America to Obama: Investigate Bush

We're not quite ready to move forward yet when it comes to war crimes.

Even as Americans struggle with two wars and an economy in tatters, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds majorities in favor of investigating some of the thorniest unfinished business from the Bush administration: Whether its tactics in the "war on terror" broke the law.

Close to two-thirds of those surveyed said there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants. Almost four in 10 favor criminal investigations and about a quarter want investigations without criminal charges. One-third said they want nothing to be done.

Torture, Plain and Simple

What else would you call slicing one's genitals with a scalpel?

WARNING: Please remove all coffee or other liquids from mouth before proceeding

Pelosi wants the Bush administration investigated.

Pelosi said she wants an investigation into whether the Bush administration broke the law when it fired a group of federal prosecutors.

"I think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the Justice Department, go unreviewed," she said. "Past is prologue."

House Democrats last week recommended a criminal investigation to determine whether administration officials broke the law in the name of national security. Along with the fired prosecutors, the report cited interrogation of foreign detainees, warrantless wiretaps, retribution against critics and manipulation of intelligence.

Really, Bob? Fitzgerald?

This has been getting a lot of attention lately. I like the question, but I worry about who they want to conduct it. Bob Fertik:

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"
-Bob Fertik, New York City

This was posted at Change.gov, and has been praised to the hilt by blogs, and featured by Countdown and This Week's George Stayontopofthis.

Special prosecutor, yes. But Patrick Fitzgerald? Really?

I'm totally puzzled by this infatuation people have with Patrick Fitzgerald. Does ANYONE remember this?

Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing Wednesday.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war.

Fitzgerald said Cheney’s “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity and what he subsequently told reporters.

That worked out great, didn't it? Libby took the fall and everyone above him, especially Cheney, walked. The federal crime of outing a CIA agent, and the goon responsible is still vice president.

Now Fitz is going after Blagojevich. Let's all see what comes of that.

This guy always talks a good game, and has had some success on the local level. But let's face it - he choked on the national stage in the Super Bowl of investigations. So I hope you'll understand why I have very little faith in his ability to execute another investigation of this magnitude.

Stop with this Fitzgerald love. Find someone who knows how to freakin' prosecute.

Cheney Indicted

Let's see how much respect for the law Clyde Crashcart has now.

A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Attorney General Al Gonzales.

The state charges are related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers.

The indictment, which had not yet been signed by the presiding judge, was one of seven released today in a county that's been a source of bizarre legal and political battles.

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra himself had been under indictment for more than a year and half before a judge dismissed the indictments last month.

Guerra's tenure ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.

GOP Cheney's indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group. The group holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers.

It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest.

Blink 142

And that's just in the first minute.

ACLU Wins Release of War Prisoner Photos

Sullivan:

The Second Circuit has just issued a unanimous decision ordering the Bush administration to release photographs of terror war prisoners, following the ACLU's FOIA request. Slowly but surely, the war crimes of the Bush administration are being brought into the light of day. Justice will come.

We can hope. Here's the entire decision. It's pretty clear. They cite the Geneva Conventions in the legality of their release, and Bush has failed to provide any evidence of anyone who will be "endangered" by the release in the court's opinion.

Let the unraveling begin. Please.

DRILL!

BREAKIN' BIG TIME: More sex scandals (No kiddin'?) from the Republicans in power.

Interior Dept. scandal: Sex, drugs, energy deals probed at Denver office

Federal investigators say government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies and received improper gifts.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf, ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released today by the Interior Department's Inspector General.

The Inspector General also claims the former head of the Denver Minerals Management Service, or MMS, office — which markets oil to energy companies — was having sex and using illegal drugs with subordinates.

Last month, The Denver Post reported on the pending release of the Inspector General's report, saying it was expected to help explain breakdowns in accountability in government energy deals and other questionable activities discovered by the office's investigators and whistle-blowers in recent years.

