Pufferfish

Maybe You Had To Be There

It follows that former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey isn't big on the job his replacement is doing. And I know politics is a contact sport. But Jeebus:

Q: Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia says anybody that questions KSM coming to New York City for a civilian trial — that they’re un-American. What is your reaction to that?

MUKASEY: I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.

Torture Logic

From the departments of fearmongering and wishful thinking:

"Well, I think it's absurd, and I think the Obama administration will be as much on trail as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed... And God help us if they get off on a technicality because of the way the evidence was gathered. I would tell you not only is the Obama administration finished, I think the Democratic Party is finished."

This would carry a bit more weight if most neutral observers hadn't concluded long ago that Mike Huckabee is a blithering idiot. So as a registered Dem I'm not all that worried. Still, I do think the over-heated rhetoric bellies a fear within conservative ranks that has less to do with terrorists walking free and more to do with destroying the neocon narrative. Here's Marcy Wheeler arguing that John Yoo's real concern with putting KSM on trial is that it will show torture tactics were, gulp, unnecessary:

What the trial will likely show, instead, is that there was a great deal of information already available before they started torturing KSM. It’ll show that the KSM expert in FBI–-who we know was never allowed to get close to the Yoo-sanctioned torture sessions–-knew much if not all of the stuff that KSM was blabbing away after being waterboarded the 183rd time.

That’s the real risk for Yoo: not the illegal actions that the trial will expose. But how much evidence there was independent of Yoo’s little torture shop.

Now there's a happy bit of collateral damage for the Obama Justice Department.

Values Voters

Someone has to stand up for this country's God-given right to electrocute a detainee's testicles:

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it. Liz Cheney's unequivocal support for torture methods gleaned from communist China has people begging her to run for office...

Reality, it seems, is a nemesis not only for the former vice president but for the entire Cheney family. But because torture is now a "values" issue for the right, it is, like abstinence-only sex education, unmoored from the necessities of proving its usefulness in the real world, which is why someone like Liz Cheney is finding herself where she is.

"Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers!"

Gitmo—the video game—is coming soon to an X-Box near you. And if the Interweb report is accurate, kids, like little Ralph Wiggum, will be treated to an accurate depiction of the detainee experience:

Acording to Deadline Scotland, Glasgow video game company T-Enterprise has hired Moazzam Begg, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, as a consultant on upcoming video game Rendition: Guantanamo, a title set in the infamous U.S. prison camp.

Mr. Begg, who also appeared in the jarring documentary film “Taxi to the Dark Side,” has said that any proceeds made from the sale of the game will go toward organizations advocating for detainee rights.

About Those Pictures

Scott Horton confirms they're explosive:

Why does the story about photographs documenting abuse at Abu Ghraib go on and on? There’s one quick answer: because the U.S. government keeps dissembling and covering it up. The last exercise came yesterday, when the Daily Telegraph secured a description of some of the withheld photos from Major General Antonio Taguba. Pentagon spokesman Bryan G. Whitman responded with a harsh attack on the reputation of Britain’s principal conservative quality paper, and the White House chimed in. But they have a problem: the Daily Telegraph report is correct. I secured specific corroboration of the Telegraph report and further details on the photos in a story in the Daily Beast, just up.

What’s this storm all about? Remember that Barack Obama announced his about-face decision to withhold the photos with a carefully worded statement that “the people who appeared in those photographs” had been investigated and prosecuted. That’s true. But there has been no investigation of responsibility up the chain of command for the decisions that produced these abuses, and that’s just what Obama appears intent on blocking. He fully appreciates that disclosure of the photos would fuel demands for appointment of a special prosecutor and a criminal investigation of the torture regime.

Do The Pictures Show Rape?

If there's one image that could hasten an investigation, it would be this:

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

If true, this would seem to call into question Obama's definition of the word "sensational." It should also be acknowledged that pictures this vulgar wouldn't play well in the Middle East. But that doesn't excuse for hiding evidence of a crime being committed. More here, including some brutal images that have already been released.