Cheney on Iraq: all Saddam's fault... and Clinton's...

LEHRER: The President has also said that mistakes -- he made some mistakes in the last eight years. Did you make any?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, make mistakes -- I can think of places where I underestimated things. For example, when you talk about Iraq, the extent of which the Iraqi population had been beaten down by Saddam Hussein was greater than I anticipated. That is, we thought that the Iraqis would be able to bounce back fairly quickly, once Saddam was gone and their new government established, and step up to take major responsibilities for governing Iraq, building a military and so forth. And that took longer than I expected. (Riiight... it couldn't have been your infantile assumption that destroying a country and removing a government in a country with centuries-long animosities is a good way to start a country on the path to democracy... Oh yeah, "bounce back" -- like in the cartoons where Wile E. Coyote blows up and then wiggles his head a few times and his face regenerates itself? Well reality ain't Road Runner, @ss#hole...Ed.).

Q When you look back on that, why? How did that miscalculation come about?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we didn't have that good of intelligence (bad brainzzz... Ed.) I don't think, with respect to sort of a state of affairs inside Iraq. A lot of that had been wiped out over the years. Saddam Hussein was so brutal, killed so many people, slaughtered so many innocents, that it had a lasting effect on Iraqi society that was greater than I expected. . .

Q But Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so.

Q Why?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because I'm a soulless, blood sucking, creature of the night. Well what he actually said is here.

Still, there has to be a way to pin all this on Slick Willie...

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I think the argument that this is a failed presidency is just dead wrong. I think we'll hear that from some of our critics, but when I look back at what we've been able to do, we dealt with big issues, we didn't deal with school uniforms. We dealt with the fact that we brought down two of the worst regimes in the 20th century, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

We were forced -- when we arrived, shortly after we arrived -- to have to deal with the global war on terror, which had not been managed properly before that. We ended up inheriting this situation, which has been very challenging, but we've been very successful at it. And when you look at what we've been able to do, both in terms of our activities overseas, as well as our operations that allowed us to block any further attack against the United States here at home, I think those are great successes. And I think there aren't very many administrations that can point to successes on that scale.

Prop 8 - the historical antecedent

In November 1964, an overwhelming 65 percent majority of the state's voters approved Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment that overturned a fair-housing law and allowed racial discrimination in property sales and rentals.

I know, I know... I'll get over it

(Crain's) — Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to shake down Children’s Memorial Hospital’s CEO in exchange for $8 million in state health care funding, according to a federal affidavit unsealed Tuesday detailing corruption charges against the governor.

Mr. Blagojevich on Oct. 8 discussed with one of his campaign fundraisers pressing the executive — named in the criminal complaint as “Hospital Executive 1” — for a $50,000 campaign contribution, allegedly a quid pro quo for the governor’s recent funding commitment, according to the affidavit.

“I’m going to do $8 million for them. I want to get (Hospital Executive 1) for 50,” Mr. Blagojevich told the fundraiser, according to the 78-page affidavit.

Republicans losing it

You can't blame them for being angry. Things have been going so well the last eight years, it would be a shame to just piss all of it away.

Panic attacks: Voters unload at GOP rallies

and the video...just what is in the water in Ohio? Look at her, she's got the chicken eyes:



then there's this:

This is what the hate from Right wing talk radio, bloggers and FOX News creates
~

This is one of those moments when having a war criminal in the White House makes everything so awkward

Civilians were only targets left as Russia kept bombing
~

added to k-mad's America-hating book list

The Outlaw Presidency

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 14, 2008; 12:47 PM

Another major book chronicling the descent into lawlessness of the Bush presidency is out this week. This one is by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, and it's called "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals." . . .

"The biggest torture-fueled wild-goose chase, of course, is the war in Iraq. Exhibit A, revisited in 'The Dark Side,' is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an accused Qaeda commander whose torture was outsourced by the C.I.A. to Egypt. His fabricated tales of Saddam's biological and chemical W.M.D. -- and of nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda -- were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation on Iraqi weaponry. Two F.B.I. officials told Ms. Mayer that Mr. al-Libi later explained his lies by saying: 'They were killing me. I had to tell them something.'"

And, if Bush is playing rope-a-dope with the press, it seems the America-haters may finally have punched themselves out...

. . . a polemic with the provocative title 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,' has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers....

