"Heckuva Job" Rummy: Bad at Defense, Good At Torture

Like most classic conservatives, I've always been a great fan of personal responsibility. I wonder, once this total shitstorm breaks over him, will Rummy feel that way, too?


RUMSFELD MAY BE CRIMINALLY LIABLE FOR TORTURE:
Lt. General Randall Schmidt Implicates Defense Secretary Himself

From Human Rights Watch, here:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could be criminally liable for the torture of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002 and early 2003, Human Rights Watch said today. . . A December 20, 2005 Army Inspector General’s report, obtained by Salon.com this week, contains a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt that implicates Secretary Rumsfeld in the abuse of detainee Mohammad al-Qahtani. Based on an investigation that he carried out in early 2005, which included two interviews with Rumsfeld, Gen. Schmidt describes the defense secretary as being "personally involved" in al-Qahtani’s interrogation.

Human Rights Watch urges the United States to name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Rumsfeld and others in the al-Qahtani case.

"The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it’s whether he should be indicted,"said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. . .
Human Rights Watch has obtained an unredacted copy of al-Qahtani’s interrogation log, and believes that the techniques used during al-Qahtani’s interrogation were so abusive that they amounted to torture. . . ."A six-week regime of sleep deprivation, forced exercises, stress positions, white noise, and sexual humiliation amounts to acts that were specifically intended to cause severe physical pain and suffering and severe mental pain and suffering," said Mariner. "That’s the legal definition of torture."

In 2005, the Judge Advocates General of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps told the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that the techniques used on al-Qahtani violated the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, and would have been illegal if perpetrated by another country on captured U.S. personnel. The U.S. State Department also regularly condemns as torture the same techniques in its annual Country Report on Human Rights, citing their use in countries such as North Korea and Iran. . . .

Rumsfeld could be liable under the doctrine of "command responsibility" – the legal principle that holds a superior responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates when he knew or should have known that they were being committed, but fails to take reasonable measures to stop them.

I think Rummy should be "personally involved" by himself receiving the treatment he ordered to be meted out to others. Sure, it's a little eye-for-eye, but Rummy's an eye-for-eye kinda guy, ain't he?

More at Salon, here.

Rumsfeld
torture
Salon.com
Human Rights Watch

Crappy King Cracks Down On Nepali People

Charming Gyanendra was long known as the "Black Prince." Once a timely royal massacre eliminated all the relatives standing between him and the throne of Nepal, the world's only Hindu kingdom, Gyanendra turned Nepal's democratic constitutional monarchy into a backward autocracy, starring himself as autocrat-in-chief.

He tossed out democratically-elected Prime Ministers as if they were rubbish, and seized total power. He still has it. So far.

But the people of Nepal are fighting back. Lawyers have protested for the restoration of democracy, and have been beaten and jailed for their trouble.

Journalists have protested, and have been beaten and jailed for their trouble.

Full story here, via CBS, with troubling video footage available on the right side of the screen (a commercial precedes it). Worth a look.

Via United We Blog! for a Democratic Nepal, more on arrests and beatings of professionals and demonstrators, as well as deportation of sympathetic foreigners like Dr. Brian Cobb, who treated wounded demonstrators and Nepali police alike.

Nepal
democracy
Nepal protests

Torture Pix by US Surface in Afghan Bazaar; Evidence Too Gruesome to Show

This week, an NBC News producer, using a hidden camera, visited [a] bazaar [outside the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan] and bought a half dozen of the memory drives the size of a thumb known as flash drives. On them, NBC News found highly sensitive military information, some which NBC will not reveal.

"This isn't just a loss of sensitive information," says Lt. Col. Rick Francona (ret.), an NBC News military analyst. "This is putting U.S. troops at risk. This is a violation of operational security."

Some of the data would be valuable to the enemy, including:
Names and personal information for dozens of DOD interrogators;
Documents on an "interrogation support cell" and interrogation methods;
IDs and photos of U.S. troops.

With information like this, "You could cripple our U.S. intelligence collection capability in Afghanistan," says Francona.

Among the photos of Americans are pictures of individuals who appear to have been tortured and killed, most too graphic to show.

NBC News does not know who caused their injuries. The Pentagon would not comment on the photos.

When will it end?

Full NBC story here.

Rumsfeld
torture
Afghanistan
Bush

Chickens Come Home to Roost for Chickenhawks Rummy, Cheney

So Big Dick Cheney, in a bulletproof vest, gets roundly booed by the people in Washington, DC, in an incident so humiliating the Bush-administration teat-sucking New York Times declined to mention it at all in its story. Then there's that ongoing Fitzgerald kerfuffle that's raising Big Dick's blood pressure.

Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, former Director of Operations at the Pentagon's military joint staff broke his silence in this Time story, "Why Iraq Was a Mistake."

Today, there's another career military man speaking his mind about Bloody Rummy.

Oh, say can you say--"full-scale frontal assault"?

RUMSFELD REBUKED BY RETIRED GENERALS
Ex-Iraq Commander Calls for Resignation

The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called yesterday for Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the defense secretary's authoritarian style for making the military's job more difficult.

"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. "It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense," he said earlier yesterday on CNN.

Batiste's comments resonate especially within the Army: It is widely known there that he was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there but he declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Batiste said he believes that the administration's handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles, such as unity of command and unity of effort. In other interviews, Batiste has said he thinks the violation of another military principle -- ensuring there are enough forces -- helped create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by putting too much responsibility on incompetent officers and undertrained troops.

His comments follow similar recent high-profile attacks on Rumsfeld by three other retired flag officers, amid indications that many of their peers feel the same way.

"We won't get fooled again," retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who held the key post of director of operations on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 to 2002, wrote in an essay in Time magazine this week. Listing a series of mistakes such as "McNamara-like micromanagement," a reference to the Vietnam War-era secretary of defense, Newbold called for "replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach."

