detainee interrogation tactics that critics assert are torture.
   
As a senior adviser to President George W. Bush, Rove emerged at the center of numerous policy and political debates. He will be questioned tomorrow by Connecticut prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who was named last year to examine whether any former senior Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006.
  
 Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Rove, declined comment this afternoon on the imminent interview. So did Tom Carson, a spokesman for Dannehy.
   
Dannehy mostly has operated in the shadows, quietly issuing subpoenas for documents through a federal grand jury in the District. But in recent weeks she has interviewed other former government aides, including White House political deputies Scott Jennings and Sarah Taylor. She also has reached out to representatives for former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and his chief of staff, Steve Bell, in an effort to determine whether New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias was removed for improper political reasons.

The firings were the subject of a lengthy report released last fall by the Justice Department's inspector general and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. Investigators there uncovered improper political motivations in the firings of several of the nine dismissed federal prosecutors.

But the department's own probe was thwarted in part because the inspector general's agents did not have the authority to compel testimony from Bush White House advisers and lawmakers.

In response, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey handpicked Dannehy, a career prosecutor who made her reputation trying public corruption cases, in September 2008.

The prosecutor firings also are the subject of intense interest from the House Judiciary Committee, which had sued former Bush aides Harriet E. Miers and Joshua B. Bolten for access to testimony and documents. Both sides reached a settlement earlier this year after high-level involvement by lawyers for Bush, new White House counsel Gregory Craigand U.S. House general counsel Irvin B. Nathan.Rove and Miers are tentatively scheduled to provide closed-door testimony to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and other members of the panel sometime next month.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

About Torture, the myths and reality

Scott Horton, who has led coverage of Bush-era wrongdoing, exposes three pervasive myths—and the surprising reason Cheney and Rove are keeping the issue alive.
• A torture memo writer refused to comply with a warning about criminal risks—and exposes the truth about the policies.
 
• Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck.
 
• Donald Rumsfeld gave step-by-step directions for techniques used at Abu Ghraib.
 
• Torture techniques originated from the White House shortly after 9/11—long before they were arguably needed on the battlefield.
 
• Torture was used by Cheney and Rumsfeld to find justification for the invasion of Iraq.
 
• Jay Bybee was confirmed to a lifetime appointment as all eyes were on Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.

In the space of a week, the torture debate in America has been suddenly transformed.

The Bush administration left office resting its case on the claim it did not torture. The gruesome photographs from Abu Ghraib, it had said, were the product of “a few bad apples” and not of government policy. But the release of a series of grim documents has laid waste to this defense. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report—adopted with the support of leading Republican Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham—has demonstrated step-by-step how abuses on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan had their genesis in policy choices made at the pinnacle of the Bush administration. A set of four Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memoranda from the Bush era has provided a stomach-turning legal justification of the application of specific torture techniques, including waterboarding.

Rove and Cheney are convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck. Its success on the political stage is just one more 9/11-style attack away.

As public and congressional calls for the appointment of a prosecutor and the creation of a truth commission have proliferated, President Barack Obama stepped in quickly to try to turn down the heat. A commission would not be helpful, he argues, and he has made plain his aversion to any form of criminal-law accountability.

Republicans, meanwhile, bristle with anger as they attempt to defend against the flood of new information. But, in the end, Obama’s assumption that the torture debate has run its course and that the country can now “move on,” as conservative pundit Peggy Noonan urged, may rest in some serious naïveté: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have different ideas. They’re convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck. Its success on the political stage is just one more 9/11-style attack away.

The latest disclosures can best be grouped in terms of the destruction of a series of long-enduring myths and the emergence of some new truths.

The Broken Myths

1. Torture was connected to some “rotten apples,” mostly enlisted personnel from rural Appalachia who were improperly supervised.

The Senate Armed Services Committee meticulously documents the abuses that were chronicled at Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, and other sites and links them directly to techniques that were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials in the Bush administration. Even in the case of Abu Ghraib, it shows step-by-step how directions given by Rumsfeld that the harsh techniques he adopted for Guantánamo be imported to Iraq, specifically for use on high-value detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility. Among the 232-page report’s conclusions: “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

2. The torture techniques were derived as a last resort, only after other techniques had failed and that interrogators in the field pushed for their use.

The report shows, however, that the effort to identify and seek authority to use harsh new techniques started shortly after 9/11—that is, in 2001, well before there were any prisoners on whom they could be used. It also shows that the effort had its origin in the White House, specifically in the office of Vice President Cheney and involved a series of people who had Cheney’s confidence.