During the past year, in September and again in May, inspector general reports have portrayed MMS as a nest of conflict, lapsed controls and potential criminal conduct. Last year, the division collected $11 billion from fees charged to oil, gas and mining companies for extracting offshore minerals in addition to production on federal and Indian lands.

Bush Didn't Consult with Generals on the Ground Before Surge

Like America's going to react to this flagrant ignorance. They'd rather have a beer with Sarah.

Suskind Book: White House Ordered Forged Memos

Impeachable enough for you yet, Nancy? Big topic around these internets today, but the Anonymous Liberal digs deeper into the story.

According to Con Coughlin, the reporter who obtained the document:

The second item [in the letter] explains how Iraqi intelligence, helped by "a small team from the al-Qaeda organisation", arranged for an (unspecified) shipment from Niger to reach Baghdad by way of Libya and Syria.

Iraqi officials believe this is a reference to the controversial shipments of uranium ore that Iraq acquired from Niger to aid Saddam in his efforts to develop an atom bomb.

Now, as everyone knows, Bush famously trumpeted the uranium from Niger claim in his State of the Union speech just prior to the invasion of Iraq, and the White House later came under fire when Joe Wilson went public and disputed that claim in July 2003.

So this letter, which appears to support two highly dubious pre-war claims by the Bush administration--the link between Saddam and al Qaeda and the Niger uranium claim--is "discovered" in December of 2003. I'm not sure what proof, if any, Suskind has that the White House was responsible for this letter, but if that claim is true, it's a HUGE deal.

...If we decide to keep it the big deal it should be. NANCY.

Good

Federal judge: Being Bush's subordinate does not mean immunity. Your move, Karl.

Monica Goodling Saved Us From the Spouse of a DEMOCRAT!!!

It's been that ugly. Americans against Americans - the worst kind of treasonous behavior was pervasive in the Bush Justice Department.

In one disgraceful example, Goodling refused to hire “one of the leading terrorism prosecutors in the country” because his wife was a Democrat:

He was an experienced terrorism prosecutor and had successfully prosecuted a high-profile terrorism case for which he received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service. … The candidate’s wife was a prominent local Democrat elected official and vice-chairman of a local Democratic Party. […]

[Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) Michael] Battle, [EOUSA Deputy Director and Cheif of Staff] Kelly, and EOUSA Deputy Director Nowacki all told us that Goodling refused to allow the candidate to be detailed to EOUSA solely on the basis of his wife’s political party affiliation. Battle said he was very upset that Goodling opposed the detail because of political reasons.

Goodling’s “damaging” refusal, the report notes, forced the EOUSA to “select a much more junior attorney who lacked any experience in counterterrorism issues” and was grossly unqualified for the position...

Read how today's report proves how the Justice Department was transformed into a tool for the Republican Party here. Breathtakingly insane.

Diva Dick

When you have no clue what it's like to be a veteran - no less a disabled one - and you're a power-mad jackass with a bloated ego, you crank up the prima donna act at the expense of the servants who fought your war. Hell's waiting for this bastard.

Vice President Cheney's invitation to address wounded combat veterans next month has been yanked because the group felt his security demands were Draconian and unreasonable.

The veep had planned to speak to the Disabled American Veterans at 8:30 a.m. at its August convention in Las Vegas.

His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney's arrival and couldn't leave until he'd finished talking, officials confirmed.

"Word got back to us ... that this would be a prerequisite," said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn't have any rest rooms. "We told them it just wasn't acceptable."

Many of the vets are elderly and left pieces of themselves on foreign battlefields since World War II, and others were crippled by recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. For health reasons, many can't be stuck in a room for hours.

"It was a huge imposition on our delegates," added David Autry, another Disabled American Veterans official.

Autry said vets would've had to get up "at Oh-dark-30 and try to get breakfast and showered and get their prosthetics on."

Once inside, they "could not leave the meeting room, and the bathrooms are outside," he said.

21%, Baby. 21 Freakin' Percent...

The legacy keeps growing.

