By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY TIMES

“Obama’s Katrina”: that was the line from some pundits and news sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review of the Obama administration’s actions and statements as the disaster unfolded found “little resemblance” to the shambolic response to Katrina — and there has been nothing like those awful days when everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the human catastrophe in New Orleans.

Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.

The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken. (more…)

side note: This was something I was worried about when President Dubya announced that we had to bail out the banks, we had to flood our financial institutions with money or the sky was going to fall. Then Henry Paulson goes to Congress with a one page proposal for $700 million dollars, and then Bloomberg news announced they have uncovered that the Federal Reserve used their emergency powers to loan $2 trillion, yes trillion dollars, to unknown entities…on top of the $700 million they were asking for. What raises red flags in my head is that during the entire Bush years…..they used fear tactics to push their agenda through Congress….the American people…whomever they needed to convince. And here they were, once again…following the same script. We know that the neo-cons want to privatize everything….they want to “shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub”. Now…a few years later, we see that no President is going to be able to push their domestic agenda through…b/c there’s no money available, from the below NYTimes article: “there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.” Do I know for sure that the bailout was bullshit? Nope…not an economics guy myself….but how can these guys do everything wrong, or right if you’re part of the elite in this country…and then suddenly get something correct……just doesn’t add up.

By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded. (more…)

side note: Here we go again….just another lie put into motion by the criminals who ran our government the last time around! Isn’t it unbelievable that they put a lie in motion, and then justify their actions around that lie. Saddam has WMD’s…..we must go into Iraq. They leak that story to the press, and then go on national tv and say “look, even the press knows about it! Didn’t you read the NYTimes today?!?!” Al-Qaeda has ties with Iraq….we must go to Iraq. The story about the aluminum tubes that that discredited journalist wrote about for the NYTimes…..yep, another reason we had to go into Iraq. Or hey…we know that our country has had the torture debate in the past…we even helped prosecute other people based on that policy. But we want to do it now…so lets have a bunch of lawyers come up with some legal mumbo-jumbo and we’ll be able to do it to! Or the Downing Street Memos that were discovered…….or they pay off journalists to promote their agenda, remember that? And now this…..the guy that “proved” that waterboarding worked….well, he wasn’t even there! This piece of shit should be charged with a crime…..for allowing other criminals to cover up their crimes. He’s a traitor in my eyes……nothing like being angry at 9am!

BY JEFF STEIN
Foreign Policy
A study in “enhanced reporting techniques.”

Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC’s Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA’s application of the medieval confession technique.

The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou’s claim.

“It works, is the bottom line,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou’s ABC interview. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

A cascade of similar acclamations followed, muffling — to this day — the later revelation that Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times. (more…)

side note: WTF? Does anyone else feel like there’s no hope at times? How can I compete with a multi-billion dollar company? I give 50 dollars….they give 50 thousand! Who would you listen to if you were an elected official? We need to get those pieces of shit, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas off the Supreme court…..they are contributing to downfall of our country. I go back to the 2004 election….and how people said it wasn’t a big deal……

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

”The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, ”The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns. (more…)

side note: An awesome article from Vanity Fair, check out their site b/c they have quite a few links backing up some of the facts in this story. I’m a bit torn on this….on one side, I agree with Prince that if he was truly a CIA asset, then he should have the same legal protections as Valerie Plame did….granted her cover was blown based upon politics and he never mentioned this in the article. On the other side of the coin, I’m a true believer in our laws…and that we are governed by those laws and even in times of crisis, we shouldn’t abandon them. Erik Prince is/was a mercenary that broke countless US and international laws. If he does it with the consent of the sitting government……does he get a pass? I don’t believe so…..but that’s just my opinion. What frightens me the most about Blackwater is they were not just working for the US government….they can be contracted by any foreign government as well. To me, that’s a conflict of interest. In addition….he’s someone who clearly sits with the right-wing croud, and I truly believe they have let the American people down by trampling our Constitution that believes in the seperation of powers…..and a host of other illegal acts they have committed to further their agenda.

