Pufferfish

Rovian Ramblings

Then:

The federal government’s responsibilities were met under Katrina which were to provide the immediate assistance, to pluck people off of the roofs.

And now:

Could this be Mr. Obama's Katrina? It could be even worse.

For Rove, Katrina is a pejorative only when being applied to another president. Here's another offering. Then:

In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, President George H.W. Bush never visited Prince William Sound.

And now:

It took Mr. Obama 12 days to show up in the region. ... Now the administration is intent on making it appear he has engaged all along. But this stance is undermined by lack of action.

Not all disasters are created equal. But then neither are the critics.

How Soon We Forget

Ben Smith notes that 44 percent now say they would prefer to have Bush as president. I know few things are more fickle than the mind of the American voter, but Jeebus. Clearly a reminder is needed:

Chappelle's Show
Black Bush
www.comedycentral.com
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs Black Comedy True Hollywood Story

Some Things Can't Be Spoofed

George W. Bush, thinking out loud, reflects on his decision to approve the $700 billion bailout, the largest federal intervention into the economy in this country's history:

“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

The Cheney Doctrine

One of Digby's readers does a nice job of tying together the neocon philosophy of preemptive war, the Bush Doctrine, with Dick Cheney's torture fetish:

The idea [of the Bush Doctrine] was that the US had the right to attack and invade other countries and change their governments because we thought they, or their proxies, or just a splinter-group of their citizens, might possibly be a threat to our citizens in the future. And if you explore that idea to it's logical conclusion you would have to agree that accepting the Bush Doctrine means you agree that the US can kill large numbers of innocent civilians in these countries, and wound and dislocate many many more. We can do this to people who never did us any harm, because our current leaders want to protect us from what their future leaders might do at some unspecified future date. Just collateral damage, don't you know.

Well, since we've built our logical case to this point, let's follow it to it's ineluctable conclusion: If that's all OK on a government to government level, it must be OK on a personal level too. And there it is: Cheney's torture policy is just the Bush Doctrine for individuals. The (evil) genius of it is that he's found a way to indefinitely extend the ticking time-bomb scenario. If we can invade other countries and kill and maim their citizens because of something their leaders might do, then surely we can do the same to individuals who may not know of any time-bombs currently ticking, but who might know of someone else who might start a bomb ticking at some future date.

What needs to be mentioned, additionally, is Cheney's one percent doctrine: If there's even the slightest chance that the enemy could present a danger, then the US has the right to defend itself by invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands. Or, in the case of torture, crushing testicles. Here's how Cheney described his worldview:

"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."

Now put torture into this perspective. Bush and Cheney were using torture because they treated every scenario as though there was a ticking time bomb. If one actually allows himself to give in to that paranoid, pathological worldview, then it's easy to see how Liz and Dick Cheney can rationalize the use of torture in their own perverted minds. Every detainee was a threat. Take no chances. Anything less than a response that assumed the worst was unacceptable.

Onward Christian Soldier

It's only getting uglier. The further we get from the Bush years, the more weird details trickle out. Robert Draper's new story on Donald Rumsfeld shows the former defense secretary in such a bad light that it almost reads like a parody:

ON THE MORNING OF Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

You can see the briefings here. They're truly bizarre. As Draper acknowledges, Rumsfeld has never been known as a man often overcome with ostentatious fits of piety. No, he clearly figured the use of God-porn could be used to seduce and manipulate President Bush, who in this reading is little more than a boy king relying on religious destiny to guide the way (and the country). But it goes beyond religious weirdness that could, incredibly, actually be used to bolster an argument with the president on an issue as important as war; Rumsfeld was taking a risk with national security by allowing for Crusade-like messaging to find its way onto the president's daily briefings. No matter that, if leaked, the images would reinforce the impression that the administration was embarking on a religious war. To underscore the inanity, a Pentagon official told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Only a feeble minded dilettante would find comfort in juxtaposing scripture and pictures from Iraq. At this point it's necessary to ask, who wasn't manipulating the president?

Obvious Thought

George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney tortured people so they could spin the necessity for a war of choice that has resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, while that war distracted our attention from those who attacked us on 9-11, destabilized the Middle East and made it easier for our enemies to recruit terrorists and preach hate for the Western world.

Justifying The Iraq War

One critical piece of information in the torture timeline is that illegal techniques were not used after Bush's reelection. This is important, not merely because it rebuts the argument from Dick Cheney that Obama shutting down waterboarding etc. will endanger the nation and embolden terrorists. If that's the case, then Cheney acted no better during the last four years of the Bush administration. So why the change in policy? Because before 2005, Cheney needed evidence to justify the Iraq war, says Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell:

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

The mounting evidence that torture was used to find information to support the Iraq war, combined with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's claims today that the CIA misled Democrats about the application of torture is a double whammy. Torture as a casus belli and the nation's chief intelligence agency lying to a leader of the opposition party are two major themes that are converging. This is too big to ignore.

Body Of Lies

On Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney made an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation to make his case on the benefits of torture. The same day, news broke that a former high-value CIA detainee who provided bogus information cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war had died in a Libyan prison. Until last month, there have been questions surrounding the whereabouts of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. We now know he is dead.

