Consciousness of Guilt (Or, Yes, Bush/Cheney's Still Getting Away With Murder)

It's Rosemary Woods on crack and steroids: the convenient "disappearance" of evidence which, by federal law, must not be disappeared. Not a miserable few minutes on Nixon's tapes, but ALL SORTSA emails. Especially Dick Cheney's emails. You know, sensitive emails. Stuff that is meant to be preserved.

But it did disappear.

No biggie.

I mean, cui bono? These things just happen! Why would you think this spontaneous event involved destruction of evidence? Why?




Hat-tip to Corrente.

Billionaires for WealthCare: Fight Socialism: End Medicare NOW!

Obama's Not-Bush Nobel Win Results in Massive Mob-GOP Head Explosion

One must work really really hard to feel compassion for so very many Mob-GOP exploded heads.




Not to mention how hard it would be to feel compassion toward the shamelessly sexist exploded heads of the idiotic faux-left.

[Hat-tip to actual liberal blog, Corrente.]

Rabid Right Mommy Scared Timid Centrist Prez Is Really Tulku of Mao-Tse Tung

How can people be so f*cking stupid?

Really.

Call to Action: Billionaires for WealthCare, Not HealthCare

RECRUITING BILLIONAIRES NOW!

Start you own chapter, or join one!

Print out signs, don tiara or tux, and make a beeline for your nearest teabagger party. Let your Billionaire voice be heard! w00t!

Barney Frank Slam's Rabid Rightists' "Vile, Contemptible Nonsense"

Barney Frank says arguing with wingnut "like arguing with a dining room table."



Great job.

The Third-Worlding of America: GOP Runs Death Panels for the Working Poor

RAM usually goes to help the poor in Africa.

But, after 8 years of Bushist fascism, America is the new Africa.

The new third world is here at home.

Oh lookee! Working adults with no access to health care, weeping because they find, having waited in line for days to receive charity health care, that they have high blood pressure.

But they can't afford a doctor. And they can't afford the pills.

In the wealthiest country in the world.

Ain't that a shame?

Hey, Joe -- can you play a few bars of "Serfin' U-S-A"?

Child Abuse/Neglect No Priority for GOP Gov Ahnold

I don't know if Arnold is a fetus-firster. I do know that he has just slashed funding for the department charged with dealing with child abuse and neglect.

I continue to be horrified by the upsurge in fetal sentimentalism, while the job of actually protecting actual kids from abuse and neglect remains so, well, neglected.

Feh.

Lindsey Graham Complains That Sotomayor Asks "Tough Questions"

I never said that playing the shrew card, calling a female temperamental, argumentative, and tough was sexist.

I never said that Lindsey Graham was a pussy, either.

Waterboarding Without Permission

Sure we tortured in 2002 well before we cooked up some lame excuse to justify doing it.

Whut's yer frickin' problem, pussies?

Via BBC interview: former CIA Agent John Kirakou pinpoints use of torture as early as the end of May/beginning of June 2002, well before the notorious Bybee memo.

Thoughts On the Tubesock Holocaust

From General JC Christian, Jesus' General.

A Fly on the Wall at Gitmo: An Antidote for Compassion Fatigue

Here's an opportunity to do the right thing: via RobinElliot at Kos, via Major Barry Wingard, a Gitmo detainee's lawyer.

Let’s recap: Some guy made a couple of afghanis by selling Fayiz to our guys so that the thug-infested Bush administration could justify their fraudulent little war and all its torture-y perks.

And what did Fayiz get? This:

While in U.S. custody in Kabul in December 2001, Al-Kandari was shackled in various stress positions for as long as 36 hours at a time. He was beaten with a chain and water hose. Photographs documenting his condition have not been released.
In early 2002, Al-Kandari was transferred to Bagram and held in a roofed tent with no sides where overnight temperatures typically reached below freezing. Photographs again documented his condition, but they have never been released. [...] He was transferred to Kandahar in early 2002, ... [where] his entire body was shaved (except for a cross on his chest, which was later shaved off) and he was initially kept awake in solitary confinement for five straight days. The abuse continued and resulted in broken ribs and severe bruising documented by medical exams performed months later.
Before being placed on the plane out of Kandahar, his sound-proof headgear was lifted and a female voice whispered, "You are going to hell in GTMO." At the time, he was also drugged, sandbagged, and placed into a head harness for the 24 hour trip.
At Guantanamo, he was again shackled into stress positions for extended periods of time. He was also urinated on and subjected to sleep deprivation, strobe lights, ear piercing music, cell extractions, and extreme heat and cold conditions in his cell via temperature controls. All told, Al-Kandari has been interrogated approximately 400 times and abused throughout the time he was in U.S. custody.

Wait, sidebar: I smell a reason for releasing those pesky torture photos everyone's talking about... evidence. Sidebar over.

So... all that torture must have worked, right? I mean, who could withstand that kind of abuse and not spill what’s left of their guts, because, you know, "some" say torture works and-- What’s that? Sorry, something’s coming through my imaginary earpiece:

A Department of Defense legal review of Al-Kandari’s case found the evidence against him "is made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no first hand knowledge of the events they describe."
Oh.
In short, the U.S. learned nothing of value from its abusive treatment of Al-Kandari and in all likelihood exculpatory materials confirming Al-Kandari’s whereabouts and accounts of abuse will be classified and withheld from public view.
Oh.