BY ADAM CIRALSKY
Vanity Fair
JANUARY 2010
Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.) (more…)

side note: This is scary……and this is how Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and a host of other war criminals got around Congressional oversight. Hire a private company to do your dirty work! You watch, this is going to come back and haunt the United States when this truly becomes public….maybe in one year, maybe in 20………and unfortunately, President Obama is continuing these war crimes. You’re supposed to be a Constitutional scholar…WTF?!?!

by JEREMY SCAHILL
The Nation

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, “We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature.” A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. “We don’t have any contracts to do that work for us. We don’t contract that kind of work out, period,” the official said. “There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services.” The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. “This is a parallel operation to the CIA,” said the source. “They are two separate beasts.” The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war–knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country. Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. “Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government,” Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has “no other operations of any kind in Pakistan.”
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity. (more…)

side note: This is why we need to continue to have conversations with everyone we can. At my last job, I was fairly outspoken about where I stood on many subjects. During the run-up to the 2008 election, I took my role of educating people who clearly didn’t pay attention seriously. One of my co-workers, who I had spoken to previously sent me one of those chain emails going around. Remember when Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem? Well…this email said that it wasn’t the Anthem, it was the Pledge of Allegiance. And this woman sent a nasty email to me showing me how little “Obama cared about this country”. Of course, I emailed her the YouTube video showing her that it was the Anthem and not the Pledge, and then emailed her 10 videos of Americans at sporting events, singing the Anthem without covering their heart. One of the owners of my past company came out of her office and told me that this wasn’t the place or the time, and that I shoudn’t bring that stuff to work. And I flatly disagreed with her….WE NEED TO BE TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE EVERY CHANCE WE GET….THEY ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION, AND IF THEY ARE, THEY’RE TURNING ON FOX NEWS FOR 5 MINUTES A DAY! She didn’t like my answer….but sometime you need to stand up for what you believe in, especially if you think you’re making a difference. With that being said, it helped that I was in the owner’s good graces, b/c someone else may have fired me…..but that’s a chance i was willing to take. BTW…that woman, who sent me that email, who was calling Obama…Osama during the summer of ‘08….ya, she voted for Barack in November!! Touchdown Superbowl!!

Media Matters releases new video showing right-wing media’s leading role in driving movement

Washington, DC – Today, Media Matters for America released a new video demonstrating how the conservative echo chamber operates in the age of President Obama. Conservative activists – aided by Fox News, a political organization disguised as a news network – use distortions, lies, and smear tactics to shape public opinion and influence national policy.

Media Matters

side note: Frank Rich has such a beautiful way with words…even when he’s writing about subjects such as Vietnam and our current situation in Afghanistan. We hope President Obama has the strength to resist the military complex…..they are a very strong force, and we’ve seen them in action before……and at times, they have led us down the wrong path.

By FRANK RICH
The New York Times

THE most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy scholar who had collaborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national security adviser, on writing a Robert McNamara-style mea culpa about his role as an architect of the Vietnam War.

Bundy left his memoir unfinished at his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book, drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and deep new research, is full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons in Disaster” caused only a modest stir when published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans.” The reviewer was, of all people, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began in Vietnam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis by the new Obama administration.

Holbrooke’s verdict on “Lessons in Disaster” was not only correct but more prescient than even he could have imagined. This book’s intimate account of White House decision-making is almost literally being replayed in Washington (with Holbrooke himself as a principal actor) as the new president sets a course for the war in Afghanistan. The time for all Americans to catch up with this extraordinary cautionary tale is now.

Analogies between Vietnam and Afghanistan are the rage these days. Some are wrong, inexact or speculative. We don’t know whether Afghanistan would be a quagmire, let alone that it could remotely bulk up to the war in Vietnam, which, at its peak, involved 535,000 American troops. But what happened after L.B.J. Americanized the war in 1965 is Vietnam’s apocalyptic climax. What’s most relevant to our moment is the war’s and Goldstein’s first chapter, set in 1961. That’s where we see the hawkish young President Kennedy wrestling with Vietnam during his first months in office. (more…)

side note: As I keep trying to hammer home…..the reason why Americans support torture is they don’t know their history. We need to redo out educational system in this county so people can learn from the mistakes made by past generations….so we just don’t repeat the same bullshit over and over. We get dumber and dumber as a nation as the years go by…..just look at what people think about those “elite intellectuals”…we used to want those guys leading this country….now we want the “regular, grits eating Texan to run this country”, with the motto of “lets kick ass!”……
(sorry to all the NT readers who eat grits!)
For anyone that hasn’t seen the Frontline program, “The Dark Side”….you should check it out, really helps explain how Cheney was able to push his agenda over the 8 years with minimal push back.