"Fool me once--I won't get fooled again?"
Full WaPo story here.

Rumsfeld
Cheney
Iraq War
Time

Bubble Boy Chuckles? You Bet! Traitorgate's Apparently Just as Funny as Not Finding Those Pesky WMDs

Via Rawstory:

Bush spoke today at the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, at The Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.

STUDENT: First let me say thank you very much for being here. And thank you for taking questions. I know we appreciate that. My name is Ben Deering. I'm a second-year Masters student studying international energy policy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: International -- ?

STUDENT: Energy policy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Oh, good!

STUDENT: Sorry. (Laughter.) My question, sir, is -- well, as Anthony alluded to earlier, and as you're aware, we have many students at SAIS who are currently working for or considering working for the State Department, the various intelligence agencies, and such.

And, how do you respond to the recent report by Prosecutor Fitzgerald that there is, in his words, "evidence of a concerted effort by the White House to punish Joseph Wilson," who himself has a distinguished record of government service?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. No. I -- this is -- there's an ongoing legal proceeding which precludes me from talking a lot about the case. There's also an ongoing investigation that's a serious investigation. I will say this, that after we liberated Iraq, there was questions in people's minds about, you know -- about the basis on which I made the statements, in other words, going into Iraq. And so I decided to declassify the NIE for a reason. I wanted to see people -- people to see what some of those statements were based on. That's what I wanted to see. I wanted people to see the truth. And I thought it made sense for people to see the truth, and that's why I declassified the document.

...And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing, you know, ongoing intelligence matters, and so I did. And as far as the rest of the case goes, you're just going to have let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that. It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it. (Chuckles.)

Chuckles? Chuckles? Chuckles?? Bet Bubble Boy's Daddy don't think this stuff is funny anymore.

Bubble Boy may find it less funny as time goes by.

From Jason Leopold at Truthout:

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger [which is untrue] to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media. . .

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.

Care to place bets, anyone?

But, wait, there's more!!

According to four attorneys who last week read a transcript of President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to the special counsel that he was aware of any campaign to discredit Wilson. Bush also said he did not know who, if anyone, in the White House had retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.

Lucky that Bubble Boy thought to get himself all lawyered up way back when, eh?

Bush
Libby
Plame
Fitzgerald

Nepal, Zone of Peace, Take 3

A Nepali journalist protects an injured Nepali policeman from an angry crowd during continuing pro-democracy protests.

From United We Blog! For a Democratic Nepal:

In the evening, the news of half an hour blackout and torch rally was circulated. The local guys chanted slogans for a while. A while ago, police entered our area and fired rubber bullets, but no one was injured. At Ghattekulo, Mr. Jiwan Bhattarai, a shopkeeper, was injured in the morning. Few protesters were arrested. An army man's (who denied shelter to the protestors) house was damaged.

Today evening at 8 p.m., I saw the biggest torch rally in long time. So many people were gathered at Ghattekulo chowk. Blackout was observed successfully. In the dead night, the crescent moon gave ample light to the impromptu protest program. Protesters with torches in their hands rallied towards Dillibazar. One could hardly identify another, but they all were gathered for [one] cause, i.e., restoration of democracy.

Jai Nepal!

Master Thangka Painter Glen Eddy Dies

Glen Eddy, reknowned Thangka painter, passed away on April 5, 2006 in Cordoba, Argentina.

Mr. Eddy was among the first Westerners fully trained in traditional Tibetan thangka painting using handmade mineral paints and other methods. For over thirty years, his deity drawings have been widely published. In recent years, he experimented with watercolor and mixed media producing exquisite non-traditional works of Tibetan deities from the lineage of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, including Tara, Gomadevi, and Mandarava. At the time of his death, he was working on a manual on Tibetan art, "The Treasury of Luminous Manifestations."

Poetrymind has more here.

Photo: Ellen Pearlman

Nepal, Zone of Peace, 2

FRESH PROTESTS IN NEPAL DESPITE CURFEW

KATHMANDU, April 9 (Reuters) - Thousands of angry Nepalis tried to storm a state hospital on Sunday, burned government vehicles and clashed with riot police despite a curfew aimed at stopping pro-democracy rallies.

A woman, wounded in police firing in a town south of the capital Kathmandu, died on Sunday, a doctor said.

Three people, including the woman, were wounded at Narayanghat, about 150 km (95 miles) from Kathmandu, when troops fired at protesters demanding King Gyanendra end his absolute rule.

"She died this morning," Bhojraj Adhikary, a doctor at a local hospital, told Reuters by phone.

It was the second death in shooting by government forces on protesters during a four-day anti-monarchy strike across the poor Himalayan kingdom that started on Thursday.

Tension was rising in Narayanghat, witnesses said, adding that a curfew had not stopped people from coming out on the streets.

In the western tourist resort town of Pokhara, thousands of people tried to storm a state hospital where the body of a man shot dead by troops on Saturday was taken, witnesses said.

The crowd burned some security posts in the area and clashed with riot police who tried to stop them for violating a curfew.

"Thousands of people are out on the streets. There is high tension here," said Keshav Lamichhane, a local journalist.

The late King Birendra first declared Nepal to be a "Zone of Peace." In 1991, Birendra responded to a people's revolution marked by massive peaceful protests, and established a constitutional monarchy and democracy in Nepal. In fact, Nepal became the first country democratically to elect a Marxist-Leninist government; in a subsequent election, it was the first Marxist-Leninist government democratically to be thrown out.

The current king, Gyanendra, came to the throne through a violent series of carefully orchestrated events. Last year, he seized power and overthrew democracy. With luck, Gyanendra will be overthrown and democracy re-established.


More here.