So what options are available to Fayiz and those like him? Not many. It all boils down to those infamous military commissions, Wingard's skills, and a judge who will believe Fayiz's testimony, because with the word "classified" popping up everywhere, that's all detainees like him have.

Sidebar #2: Per Barry Wingard, "the military is not behind the commissions." Sidebar #2 over.

However, Major Wingard did share one silver lining with me: He could get a sympathetic judge. Maybe. If he's lucky. But—and there’s always a pesky but-- delays and more delays are kicking that silver-lined opportunity down the road, and Fayiz is still in prison.

But at least he has one hell of a caring, persistent, ethical lawyer.

Vice-President Cheney insists that enhanced interrogations were only used on "hardened terrorists" after other efforts failed, that such efforts prevented the deaths of thousands, and that the U.S. never lost its moral bearings in its treatment of detainees. Al-Kandari is living proof he is wrong on all counts.

Krauthammer: Sotomayor Is a Racist

So Sonia's a racist, is she, Charlie?

Not to worry, dude.

Hillary was a racist, too.

Same mud. Different face.

Department of Karma, Cause & Effect: O'Reilly's "Tiller the Baby Killer" Rant

Malicious words. Like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, is it not, Billy?

Bill O'Reilly has blood on his hands for this nasty piece of work: Tiller the Baby Killer.

I have never agreed with Billy's fetal position: that fetuses trump the post-born in terms of being worthy of our compassion.

Bill O'Reilly, in addition to being a sexual harasser, is a loudmouth and a narcissist. One who conducts himself in a way that makes him complicit in murder by domestic terrorism. As is Cheney, and the rest of the shrieky hysterical mirror-neuron-deficient, pro-torture, anti-life Talibangelical terrorists: by their works shall ye know them.

How can anyone claim to be Christian, yet fail to follow the golden rule?




---
Jesus' General on O'Reilly, God's Destroying Angel.

Clueless Self-Injurious Behaviorist Gordon Liddy Fears Sotomayor: re: Riding the Cotton Pony!!

Little Gordy don't know much about women, do he?

bwahahaha.

How embarrassing for him. Someone needs to send him a book on physiology, do they not?



hat-tip to bluegal.
Corrente: big tent watch

US Military Rape: STFU

The rightwing Talibangelical government-forced maternity crowd likes to protect a rapist's right to breed. Now the government is protecting rapists' identities.

There are pictures that depict the US military, carrying out the "get tough" orders of George W. Bush, using warcrime rape as a weapon of torture.

There are pictures. Videos. We heard of them long ago. Haven't seen them.

The still unreleased photos relate to abuse alleged to have taken place between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Taguba, now retired, supports Obama’s decision to block the release of the photos, which Obama had previously said would be released according to a court ruling in support of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it,” Taguba said.

Horrendous. Right. The description is enough.

Hunh? They're too awful for anyone to see? So we really really have to keep them secret. Because if everyone saw what the US really did, they'd really might get their panties in a twist, and hey, that would really suck.

Yes, it's heinous. So heinous. Just calling the pix "heinous" is really enough.

But not heinous enough to prosecute the rapists, for example. Why not? The pictures are just too hot to handle? They'd just make everyone upset? Obama's ok with helping everyone to just STFU?

Why would shutting up about atrocities be a good thing? Why would letting people get away with comitting atrocities be in any way acceptable?

If there are images, there are victims and perps.

Why are happy to have our tax dollars spent protecting a rapist's right to rape?

Mancow Waterboard

People who do not suffer from Mirror Neuron Retardation Syndrome don't have to BE waterboarded like this guy had to, in order to realize that waterboarding is torture.

Is it "torture"?

Watch conservative Radio host Mancow attain sudden and complete enlightenment.




Waterboard Cheney. Waterboard Rummy. Waterboard Rush, Bush. Waterboard Geoffrey Miller. Waterboard the whole entire pro-torture crowd. Then we'll talk.

Al-Gonzo Okays Torture Prior to Torture Memo Saying Torture Is Okay

Maybe Alberto needs to get all lawyered up?

GOP Cons End "Era of Apology" -- Without Even Apologizing

Michael Steele Hails End of "Era of Apologizing."

You have to give them points for creating their own reality. As in unilaterally ending an era it just unilaterally created.

But then you have to take all them points away for their destroying our reality.

I just wish they would shut up and slink off. Really, I do.

WaPo Headline Puts Torture in Quotes. Well, Torture's Not Quite the Same as "Torture," Is It?

Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture'.

An otherwise fine article on BushCheneyRrummy admin being warned that torture does not produce useful info, besides being, you know, "wrong."

My beef with the headline is that it continues the neo-Orwellian habit of the US media whore media to minimize torture by calling it "harsh interrogation," "harsh methods," making it not really torture because if you don't say it's torture then it just isn't, is it?

None dare call it torture?

Language: this is how we "create" our "reality."