By Derrick Z. Jackson
Boston Globe

The more Dick Cheney defends torture, the more we Americans must end our tortured ambivalence. Either we are above using the same interrogation practices that police states use, or we are are not.

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8/31/09 Cheney says CIA inquiry is politically motivated
This past weekend, the former vice president said he knew about waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA personnel on terror suspects and even defended officers who went beyond authorized methods. He said they were “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.’’

Going further, he said it “offends the hell out of me’’ that the Obama administration has decided to investigate prisoner abuse by the CIA. He called it an “outrageous political act’’ that will demoralize the intelligence community to the point where “nobody’s going to sign up for those kinds of missions.’’

It would be easy at this juncture to demonize Cheney, who was so wrong so often in his eight years in office, most notably about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That war has cost the lives of more than 4,300 American soldiers, with another 31,400 wounded, and about 100,000 documented deaths of Iraqi civilians, according to Iraqbodycount.org.

But Cheney’s role is an old, if still developing story. After all, he warned us five days after Sept. 11 that our government would work on the “dark side.’’ He told the late Tim Russert, “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.’’ A majority of Americans thought Cheney was right. Despite the false pretenses for war and Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses that were exposed in the spring of 2004, Bush and Cheney were reelected. (more…)

side note: WTF?!?! The sad thing about this, is I actually believe it. dubya was a religious crackpot….this falls right in line with his briefings he received from Rumsfeld (we posted about these, and the story is referenced in this article). Or, when a journalist asked him if he consulted his father (Bush 41) about the Iraq War, and dubya responded that he consulted God, instead of the most recent President to go to war with that country…..or all his God babbling during his speeches…….This is why President Obama has to step up and release this kind of stuff to the public, I know religion runs high and strong in this country…….but we need to make sure we don’t start religious wars. If history has taught us anything…those religious conflicts usually don’t end well, and they usually last a really long time. dubya is the kind of nut who thinks the end of the world is upon us…..never a good idea to put “that guy” in charge of the most powerful military in the world.

JAMES A. HAUGHT
secularhumanism.org

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void. (more…)

side note: This is why we at NT, plus countless other reliable news sites we’re hammering against the bailout. Not because we didn’t think the country had financial problems, but b/c we knew how tied at the hip big corporations and the bush administration were, and knew for sure that they would find some way to fuck things up and not fix the economic situation. Low and behold……the rich got richer, and the rest of us got screwed. (a huge reason why I shake my head at low and middle class Americans who keep supporting the “lets screw over low and middle class Americans” Republican Party…….the Dems, at times, aren’t too far behind though.) This is why President Obama needs to find out how and why this happened….and frankly….it didn’t happen on accident, and then make an example of the folks who allowed it.

By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH
The New York Times

Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.

Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.

The report is certain to intensify the growing debate over how, and how much, Wall Street bankers should be paid.

In January, President Obama called financial institutions “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was faltering and the government was spending billions to bail out financial institutions.

On Friday, the House of Representatives may vote on a bill that would order bank regulators to restrict “inappropriate or imprudently risky” pay packages at larger banks.

Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support. (more…)

side note: Not the hugest fan of this author, but he poses some important questions as to what the CIA was doing for the bushies during their horrible reign. It will be interesting to find out exactly what was going on though…..especially if it was illegal, not only in our country, but against international law.

The Atlantic
by Marc Ambinder

Because the executive branch retains a stranglehold on regulations about the disclosure of classified information, there are very few ways for member of Congress who learn about objectionable, classified programs to reveal their discomfort. They can write a classified letter. They can risk prosecution by revealing the information publicly. Or they can do what a gaggle of House Democrats did yesterday: band together, suggest that the CIA misled them about a specific program, and wait for journalists to uncover the details.

In some ways, this last route is a reasonable accommodation of competing interests. If Congress believes the CIA’s program is or was illegal and unethical, the single way to ensure that the program — or the values that informed the program — never surfaces again is to utilize public pressure, or the threat of public pressure. Transparency often conflicts with efficiency.