Conversely, the report (and other documents emerging since its release) shows that interrogators in the field raised sharp objections to the use of the techniques and steadily questioned their efficacy. The team dealing with one prisoner, for instance, voiced the view that he had already furnished all the evidence he was likely to produce and that further waterboarding would be pointless. Nameless “higher ups” overrode their judgment. That group might well include Cheney, who is known to have maintained a sharp interest in this particular detainee and kept on his desk a file marked “detainees” in which he collected data related to the use of torture.

The Senate report documents a series of military officers who raised objections against the use of torture and insisted that their opposition be recorded. And today a further report has emerged from July 2002 (just as the OLC memos were being commissioned), in which the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency expressly referred to the techniques, which were being reverse engineered from the SERE program (that JPRA oversaw), as “torture” and insisted that, if used, they would not produce reliable intelligence.

3. Bush lawyers may have made “honest mistakes” in their legal analysis owing to the extreme pressure that existed in the immediate wake of 9/11, in which they were pressed quickly to give opinions before matters could be fully evaluated.

One of Bush’s OLC chiefs, Jack Goldsmith, makes the argument, now accepted as a mantra-like defense for the Bush-era torture lawyers, that tremendous pressure and short deadlines were to blame for their failure to properly assess the law. The torture memoranda gave seriously faulty analysis of the law, Goldsmith claims, because of this pressure-cooker environment. We should all be prepared to excuse their lapses for this reason. Goldsmith is not the most objective analyst of the question, and his adamant insistence that he was divorced from the process of giving a green light to torture appears less persuasive as time passes. But the writings of the torture memo writers, particularly of John Yoo, look suspiciously like their academic writing, in which they sought to expand presidential power and authority at the expense of the rights of the other branches. It seems more plausible to conclude just the opposite of Goldsmith’s claims—namely, that they seized upon the crisis that arose in the wake of 9/11 as an opportunity in which they could realize their ideas about limitless presidential powers in wartime.

The Emerging Reality

 1. The impulse to torture had a clear motivation: Cheney and Rumsfeld were increasingly desperate to find evidence that would support their decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

The push for application of torture techniques occurred as the Bush administration scrambled to come up with evidence to support its claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had links to al Qaeda or was pursuing the development of weapons of mass destruction. Two major spikes in the use of the harshest techniques occurred in the weeks just before the Iraq invasion and the couple of months after the occupation of Iraq had begun. The first spike coincides with a period of difficulty with America’s principal ally, Britain, shortly following the famous Washington meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in which the latter expressed concern about the lack of evidence supporting claims about a WMD program. Blair had been informed by his attorney general, Lord Peter Goldsmith, that the legal case for invading Iraq was exceedingly tenuous and badly needed to be bolstered with evidence showing an imminent threat coming out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Also in this period, Vice President Cheney was doing his best to make this case by talking up evidence that proved specious—including reports of a meeting in Prague between an al Qaeda figure and an Iraqi diplomat.

The new documents make plain that interrogators using the new harsh techniques, including waterboarding, were pushing their subjects for information that would justify the Iraq war. For instance, Major Paul Burney, a medical professional attached to interrogation efforts at Guantánamo, told investigators that “we were there a large part of the time. We were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link… there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” Numerous other sources involved in the interrogation effort recorded the same intense pressure to secure “results” that would justify a decision that had already been taken in Washington to invade Iraq.

In the end, Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent to the United Nations to make the case for an invasion of Iraq. The crown jewel of his evidentiary case turned on claims supplied by Ibn al-Shaykh Al-Libi that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical weapons. (AKA Curve-ball)  Al-Libi had been tortured using the new techniques to secure this evidence. It was subsequently determined to be false—offered up by Al-Libi to escape the torments to which he was subjected with the full understanding that this was what his interrogators wanted to hear. By curious coincidence, as Powell delivered his speech to the U.N. Security Council, a Judiciary Committee hearing room emptied out, and the nominee then under consideration got a free pass to confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. His name was Jay Bybee, and more than a year later, the public would learn that he had been a principal author of the torture memoranda.

The new reports make clear that torture was used to secure information to justify the invasion of Iraq, but—just as experts from the military and the FBI warned—the information proved false. America’s credibility on the international stage was seriously damaged as a result.

2. The torture trail started and ended in the White House.

The Bush administration went to great lengths to fabricate a narrative under which it agreed to demands from interrogators on the ground to allow the use of harsher methods, effectively “removing the shackles” on their interaction with prisoners. But the Senate Armed Services Committee report shows that the effort to introduce these techniques dates from 2001, before there were any prisoners. It also shows that these techniques emanated from the White House and specifically from the office of Vice President Cheney. Finally, it documents a protocol that was in effect governing the use of the techniques. Interrogators would propose a full program of torture techniques to be applied to an individual prisoner. This proposal would be vetted and approved by higher ups in the CIA (including the senior CIA officials who, not coincidentally, vehemently opposed disclosure of information surrounding their own engagement), and then it would go to the White House, where discussions occurred in the National Security Council. Formal signoff occurred by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, involving her lawyer, John Bellinger. President Bush and Vice President Cheney are also recorded as having been informed and having approved its use. If the torture story is therefore a tale involving a “handful of bad apples,” then, the “bad apples” were sitting at the very top of the government.