"Mr. Bugliosi, in a recent telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles, said he had expected some resistance from the mainstream media because of the subject matter - the book lays a legal case for holding President Bush 'criminally responsible' for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq - but not a virtual blackout...

"The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, said he had not read the manuscript, but he offered a reason why the media might be silent: 'I think there's a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there.'"

War Isn't News

"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts."
-- Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News

Why does Lara hate free markets? The media give the people what they want, and war is really depressing. (And the people are pretty stupid.)

I suppose they have a point... I still totally hate that phokker Emmanuel Goldstein though

Fighting with Fox Noise is "'fighting with a pig. Everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it.' But in the Times today, media critic David Carr takes Fox to task for its 'scorched earth' reaction to criticism. In particular, Carr writes that the anti-Semitic overtones to the distortion of Steinberg's photo recall 'a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda' as 'his ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened.'"

Winning Hearts and Minds! (WHAM!) (cont'd!), or, it's just that perception thingy again

Exams Back Up Reports of Detainee Abuse, Group Says

The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.

The assessments of 11 men formerly held in U.S. detention camps overseas revealed scars and other injuries consistent with their accounts of beatings, electric shocks, shackling and, in at least one case, sodomy, according to the report by Physicians for Human Rights. Most also had symptoms of long-term psychological damage, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the group said.

The evaluations backed up the men's stories of physical and sexual assault and documented psychological damage that had left many of them severely impaired, the report said. For example, exams and X-rays of one of the former detainees showed scars and joint injuries that supported his description of being suspended for hours by his arms at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

All 11 men were eventually released from custody without being charged with crimes.

In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a "systematic regime of torture" inside U.S.-run detention camps.

CIA Played Larger Role In Advising Pentagon

Torture "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong." (Ha! Good one! He's here all week! -- Ed.)

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The doctors and experts determined that the men had been subject to cruelties that ranged from isolation, sleep deprivation and hooding to electric shocks, beating and, in one case, being forced to drink urine.

Bush has said repeatedly that the United States doesn't condone torture.

the ultimate sacrifice

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

k-mad is on this (still) so you don't have to be

Pentagon's Propaganda Documents Go Online, but Will the TV Networks Ever Report this Scandal?
by John Stauber

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences...

Deja Vu: NYT, US Propaganda and War with Iran
by John Stauber

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher notes that New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon, "who contributed several false stories about Iraqi WMD in the run-up to the U.S. attack in Iraq," has been writing about Iran's alleged involvement in attacks against U.S. service members in Iraq. Gordon's latest article, "Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say," is "based solely on unnamed sources," notes Mitchell.

An article from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau also contradicts Gordon's New York Times piece. McClatchy reports that the Iraqi government "seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran." Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said the government had formed a committee to find "tangible information" about Iranian activities in Iraq, instead of relying on "information based on speculation." Al-Dabbagh also told Agence France-Press that there is no "hard evidence" of Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq.

What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side: Propaganda Meets Corporate Lobbying
by Diane Farsetta

The Pentagon launched its covert media analyst program in 2002, to sell the Iraq war. Later, it was used to sell an image of progress in Afghanistan, whitewash the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and defend the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping, as David Barstow reported in his New York Times expose.

But the pundits weren't just selling government talking points. As Robert Bevelacqua, William Cowan and Carlton Sherwood enjoyed high-level Pentagon access through the analyst program, their WVC3 Group sought "contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq," reported Barstow. Cowan admitted to "push[ing] hard" on a WVC3 contract, during a Pentagon-funded trip to Iraq.

your Scum-Slimes for Tuesday

Blow-up doll in Sox clubhouse: page 1 (two-thirds of page), page 5 (full page), page 61 (two columns)

10,000+ dead in Burma: page 20 (one paragraph) (figure is off by more than half)

when did 'torture' become 'harsh interrogation techniques' and when... well, you know...

Cheney, others OK'd harsh interrogations

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

oh! to be a merry plutocrat (cont'd)

Most Republicans Think the U.S. Health Care System is the Best in the World. Democrats Disagree

Source: Harvard School of Public Health

A recent survey by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harris Interactive, as part of their ongoing series, Debating Health: Election 2008, finds that Americans are generally split on the issue of whether the United States has the best health care system in the world (45% believe the U.S. has the best system; 39% believe other countries have better systems; 15% don’t know or refused to answer) and that there is a significant divide along party lines. Nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) believe the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, compared to just three in ten (32%) Democrats and four in ten (40%) Independents who feel the same way.