It’s inevitable, now, that we’ll soon be provided with a fairly full accounting of the covert program that director Leon Panetta discovered, stopped, and brought to Congress’s attention. All the major intellireporters are on the trail. There are plenty of former IC folks who are willing to hint about the details, provided they’re asked the right questions. (more…)

side note: This goes right in line of what’s already been released to the public….remember The Downing Street Memos? We just have to make sure that we take the necessary steps to assure this doesn’t happen again. This is why I’ve been deeply disappointed in the President’s statements of: “We need to look forward, not backward”. This is just another way of protecting criminals.

by: Jamie Doward, Gaby Hinsliff and Mark Townsend
The Observer UK

Former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A confidential record of a meeting between Bush and Blair showed plans to provoke Iraq into a war. (Photo: Getty Images)

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK’s role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan “to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover”. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be “brought out” to give a public presentation on Saddam’s WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was “solidly with the president”. (more…)

side note: One of my biggest disappointments with the Obama Administration. There have been quite a few instances now where he has marched in lockstep with Dubya and his illegal policies.

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Arguments for suppressing torture photos are grounded in the worst aspects of the Bush/Cheney mindset.

(updated below – Update II)

Yesterday, there was a potentially temporary though still quite significant victory for those who believe in open government and transparency: as Jane Hamsher first reported, House leaders and the White House were forced to remove the Graham-Lieberman photo suppression amendment from the war supplemental spending bill, because widespread opposition to that amendment among progressive House Democrats was jeopardizing passage of the spending bill. Readers here and those of various blogs who bombarded House members with opposition calls on Friday obviously played an important role in forcing the withdrawal of this pernicious amendment. Successes of this sort are rare enough that — even if fleeting — they warrant some celebration.

Whether there is value in disclosing these specific torture photographs is a secondary issue here, at most [though in light of the ongoing debate in this country over torture and accountability, as well as the irreplaceable value of photographic evidence in documenting government abuses (see Abu Ghraib), the value of these sorts of photographs seems self-evident]. A much more critical issue here is whether the President should have the power to conceal evidence about the Government’s actions on the ground that what the Government did was so bad, so wrong, so inflammatory, so lawless, that to allow disclosure and transparency would reflect poorly on our country, thereby increase anti-American sentiment, and thus jeopardize The Troops. Once you accept that rationale — the more extreme the Government’s abuses are, the more compelling is the need for suppression — then open government, one of the central planks of the Obama campaign and the linchpin of a healthy democracy, becomes an illusion. (more…)

side note: The more and more we learn….the more we realize that for the 8 years the Bush Administration was in power…..the VP was actually running the daily operations. This is why Cheney is coming out and going on the offensive….they were his policies, not dubya’s. This is why we need a real investigation…..

by: Paul Kane and Joby Warrick
The Washington Post

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney personally oversaw at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about the controversial interrogation program, part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees.

The Cheney-led briefings came at some of the most critical moments for the program, as congressional oversight committees were threatening to investigate or even terminate the techniques, according to lawmakers, congressional officials, and current and former intelligence officials.

Cheney’s role in helping handle intelligence issues in the Bush administration — particularly his advocacy for the use of aggressive methods and warrantless wiretapping against alleged terrorists — has been well documented. But his hands-on role in defending the interrogation program to lawmakers has not been previously publicized.

The CIA made no mention of his role in documents delivered to Capitol Hill last month that listed every lawmaker who had been briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” since 2002. For meetings that were overseen by Cheney, the agency told the intelligence committees that information about who oversaw those briefings was “not available.”

The revelations do not shed light on whether top Democrats, as Republicans contend, were aware that waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, was being used on terrorism suspects as early as the fall of 2002. That discussion has dominated Capitol Hill since last month, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was not present at any of the briefings that included Cheney, accused the agency of intentionally misleading her in a 2002 briefing about the use of waterboarding.

An official who witnessed one of Cheney’s briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president’s presence appeared calculated to give additional heft to the CIA’s case for maintaining the program. Cheney left it to the professional briefers to outline the interrogation practices, while he mounted an impassioned defense of the program. (more…)