3. Experts advised the administration lawyers that their opinions on torture were wrong and possibly criminal in nature and the lawyers attempted to destroy evidence of this fact.

Contrary to the uninformed assertion of Washington Post columnist David Broder that the “memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places,” the newly released documents are filled with evidence that military law experts and others repeatedly warned the Bush administration, and particularly its lawyers, that the techniques being introduced constituted torture and that torture was a federal crime, punishable with penalties up to capital punishment in cases in which death occurred (and it did).

In addition, a senior military lawyer tells me that he directly confronted one of the torture memo writers advising him that the techniques proposed would be viewed by most experts as criminal in nature. He insisted that the memo be rewritten to reflect this risk. But the memo writer refused, he states. Phillip Zelikow, a senior counselor to Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, also described a memorandum he wrote warning of risks associated with the torture memoranda. He explained last week that an extraordinary effort was launched by the Bush White House to round up and destroy all copies of his memo. Prosecutors would probably characterize all of this as reflecting mens rea—a state of guilty mind—a realization by the torture memo writers that they were engaged in a criminal act.

(And they would be right)


Why did the memo writers issue their opinions in the form that they did without signaling the risks of criminal law involved in the scheme that the White House was implementing? It’s likely that they were acting under instructions to issue “clean opinions,” which would make it easier for the White House to act and provide more effective insulation from criminal prosecution to those who received the memos.

The new disclosures have transformed the parameters of the debate. The fallback position urged with increasing vigor by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove is simple and includes both offensive and defensive elements. The critical top note is that torture works and keeps America safe. Cheney repeats this claim at every public appearance. He claims that these techniques yielded information that allowed the U.S. to thwart attacks. But Cheney has been extremely slippery about the details of these claims.

Cheney has also filed papers with the National Archives seeking the declassification and disclosure of two CIA reports, which he notes are in a file from his office marked “Detainees.” Curiously, neither report dates from the period of heavy use of torture techniques like waterboarding—they are from a subsequent period in which information gained is probably being crunched or evaluated in an effort to prove that the application of torture yielded something useful. Critics object to Cheney’s request, but they don’t object to disclosure of information about the fruits of the program. They argue that Cheney cannot be allowed to cherry-pick the evidence as he did with intelligence relating to the Iraq War. Instead, they argue, there should be a comprehensive study of the question that reaches some results—perhaps best in the form of a commission of inquiry like the one that the congressional Judiciary Committee chairmen, John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, have proposed.

Rove’s counterattack takes a different form. He argues, using formulations that instantly reverberated though the airwaves as dozens of Republican commentators took them up, that any effort at accountability would be a primitive act of retribution. Appearing on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, Rove invoked the image of “Latin American colonels in mirrored sunglasses,” claiming that any effort to investigate breaches of law would be a “criminalization of an honest policy dispute” that would undermine the fabric of American democracy.

President Obama and his advisers have reacted to these disclosures through a series of unconvincing gyrations. 

It is clear that Obama’s principal concern throughout this process has been that the controversy surrounding torture will prove a distraction that might encumber his efforts to push through an ambitious agenda including financial-industry reform, bailouts, health-care reform, and an array of foreign-policy initiatives. His steps have been ham-handed. On the question of possible prosecutions, Obama went to the CIA to deliver public assurances that no intelligence officers who relied on government legal opinions would be investigated or prosecuted for what they did. Shortly thereafter, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and press secretary, Robert Gibbs, announced that there would be no prosecution of legal memo writers or policymakers either—steps violating clear-cut rules about the involvement of White House political figures in criminal-justice matters. The White House was forced to pull back the next day, insisting that the Justice Department would handle these questions.

Obama insists America must “look forward.” He views the torture question as resolved by a series of orders he issued coming into office. But Cheney and Rove suggest another idea. It’s clear that in their view America is just one more 9/11 attack away from a transformation in which their use of the “dark arts” will again carry popular endorsement and provide a powerful wedge issue to use against Obama. Obama’s optimism about closure on the torture issue may therefore be seriously misplaced.

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

Could be, Scott, that Cheney and Rove are counting on just such a terrorist attack. More, they may be hoping for one. Even worse, they and their Neocon pals may be busy planning one, feeling sure that the Obama administration and American "libruls" will get the blame. I would not count on that, if I were them. Do they not know that they are being watched?

Let The Sun Shine In......