George W. Bush's overall job approval has dropped to 21% as 76% of American say the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 21% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 72% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 17% approve and 77% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 22% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 71% disapprove. When it comes to the way Bush is handling the economy, 18% of registered voters approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 77% disapprove.

A total of 76% say the national economy is getting worse, 61% say their household financial situations are getting worse, and 68% say the national economy is in a recession. Of those disapproving of the way Bush is handling his job, 84% say the national economy is getting worse, 73% say their household financial situations are getting worse, and 79% say the national economy is in a recession.

D'OH

The White House pulls an email blunder by sending the Maliki approval of Obama's withdrawal plan to the press instead of its internal meat grinder.

Can it get any better? Wait around 17 minutes and 11 seconds. That's about when the McCain Colombia hostage release fairy tale will officially disappear from memory. 17 minutes and 8 seconds. 17 minutes and 6 seconds...

President Nero's Fiddling as Fast As He Can

The news:

President Bush urged lawmakers on Tuesday to move quickly to help prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while declaring the nation's financial system to be "basically sound."

Really. This is your idea of "sound"?

Stocks fell  again on Tuesday — and shares of Freddie Mac plunged 30 percent — as Wall Street sent an increasingly loud signal that the government’s triage efforts for the ailing financial system were insufficient.

The Dow Jones industrials lost 200 points before recovering slightly mid-morning; the blue-chip barometer was down 82 points shortly before 11:30 a.m. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index lost 1.03 percent, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.5 percent.

The major markets recovered after oil prices fell sharply amid concerns about the economy.

Prices dropped nearly $10 a barrel, and are now down more than $6 from Monday’s closing. Crude oil was trading at $139.03, down $6.15. Earlier, it was as high as $146.73.

On Wall Street, banks led the downward march, as investors fretted about further troubles at regional banks and forthcoming earnings reports from the Wall Street behemoths. Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost more than 25 percent, just days after the Treasury Department laid out an ambitious plan to prop up the mortgage finance giants.

The dollar fell to a new record low against the Euro as investors worried that the American government has taken on an enormous share of the nation’s financial risks.

President Bush, in a news conference on the economy, dismissed questions about the day’s reports and said that the economy was resilient. “Growth is slower than we would have liked, but it’s growth nonetheless,” he said.

You can only grab your head and hope it doesn't explode. The entire system is collapsing under Bush and six years of the approving GOP congress. This is the result of their tax cuts, their wars and their complete failure of knowing (and caring about) how it all works.

The Dow has fallen into the 10k zone. "Growth, nonetheless." Uh-huh.

Bush to Lift Offshore Drilling Ban

Trashing the joint before checking out.

Frank Rich on "The Dark Side"

This piece (using Jane Mayer's new book as a stepping-off point) is really tough to condense. I suggest you just read the whole thing. I'll offer up the payoff.

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, the national security expert Daniel Benjamin sounded an alarm about the “chronic” indecisiveness and poor execution of Bush national security policy as well as the continuing inadequacies of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Benjamin must feel a sinking sense of déjà vu. Exactly seven years ago in the same newspaper, just two months before 9/11, he co-wrote an article headlined “Defusing a Time Bomb” imploring the Bush administration in vain to pay attention to Afghanistan because that country’s terrorists “continue to pose the most dangerous threat to American lives.”

And so we’re back where we started in the summer of 2001, with even shark attacks and Chandra Levy’s murder (courtesy of a new Washington Post investigation) returning to the news. We are once again distracted and unprepared while the Taliban and bin Laden’s minions multiply in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat.

That’s why the Bush White House’s corruption in the end surpasses Nixon’s. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.

Bush Ends His Presidency In Failure to Finish His Work

Lazy punk-ass.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

He is simply continuing a Bush tradition. Start something dumb and let someone else mop up his mess.

We Always Held the Pasty Little Bastard In Contempt

Hopefully, so will congress.

Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of a House subcommittee, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate — perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress.