Photo:AP

Official No Blood for Hubris Mental Health Interlude

Yuh, okay, so I used to number these, but I'm too lazy to go back and count. Maybe it's interlude number six. Who cares? I need a break. How about you?


His closest advisors came to visit Dubya at the White House one evening and found him slamming down beers and whooping it up. They were astonished, since he had given up drinking years ago. When asked why he was off the wagon, Dubya replied that he was celebrating finishing a jigsaw puzzle. They smiled and told him that wasn't much of an accomplishment. "Ah, but you're wrong. I did it in record time!" When asked what that record was, he replied that he had finished it after only 6 months. Again, they told him that wasn't that great. "Oh yeah?" said the commander in chief, "Well, the box says 3-5 YEARS!"

George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush were dragging the deer they had just shot back to their truck. Another hunter approached, pulling his along, too.

"Sirs, I don't want to tell you how to do something," he said, " But I can tell you that it's much easier if you drag the deer the other way. Then the antlers won't dig into the ground."

After the third hunter left, they decided to try it. A little while later George said to George, "You know, that guy was right. This is a lot easier!"

"Yeah," says George, "but we're getting farther from the truck."

Cheney gets a call from his "boss", Dubya.

"I've got a problem," says Dubya.

"What's the matter?" asks Cheney.

"Well, you told me to keep busy in the Oval Office, so, I got a jigsaw puzzle, but it's too hard. None of the pieces fit together and I can't find any edges."

"What's it a picture of?" asks Cheney.

"A big rooster," replies Dubya.

"All right," sighs Cheney, "I'll come over and have a look."

So he leaves his office and heads over to the Oval Office. Dubya points at the jigsaw on his desk.

Cheney looks at the desk and then turns to Dubya and says, "For crying out loud, Georgie - - put the corn flakes back in the box!"

Extremists overthrow the US government, and they start rounding up important American politicians to execute. A firing squad is convened and Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are all marched to a wall to be shot. As the extremists are loading their guns, Al Gore thinks, "Hmm. I've got to cause a diversion so I can get away." He yells "Oh, no. A TORNADO!!" and points behind the firing squad. As the extremists turn around to see if there is a tornado approaching, Al Gore jumps over the wall behind him and runs away.

The firing squad turns their attention back to the two men who are left. C linton quickly observes how well Gore's ruse has worked and yells "EARTHQUAKE!!" As the firing squad frantically looks for a place to take cover, Clinton jumps over the wall and he, too, escapes.

The firing squad resumes their stance and proceeds to take aim at George W. Bush. Dubya, believing that he, too, can create a diversion, frantically searches his mind for another natural disaster to use. Smiling to himself, he yells "FIRE!!"

Nepal, Zone of Peace

From the Guardian:

HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN NEPAL PROTEST

Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested in Nepal today after students fought pitched street battles with police, hurling stones and setting the central post office on fire. Home minister, Kamal Thapa, said that 751 people had been arrested and 115 were taken to prison under a tough public safety law that allows authorities to jail people without charge for 90 days.

"The government is using minimum force to control the situation. The government has made adequate arrangements to ensure the security of the people. There is no need for people to be scared and we are doing what we can to foil the protest," he told the AP news agency.

The protests happened on the second day of a strike called by an alliance of seven political parties to protest against King Gyanendra, who seized power a year ago.

Police fought the protestors with tear gas and batons. Students at Kathmandu's Tribhuwan University ransacked the dean's office and briefly took several officers hostage. . . Days before the strike, the government banned all forms of public protest in Kathmandu.

The photo above is of current King Gyanendra, who seized absolute power in Nepal last year. Gyanendra, once known as "The Black Prince," came to the throne under unusual circumstances, due to the timely massacre of virtually the entire Nepalese Royal family save several relatives of the current king.

Jai Nepal!

photo: Gopal Chitrakar/Reuters

Child Abuse Prevention Month -- And Miss America By Day

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

In acknowledgment thereof, we might talk about the Republican Homeland Security pedophile guy, Brian Doyle, who went sex-trolling for adolescent girl children via the internet.

We might talk about all the bruised, beaten, starved and neglected unwanted children, but we've already talked a lot about them (scroll on down).

Or we might talk about Miss America of 1958.

That would be Marilyn Van Derbur, who was the victim of child abuse. The Miss America who was incested by her own pedophile father, and who, at 69, still suffers the consequences.

Americans don't like to talk about child physical abuse, much less child sexual abuse, much less incest. We prefer to be oblivious, like the South Dakotans who support a rapist's right to breed -- even an incestuous rapist's right to breed.

That's why, as part of Child Abuse Prevention Month, I think it's good to bring Miss America's story to the fore.

Her father was a rich and powerful man. His name was Francis S. Van Derbur, but his friends -- and he had many -- just called him "Van." He owned mortuaries and made himself a millionaire.

He was a socialite, a philanthropist, a renaissance man who recited poetry from memory -- and a rapist of children who violated his own daughter hundreds of times.

"Terror was my nightly blanket," Van Derbur writes in her award-winning autobiography, Miss America By Day. . .

When Van Derbur talks about child molestation, her demeanor is fierce, and her turquoise eyes burn with a natural-born warrior's zeal for battle. She rattles off shocking statistics like this: "One in six boys and one in four girls are sexually violated before the age of eighteen in this country; fourteen-year-olds comprise the greatest number of sex offenders of any age group. If those statistics don't frighten you, you are in total denial."

Or sums up the feelings of victims of child molestation like this: "We stay shamed by acting ashamed, when we have nothing to be ashamed of. Together we must say to every violator, 'The child may be mute today, but someday the child will speak her name and your name. The children will speak every single name!'"