Al-Libi was an integral player in the torture debate. Here's Peter Finn’s of the role the al-Libi interrogation played in efforts to make a case for war against Iraq:

Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush Administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush Administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003. Powell later called the speech a “blot” on his record, saying he was not given all available intelligence and analysis within the government. The Defense Intelligence Agency and some analysts at the CIA had questioned the veracity of Libi’s testimony, which was obtained after the prisoner was transferred to Egyptian custody for questioning by the CIA, according to Senate investigators.

In their book “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” Michael Isikoff and David Corn said Libi made up the story about Iraqi training after he was beaten and subjected to a “mock burial” by his Egyptian interrogators, who put him in a cramped box for 17 hours. Libi recanted the story after being returned to CIA custody in 2004.

In 2002, two months after the CIA authored a report warning that al-Libi had provided bad information, President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati and said that "we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases." He was referring to information gained from the torture of al-Libi. Were al-Libi still alive today, he could be a star witness in a war crimes investigation. Scott Horton has more:

When, in September 2006, President Bush ordered the transfer of the “worst of the worst” terrorist detainees from CIA black sites to Guantánamo, al-Libi was nowhere to be found. Why? Al-Libi had great potential to embarrass the CIA and the Bush White House. The Bush Administration wanted him out of sight. They accomplished that, in the first instance, by turning him over to Libyan authorities, who subjected him to a pseudo-trial and locked him away for what turned out to be a life sentence...

He was the Bush era’s most inconvenient witness. And now he’s dead.

Evil Speaks

Dick Cheney isn't going anywhere. The permanent campaign continues. Politically it's great news for Democrats, who can enjoy using Mr. 20 Percent as the embodiment of today's GOP when they're not busy sending out mailers on Rush Limbaugh. Talk about a dynamic duo. When Cheney wasn't attacking Colin Powell this weekend and whispering sweet nothings about Rush, he managed to also argue that neglecting to torture people will result in the deaths of innocent Americans, signed up for Congressional testimony about the administration's torture policies and offered that Bush personally "signed off on" the torture program. Sullivan, of course, goes nuts:

And as history slowly accepts that this man disgraced his office more profoundly than any before him, as it sinks in that this man did not merely make mistakes, as all flawed politicians do, but committed war crimes, with pre-meditation and elaborate subterfuge, he slowly realizes what's happening to him. He can feel it. And so he resists the way he always resists - by lashing out, attacking, smearing, snearing, and grabbing every inch of the limelight he can.

Those of us who want him to face real accountability should, of course, welcome all this. Cheney does not seem to understand that he is incriminating himself further with every interview, every time he adjusts his story, every time he moves from torture as a "no-brainer" to a "last resort", every time he assaults yet another person who knows too much about him and what he did.

I don't disagree, though there's one bit we need to keep in mind. This is also wicked smart politics for Cheney. Yeah, he's lashing out. But you better believe it's calculated as hell. And you can bet GOP staffers are bunkered down right now trying to figure out how to get Dick Cheney off the airwaves because they know he's not doing the party any favors. 2010 isn't that far off. But Cheney could care less about his party. He isn't running for office anytime soon and has criminal charges to fend off. There's no better way of doing that than keeping the torture debate politically charged, even to the point of going after a Bush administration insider like Powell.

Sullivan asks, what character does this reveal? It's that of a desperate thug who will say and do anything, coerce and pressure anyone, to not merely escape the judgment of history but foremost the business end of this country's judicial system.

It's every rat for himself at this point. Watch them scurry.

Call His Bluff

In the build-up to next week's release of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility report, there's been lots of focus on the legality of the Bush lawyers' memos. But Thomas de Zengotita wants us to also focus on the effectiveness of torture; something I've regarded largely as a red-herring because it distracts from the basic idea that we don't torture. Period. Zengotita argues that Cheney's bloviating is designed to soften up Democrats:

They are gambling that another attack on American soil, perhaps a very serious one, is highly likely in the next few years. Are they hoping for it? I'll report, you decide. But in any case, they are right. It is highly likely. And if and when it happens, then Cheney and Fox (and Friends) are going to be in a position to lead a Rightist Renaissance based on the claim that Obama Democrats have been soft on terror whereas, after 9/11, Bush and Company were tough on terror - and so prevented attacks. Movement conservatives and the Republican Party will be redeemed at a stroke...

Unless a full investigation of the whole torture issue yields a credible official conclusion, graven in the historical record, a conclusion that says: torture did not in fact yield any information that prevented another attack. That has to become the conventional wisdom before there's another attack - or it will be game over.

I'm not so sure I share Zengotita's alarmist conclusion but it's a fair point. Leaving the effectiveness in doubt not only blurs the record and makes it easier to argue in favor of using torture in the future, but it could also become a big political liability for Democrats, should there be another attack, when wielded by a GOP intent on fear-mongering its way into the White House. I also agree that we should not be afraid to have the debate on Cheney's terms. If he wants to talk effectiveness, then let's talk effectiveness. There's no evidence to this point that torturing led to crucial information that either a) resukted in stopping a ticking time bomb scenario or b) got us further in an investigation thah had we used legal methods. As Christopher Hitchens writes, British interrogating Nazi spies in Britain at the height of the war banned all forms of torture "because the situation was so urgent, so desperate, and so grave that no amateurish or stupid methods could be permitted to taint the source."

Amateurish and stupid. Sounds about right.