Thank You, Mr. Cheney. Thank You, Mr. Bush. Thank You, Mr. Rumsfeld. Thank You, Mr. Kristol.

Thank you, Mr. Wolfowitz. Thank you, Ms. Rice. Thank you, Mr. Feith. Thank you, Mr. Hadley. Thank you, Mr. Perle. Thank you, Mr. Libby. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, Mr. Tenet. Thank you, every last one of you.

Thanks to your incompetence, your bravado, your hubris, your inability to finish the jobs you started, your gross negligence, your infighting, your need to go to war in Iraq, your egos and your smugness, the very government you're presiding over tells us Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda is back to pre-9/11 strength and is capable of another large-scale attack.

For making us no more safer than we were in the first year of your regime, I think we speak for America when we say thank you all so very, very much.

Hopefully, America will overwhelmingly vote out this insanity in November - unless the stupids somehow are STILL convinced that America needs Republicans to protect them from this big scary thing they couldn't stop.

The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Publicly, senior American and Pakistani officials have said that the creation of a Qaeda haven in the tribal areas was in many ways inevitable — that the lawless badlands where ethnic Pashtun tribes have resisted government control for centuries were a natural place for a dispirited terrorism network to find refuge. The American and Pakistani officials also blame a disastrous cease-fire brokered between the Pakistani government and militants in 2006.

But more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan tell another story. American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.

...while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured “dead or alive,” the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil.

“The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.

“The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

Bush Picks a New Fight: The U.S. Army

The Bush White House has totally lost its bearings. Or they have a lot to hide with Blackwater. Either way, the evidence is really mounting up.

The Office of Management and Budget, President Bush's administrative arm, has shot down a service plan to add five active-duty generals who would oversee purchasing and monitor contractor performance.

The boost in brass was a key recommendation from a blue-ribbon panel that last fall criticized the Army for contracting failures that undermined the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, wasted U.S. tax dollars, and sparked dozens of procurement fraud investigations.

Wexler: Impeach!

Rep. Robert Wexler just told the Judiciary Committee that the testimony of Scott McClellan warrants opening up an impeachment investigation.

"These facts and your testimony, Mr. McClellan, are more than enough in my view to open up impeachment hearings."

We're all waiting out here.

Meanwhile, the Repubs on the committee are still hammering on the idea that McClellan was capitulating to the publisher's wishes (which McClellan's denying under oath), and making an issue of his book tour. Most ridiculous was Rep. Lamar Smith who pulled the ol' Judas card out of his ass.

(Blink Blink) Yep...We're Really Seeing It

Live on C-SPAN3

Harris Poll: Worst. Numbers. Ever.

Why does America hate America? Sadly, it looks like hatred for Washington crosses all lines. You can't take what America wants off the table. You just can't.

The latest Harris Poll finds the nation in a foul political mood. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all register their worst ratings ever. More people than ever also think the country is on the wrong track.

But this does not seem to help the Democrats. The Democratically-controlled Congress gets even worse ratings than the President and Vice-President, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ratings have also fallen to their lowest point.

• President Bush’s latest ratings are 24 percent positive and fully 75 percent negative. Previously, his worst numbers were 26 percent positive and 72 percent negative in April of this year. His ratings are substantially worse than those of any president, except for Jimmy Carter (22%-77% in July 1980), since Harris first started measuring themin 1963.
• Vice President Cheney’s ratings are even worse, 18 percent positive and 74 percent negative, compared to his previous low of 21 percent positive, 74 percent negative last July.
• Secretary of State Rice’s ratings are much better than those of the President and Vice President, but also have fallen to their lowest point ever, 39 percent positive and 54 percent negative, compared to 42 percent positive and 51 percent negative last October.
• Only 14 percent of the public think the things in the country are going in the right direction and fully 80 percent think they are on the wrong track. These compare to the previous worst numbers in President George W. Bush’s term, 75 percent thought things were on the wrong track in April. The highest number of people who said the country was on the wrong track was 81 percent in June of 1992 during the term of the first President Bush.