More on Ms. Van Derbur here. More on Child Abuse Prevention Month at the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, here.

child abuse
incest
Bushist family values

Fly the Tortured Skies of [the] United --- [States of America]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORTS MORE DETAILS RE: U.S. TORTURE FLIGHTS

Amnesty International today released a new report which exposes a covert operation whereby people have been arrested or abducted, transferred and held in secret or handed over to countries where they have faced torture and other ill-treatment. The report describes how the CIA has used private aircraft operators and front companies to preserve the secrecy of "rendition" flights. . .the CIA has exploited aviation practices that would otherwise require their flights to be declared to aviation authorities. The report lists dozens of destinations around the world where planes associated with "rendition" flights have landed and taken off -- and lists private airlines with permission to land at US military bases worldwide.

Amnesty International has records of nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA, most of which have used European airspace; these are flights by planes that appear to have been permanently operated by the CIA through front companies. In a second category, there are records of some 600 other flights made by planes confirmed as having been used at least temporarily by the CIA. . .

"The US Administration has tried to circumvent the ban on torture and other ill-treatment in many ways. The latest evidence shows how the Administration is manipulating commercial arrangements in order to be able to transfer people in violation of international law. It demonstrates the length to which the US government will go to conceal these abductions," said Amnesty International Secretary General, Irene Khan.

The report uncovers part of the mystery surrounding the practice of renditions. Secrecy surrounding rendition operations means it is impossible to know how many people have been arrested or abducted, transferred across borders, held in secret detention or tortured in the 'war on terror'. Information from governments themselves indicates that numbers are likely to be in the hundreds. . .

"Most victims of rendition were arrested and detained illegally in the first place. Many were abducted, denied access to any legal process and have subsequently "disappeared". All of those interviewed by Amnesty International described being tortured or otherwise ill-treated."

"The callous and calculated multiplicity of abuses is shocking. People captured have been subjected to a range of abuses of human rights by a number of governments acting in collusion, and all of this has been shrouded by secrecy and deceit," said Ms Khan.

"The report shows not just how arrest and extradition procedures have been ignored, the ban on torture and other ill-treatment has been disregarded, but also how aviation practices have been undermined: in essence the rule of law has been put aside."

Amnesty International cautioned that states that tolerate these flights landing on their territory and companies that carry them out, may find themselves complicit in serious human rights abuses. . . The Egyptian prime minister noted in 2005 that the US has transferred some 60-70 detainees to Egypt alone, and a former CIA agent with experience in the region believes that "hundreds" of detainees may have been sent by the US to prisons in Middle Eastern countries. The USA has acknowledged the capture of about 30 "high value" detainees whose whereabouts remain unknown, and the CIA is reportedly investigating some three dozen additional cases of "erroneous rendition", in which people were detained based on flawed evidence or confusion over names.

.
Lawless George, at it again. Spreadin' democracy, spreadin' torture, it's hard work. More here.

Reichwingers Re-Victimize Kidnap Victim Carroll

American journalist Jill Carroll was released by her Iraqi captors, but not by the Reichwing American Taliban, which came out against her in full force.

From Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, to Imus in the Morning minions Bernard McGuirk and Charles McCord, to the shrieky Little Green Footballers on the Internet, and Ultimate Yellow Elephant Jonah Goldberg, you'd think Carroll was the bloodthirsty re-morphing of Osama Bin Laden.

Via Think Progress: From Imus In The Morning, 3/31/06

Don IMUS: She’d have made a bigger dent had she hit the ground because, than she ordinarily would have, because she put on 20 pounds.

MCCORD: Put on 20 pounds while in captivity, yeah.

MCGUIRK: And why, do we suspect?

IMUS: Well, why do you suspect?

MCGUIRK: She’s carrying Zarqawi’s baby. No doubt about it.

IMUS: Man, you are a such a, you’re a…

MCGUIRK: Did you hear her comments yesterday? She’s wearing the terrorist headgear, and everything points to that.

IMUS: Well, we don’t know. That initial interview — she was taken directly from captivity to that location to conduct an interview with an Arab broadcasting outlet. I think she probably was circumspect in what she was saying, don’t you think Charles?

MCCORD: Well, it is well known that her sympathies lie with the Arab community, not only in Iraq, by the way, but across the region, as pointed out by the Jordan Times in a couple of editorials who had called for her release, saying that they were "silencing a pro-Iraqi voice and harming the Arab and Iraqi cause." The Jordan Times wrote, "She is more critical of U.S. policies than many Arabs."

IMUS: Are we suggesting she’s in lock-step with the terrorists?

MCGUIRK: Something smells.

MCCORD: No, not in lock-step with the terrorists, but she certainly is in lock-step with Arab causes.

IMUS: Well, probably not her, because one of the things she said they did was let her take showers all the time, so.

MCCORD: The Times writing, "She doesn’t just like Arab culture, she loves it. Jill makes one of the best ambassadors Arabs could ever hope for." That during the time of her captivity when they were editorializing there in Amman, Jordan for her release . .

MCCORD: Apparently according to Baghdad’s New Sabba news, "She loves Iraq and went by the name while in Iraq, not of Jill, but rather Zanaib."

MCGUIRK: She’s Taliban Janie, this girl. Taliban Jill or whatever. . .

MCGUIRK: Well except for the fact that she seems overly sympathetic. There’s something wrong. Something stinks.

MCCORD: Well, that was her position.

MCGUIRK: Again she’s wearing the terrorist headgear. She’s saying nice things about them.

IMUS: It’s not terrorist headgear, you moron.

MCGUIRK: It’s just traditional Arab garb, I would say.

IMUS: Thank you, Charles.

MCGUIRK: And I’m alleging she’s carrying Zarqawi’s baby.

How vile and sexist can they get? Plenty. Making fun of her weight, then saying it's because she's now pregnant. Oh, and by Zarqawi. Carroll might not then measure up to the famed Bill Napoli South Dakota rape test: sodomized virgins only need apply.

Feh. What rock do these guys keep crawling out from under?

(Update here where Ms. Carroll surprises no one but Jonah Goldberg, the Imuses, and the reichwing hysterics, that her TV interview was conducted under the watchful eyes of three gentlemen with machine guns.)

(On a similar note, refresh your recollection here: "She Didn't Act Traumatized Enough.")

Jill Carroll
Howard Kurtz
Imus in the Morning

Anton Scalia's Id--Coming Out of the Closet

It's a Sicilian thing. Lucky no one but Fat Anton speaks-a-da Sicilian. Oh wait. No, everyone understands that kind of language.

A Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, "To my critics, I say,'Vaffanculo!'" punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means "(expletive) you." Then the judge said, "Don't publish that!"

Say, can you say--consciousness of guilt?


American Bar Association Model Code of Judicial Conduct

CANON 2

A JUDGE SHALL AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY IN ALL OF THE JUDGE’S ACTIVITIES (More at Roger Ailes).


More here.

Update: The Catholic Church's newsletter, The Pilot, fired the freelance photographer who let the picture become public. Covering up for pedophile priests, covering up for Scalia's obscenity--what would Jesus think?

Scalia
obscenity
Catholic Church

It's Spring. Must Be Time for More All-American Abu Ghraib Torture/Humiliation Pix

Personally, one feels definitely sure that Jesus Christ definitely would torture definitely naked men who are seemingly covered in their own feces. Thanks to their Christian captors. You know, the values guys. And gals.

See how very quaint are the Genevas? To wit:

humane treatment of prisoners of war

Prisoners of war must be humanely treated at all times. Any unlawful act which causes death or seriously endangers the health of a prisoner of war is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. In particular, prisoners must not be subject to physical mutilation>, biological experiments, violence, intimidation, insults, and public curiosity. (Convention III, Art. 13)

Prisoners of war must be interred on land, and only in clean and healthy areas. (Convention III, Art. 22)

Prisoners of war are entitled to the same treatment given to a country’s own forces, including total surface and cubic space of dormitories, fire protection, adequate heating and lighting, and separate dormitories for women. (Convention III, Art. 25)

Prisoners of war must receive enough food to maintain weight and to prevent nutritional deficiencies, with account of the habitual diet of the prisoners. Food must not be used for disciplinary purposes. (Convention III, Art. 26)

Prisoners of war must receive adequate clothing, underwear and footwear. The clothing must be kept in good repair and prisoners who work must receive clothing appropriate to their tasks. (Convention III, Art. 27)

Prisoners of war must receive adequate medical attention. (Convention III, Art. 30)

Prisoners of war must receive due process and fair trials. (Convention III, Art. 82 through Art. 88)

Collective punishment for individual acts, corporal punishment, imprisonment without daylight, and all forms of torture and cruelty are forbidden. (Convention III, Art. 87)

Kkeep in mind--there's more fun spring pix yet to come. The Department of Defense has pretty much given up trying to hide them, as others in the military who view the Geneva Conventions as non-quaint, have been leaking said pics and videos to the media.

When the DOD was still actively trying to prevent the world from seeing the effects of Rummy's "gloves-off-green-light-for torture" policy, their lawyers used this precious rationale:

Attorneys for the government had argued that turning over visual evidence of abuse would violate the United States' obligations under the Geneva Conventions, but the ACLU, supported by experts in international law, said that obscuring the faces and identifiable features of the detainees would address any potential privacy concerns.

Yes, just like the reichwing blowhard spinners said, it's not the actual torture and humiliating treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions, but the showing of the pictures that's the problem. Yes, and they're so concerned all of a sudden about not violating the quaint Genevas. A late enlightenment.

My favorite part has always been the Bushists' deliberate creation of an absolutely new species of humans--that would be sub-humans: "the terrists" -- who no longer deserve humane treatment, because they're just, well, insufficiently human.

(You know, sort of like Jews seemed to Hitler. Like educated people seemed to the Khmer Rouge. They just ain't yoo-man).

There is this little problem about the ritually polluted victims being sacrificed at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib turning out to be not Osama-types at all but goat-herders and truckers in fact, but well never mind. Someone's got to be the container of our psychologically-projected evil, do they not?

You betcha.

It's Spring. Must Be Time for Bubble Boy's Bloody Iraq Civil War.

Bubble Boy said it couldn't be done. Bubble Boy said he knew best, and civil war just wouldn't happen. He still says it. Big Dick said the whole thing was in its "last throes." However, sadly,it is the gentleman in the picture above who is in his last throes, along with increasing numbers of his countrymen. Shia killing Sunni, and Sunni killing Shia.
From Healing Iraq,, an Iraqi blog.

Someone shouts: "Drag the Wahhabi," while another describes him as a "bastard." They pause a moment to search for a wire, then they dump him on the side of the road. Another militiaman suggests they bury him. "What do you mean bury him?" the gang leader snaps back with indignation. "Leave him here to the dogs." Then they joke about his underwear and cover the corpse with a cardboard.

Note that life looks absolutely normal in the surroundings. You can see children running about, stores open, religious holiday flags and even a traffic jam. Perhaps Ralph Peters will happen to drive by with an American army patrol and enjoy the scene of children cheering for the troops, while wondering where his civil war is, dude.

Meanwhile, the rising young Shi’ite cleric Yassir Al-Habib, like most of his Islamic counterparts, is just learning how to soar himself to stardom and popularity: by calling for more death and mayhem. Our friend laments the fact that the government has failed to protect the Askari shrine and the cellar of the Imam Al-Mahdi, which he believes is of higher standing with Allah than Jerusalem.

His solution? "Let's send an army of the faithful to liberate Samarra and cleanse it from the rotten Nawasib" (a derogatory term used by fundamental Shia to describe Sunnis, very much like the Rafidha or 'rejectionist' stigma used by some Sunnis when they refer to Shia. Nawasib literally means 'those who set themselves against the household of the prophet.') On second thought, let's cleanse all of Iraq from those infidel scum. He goes on to say that we should destroy all their filthy mosques. We are able to if we are just given the chance. Let's just have another holy war.

Preznit Toad-Exploder, he who tortured and killed innocent sentient beings in his youth, is carrying on this youthful tradition in adulthood. Through his arrogance and through pure spite, he decided to start a big fat war--so he could be a War Preznit. So he could finally show up his Father.

But Father knew best. And now Bubble Boy's not just a War Preznit, but a Defeat Preznit. Not merely defeated in war, but defeated at home, having sunk his own country into moral and fiscal bankruptcy.

Way to go, Bubble Boy. Do you sleep at night? If so, how? Why should you?

Hat tip to DC Tom.
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It's Spring. Must Be Time to Shoot/Club Some Baby Seals. So Where's Cheney?

Canada hunters start killing seals, tempers flare

OFF CANADA'S EAST COAST (Reuters) - Canadian hunters started shooting and clubbing harp seal pups on Saturday at the start of an annual hunt that is the focus of a tech-savvy protest by animal rights groups. This year, 325,000 young seals will be killed on the ice floes off the East Coast where the animals gather.

Unusually warm weather means the floes are a fraction of their normal size and thickness, prompting hunters to kill the seals individually rather than clubbing them to death en masse as they cluster on the ice in pools of blood.

More here. Also,revisit "Cheney's Canned Hunts: Killing for Fun."

Lawless George's Little My Lai: Civilian Massacre in Haditha

"I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head," one child was quoted by Time as saying. "Then they killed my granny."

RESIDENTS SAY BODIES IN VIDEO FROM US RAID

A video provided by Hamourabi Human rights group shows covered bodies, which Hamourabi says are of a family of 15 shot dead in their home, possibly by US Marines, in Haditha, Iraq. A video of civilians who may have been killed by US Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by US soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction. (Full story here.)

A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue. The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi, said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.

Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha echoed accusations by residents in the video that US Marines attacked houses after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.

They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified.

Time magazine has published allegations that US Marines killed civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. . .

On November 20, US Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gun battle, US and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.

US military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead. . .

The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old.

One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man's face had been torn apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.

Leaders perforce establish the tenor of their times, whether it be a "peace and prosperity" outlook, like Clinton's and Carter's, or the aggressive, fake macho, feckless, reckless, gloves off, anything goes outlook of Lawless George Bush.

When torture is ok, then massacres become ok. Ok?

Your tax dollars at work.


(Current WaPo story here.)
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How Many Chappaquid-Dicks Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? Hell, Cheney Can't Even Turn the Lights ON by Himself

Once again, I'm not making this up. I don't even have to.

The list below, courtesy of the Smoking Gun, outlines the very personal needs of our very Big Dick Cheney.

The lights need to be turned ON.

The TVs need to be turned ON. To Fox News. All of them.

If poor in America have no bread and no jobs and no health care but must have government-forced maternity and no housing or hope, why then, let Mrs. Big Dick suck down some cheese-eating-surrender monkey Perrier water!
Oh, and the Little Emperor is quite willing receive "gifts." Seems to expect them, even.

Ohh?
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GOP=Greedy Old Pricks

Official No Blood for Hubris Mental Health Interlude

Yeah, ok, we're having a lot of mental health interludes. So sue me. These are dark times. Better yet, watch Will Ferrell on TransBuddha as Bush.

Will Ferrell - Bush on Global Warming on Transbuddha

This Just In: Buddhism is "Satanic"

"Satanic." Yep. Thus spake the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I can't make this stuff up. I don't even have to.



[above: A statue of the Buddha, a statue not unlike the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, prior to the other Taliban fundamentalists blowing it up for being oh, well, you know, Satanic or something. Go figure.]


Southern Baptist Theological SeminaryVets
Rev. Al Mohler
Christian grace
PTSD

New Bushist Money-Saving Tactic: Send Vets With PTSD Right Back Into Battle

Gee, why would the Defense Department send depressed, suicidal, suffering vets with post-traumatic stress disorder back into battle?

So they'll die, and then they'll save money by not having to pay any more for physical and/or mental health treatment? Can you say--heinous?

How about this? How about higher-ups instructing doctors to underdiagnose deliberately--so troops can be sent back for another tour, and then later be denied proper mental health care.

(We've seen this before: see, First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You. It's Hard Work, here. Oh and then there's "You Break 'Em, You Fix 'Em -- Unless You're a Bushist," here.)

Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. . . The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer hopes to address the controversy through the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which is expected to start work next month. The California Democrat wrote the legislation that created the panel. She wants the task force to examine deployment policies and the quality and availability of mental-health care for the military.

"We've also heard reports that doctors are being encouraged not to identify mental-health illness in our troops. I am asking for a lot of answers," Boxer said during a March 8 telephone interview. "If people are suffering from mental-health problems, they should not be sent on the battlefield."

Stress reduces a person's chances of functioning well in combat, said Frank M. Ochberg, a psychiatrist for 40 years and a founding member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

"I have not seen anything that says this is a good thing to use these drugs in high-stress situations. But if you are going to be going (into combat) anyway, you are better off on the meds," said Ochberg, a former consultant to the Secret Service and the National Security Council. "I would hope that those with major depression would not be sent."

. . [m]edical officers for the Army and Marine Corps acknowledge that medicated service members – and those suffering combat-induced psychological problems – are returning to war. And anecdotal evidence, bolstered by the government's own studies, suggest that the number could be significant.

A 2004 Army report found that up to 17 percent of combat-seasoned infantrymen experienced major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder after one combat tour to Iraq. Less than 40 percent of them had sought mental-health care.

A Pentagon survey released last month found that 35 percent of the troops returning from Iraq had received psychological counseling during their first year home.

That survey echoed statistics collected by the San Diego Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. The system has found that about 33 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from schizophrenia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The various studies apparently didn't consider the effects of multiple combat tours, though psychiatrists agree that the greater people's exposure to combat, generally the higher their risk of suffering mental illness. . .Joe Costello, a mental-health counselor at the Vista Veterans Center, said emotionally scarred troops are routinely redeployed and that most want to go back to the war zone.

"I see it every day," said Costello, who mainly treats reservists.

Buttressing the idea that large numbers of service members are medicated, more than 200,000 prescriptions for the most common types of antidepressants were written in the past 14 months for service members and their families, said Sydney Hickey, a spokeswoman for the National Military Family Association. . .

Mental-health care for service members and the Defense Department's efforts to keep the mentally ill in uniform are becoming national issues, said Steve Robinson, director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Silver Spring, Md.

Robinson said three Army doctors have told him about being pressured by their commanders not to identify mental conditions that would prevent personnel from being deployed.

"They are being told to diagnose combat-stress reaction instead of PTSD," he said. "That does two things: It keeps the troops deployable and it makes it hard for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military."

Robinson contends that the Pentagon is trying to control its spending on mental-health disabilities.

Between 1999 and 2004, disability payments to veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder rose to $4.3 billion from $1.7 billion nationwide, according to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs' inspector general.

Overall, service members' mental health is a hot-button subject because it goes to the cost of the war in dollars and lives, said Joy Ilem, an assistant national legislative director for the organization Disabled American Veterans.

"The (Department of Veterans Affairs) is very worried about the political implications of PTSD and other mental issues arising from the war," Ilem said. “They are talking about early outreach and treatment, but they are really trying to tamp down the discussion."

Cmdr. Paul S. Hammer deals with such issues daily.

Hammer, a psychiatrist, is responsible for the Marine Corps' mental-health programs during this deployment rotation. He confirmed that Marines with post-traumatic stress disorder and combat stress are returning to Iraq, though he would not say how many.

Hammer said deciding who is deployed is often anguishing.

Persons in power sending others into combat who lack combat experience: Preznit Toad-Exploder, Five Deferments Cheney. Those lacking empathy: Toad-Exploder, Cheney, Rummy. Those leading the US further and further into moral and fiscal bankruptcy: all of them. All of them.


Full story here

Photo: agony of war, Vietnam, 173 Airborne.
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Alice Miller: The Origins of Torture

Exerpts from an article by world-renowned author and psychologist Alice Miller:

Many people have claimed to be appalled by the acts of perversion committed by American soldiers on ADULT people, Iraqi prisoners. . . .
It is definitely a good thing that light has been cast on the situation and that the media have exposed this lie for what it is. Basically it runs as follows: We are a civilized, freedom-loving nation and bring democracy and independence to the whole world.

Under this motto, the Americans forced their way into Iraq with devastating results and still insist that they are exporting cultural values. But now it turns out that alongside their bombs and missiles the well-drilled, smartly dressed soldiers are carrying a huge arsenal of pent-up rage around with them, invisible on the outside, invisible for themselves, lurking deep down within, but unmistakably dangerous.

Where does this suppressed rage come from, this need to torment, humiliate, mock, and abuse helpless human beings (prisoners and children as well)? What are these outwardly tough soldiers avenging themselves for?

And where have they learnt such behavior? First as little children taught obedience by means of physical "correction," then in school, where they served as the defenseless objects of the sadism of some of their teachers, and finally in their time as recruits, treated like dirt by their superiors so that they could finally acquire the highly dubious ability to take anything meted out to them and qualify as "tough."

The thirst for vengeance does not come from nowhere. It has a clearly identifiable cause. The thirst for vengeance has its origins in infancy, when children are forced to suffer in silence and put up with the cruelty inflicted on them in the name of upbringing. They learn how to torment others from their parents, and later from their teachers and superiors.

It is nothing other than systematic instruction by example on how to destroy others. Yet many people believe that it has no evil consequences. As if a child were a container that can be emptied from time to time. But the human brain is not a container. The things we learn at an early stage stay with us in later life.

In my recent book . . . I pointed out that in 22 American states children and adolescents can be beaten, humiliated, and sometimes exposed to outright sadism without this having any legal consequences. . . The scandal in Iraq shows what becomes of these children when they reach adulthood. The perverted soldiers are the fruits of an education that actively instills violence, meanness, and perversion into young people.

The media quote psychological experts who contend that the brutality displayed by the American soldiers is a result of the stress caused by war. It is true that war unleashes latent aggression.

BUT TO BE UNLEASHED IT HAS TO BE ALREADY THERE.

It would be impossible for individuals who have not been exposed to violence very early, either at home or at school, to abuse and mock defenseless prisoners. They simply couldn't do it. We know from the history of the last World War that many conscripted soldiers were able to show a human face, even in the stress of war, if they had grown up without being exposed to violence. Many accounts of the war and the conditions in the camps tell us that even such extreme stress will not necessarily turn adults into perverted individuals.

Perversion has a long, obscure history invariably rooted in the childhood of the individual. It is hardly surprising that these histories are usually concealed from the eyes of society. People who have been taught to obey by having violence inflicted on them have very good reasons to avoid being reminded of the sufferings they went through in childhood and prevent the suppressed facts from ever emerging into the light of day. . .

It is not true that we all carry in us the "beast," as some psychological experts claim. Only people who were treated in a perverse way, but deny the fact, will seek scapegoats on whom they can unconsciously take out their rage, telling in interviews they did it only "just for fun" (exactly as their abusing "innocent" parents might have declared). Or they destroy themselves by taking substances to ease the pain.

Children, of course, are unable to bear the pain of their victimization or understand that crime is being committed to them. But as adults they can learn to sympathize with the wounded child and, by becoming conscious, they can free themselves (and the world) from the "beast" within.

Preznit Toad-Exploder, Rummy, Cheney. Lynndie England. Dogbeater Dobson. Graner. What have they all in common?




Alice Miller is the author of many books, translated into 21 languages, including For "Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence". Complete article here.
[photo: dying horse in Iraq nomorebush.premiumfinder.com]
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Father Wants To Divorce his Little Daughter

From the Sydney Morning Herald, here:

Father wants to divorce his seven-month-old daughter

SEVEN-MONTH-OLD Elizabeth Wells has never been held in her father's arms, and if he has his way she never will be.

In what could be a landmark case in the US, Matt Dubay, a computer programmer, is asking the courts to absolve him of all the responsibilities of fatherhood.

Mr Dubay's lawsuit has the backing of the National Centre for Men, activists who say that equal opportunities have swung too far in favour of women.

For Mr Dubay, 25, news that he was about to become a father was an unwelcome shock. It followed a night spent with a student, Lauren Wells, who he claims told him that she was infertile and using contraception. The apparent contradiction of those remarks did not fully hit Mr Dubay until several weeks later, when Ms Wells, 20, told him she was pregnant.

While the relationship soon foundered, his former girlfriend said she was keeping the child and, when the baby was born last August, she began legal proceedings to ensure that her former boyfriend paid his way in bringing up their daughter.

Faced with a court order for $US500 ($690) a month in child support, Mr Dubay said not paying was his constitutional right.

"I don't believe men have any say … [they are] simply ignored," he said from his home in Saginaw, Michigan. After learning that Ms Wells was pregnant, Mr Dubay said he talked to her about an abortion or having the baby adopted, but she ruled out both. "I painted a very clear picture at that point that I was not ready to be a father," he said. "I was not ready to be a part of the child's life."

His lawsuit, filed in a federal court, says that men who face fatherhood without their consent should be able to opt out of their responsibilities. While it does not seek to force women to have an abortion or give up their babies for adoption, it claims that women have the right to pursue either option if they do not want to bring up a child on their own.

The founder of the National Centre for Men, Mel Feit, said: "Men are routinely forced to give up control, forced to be financially responsible for choices only women are permitted to make, forced to relinquish reproductive choice as the price of intimacy.

"A man must choose to be a father in the same way that a woman chooses to be a mother," Mr Feit said.

Ms Wells said in a statement through her lawyer on Saturday that "my focus is on providing a nurturing home for our baby".

Saying that she was disappointed in Mr Dubay's decision, she added: "I believe that life begins at conception and blossoms. I take responsibility for my acts and will do my best as an adult and mother to protect and provide for our daughter."

Mr Dubay has met his daughter just once, when both attended a clinic for blood tests that proved he was her father. He admitted it was "difficult to look away" when the baby was in the room, but he believes it would disrupt her life if he assumed any other duties of parenthood. "I still, to this point, believe that it isn't right to be part of the child's life. An unwilling parent is not good for a child."

I agree that an unwilling parent is not good for a child, so he may as well just stay out of the little girl's life. I see no reason why he shouldn't foot his part of the bill, however, for this unintended pregnancy. He didn't have to carry the child to term, placing his own life at risk, nor, apparently, will he be doing any of the rest of the work of child-rearing. His initial participation was certainly equal.

Presumably Mr. Dubay understands in general the law of cause and effect?


unwantedness
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Official No Blood for Hubris Mental Health Interlude

Day after day. Samsara. (Not the perfume). Torture, war, poverty, stupidity, hubris, blah blah birth, death, sickness, old age, passion, aggression, ignorance. Sometimes one just needs a break.

"Last night, Jessica Simpson turned down an invitation to meet President Bush at a fundraiser. Yeah, Bush said he invited Simpson because he likes being around people who challenge him." --Conan O'Brien

"President Bush was clearing brush at his ranch when he was scratched by a tree. That's a switch, a tree harming a Republican, when does that ever happen? I guess Bush has cut down so many trees they're starting to fight back now" --Jay Leno

"President Bush's approval rating is not good. A new Gallup poll puts it at just 36% which is a new low for his presidency. He is just slightly more popular than herpes now." --Jimmy Kimmel

"I know the country has been mired in deficit spending and it's been terrible burden on the country in terms of interest payments. Good news today out of Washington. They haven't paid down the debt or come up with any program to do so. What they did is raise the limit of debt we can go to to $9 trillion. It sends a great message to the kids: Hey, are you getting an F? Don't study harder, make the grading curve go out to K. Then your F looks like a C." --Jon Stewart

'In response to a request by the 9/11 commission, the White House agreed to declassify the president's daily intelligence briefing from August 6th titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." The commission also wants to see the August 20th briefing, "No Seriously Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," and also from August 26th, "Mr. President, Please Put Down the Game Boy, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."' —Tina Fey

"Earlier today, the Pentagon launched the biggest air attack in Iraq since 2003. The White House said the attack will continue until President Bush's approval rating goes above 40%." --Jay Leno

"We're coming up to the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I'm not sure how Bush is going to mark the occasion. I think we can rule out landing on an aircraft carrier and declaring mission accomplished." --Jay Leno

"Mexican President Vincente Fox announced that they have discovered oil under the Gulf of Mexico. In a related story, President Bush accused Mexico of having weapons of mass destruction." --Jay Leno

"Rumors are that the reason Dick Cheney didn't say anything about the hunting accident for about 24 hours was because he had been drinking. And I'm thinking, well jeez, he was probably drinking when we planned the invasion of Iraq." --David Letterman

"President Bush said that Bill Clinton has become so close to his father, he is like a brother. Which is great because it gives the first President Bush the smart son he never had." --Jay Leno