Torture Tape Updates: White House Lied! CIA Violated Court Order! Mukasey Covered Up! ... [yawn] What Else Is New?

The Los Angeles Times says the CIA's destruction of some of its 9/11 torture videos may have been a violation of a court order.

Over the objections of the Justice Department, a federal judge said Tuesday he would explore whether the U.S. had violated a court order to preserve evidence when the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. set a hearing for Friday in Washington in response to a request from Yemeni prisoners who are challenging their detention by the U.S. at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
...

The tapes were destroyed by a CIA official in November 2005, at a time of growing congressional and public concern about U.S. tactics in the war on terrorism, including interrogation techniques.

It was also five months after Kennedy, in the case of the Yemeni prisoners, issued an order requiring that the U.S. preserve and maintain "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now" at Guantanamo Bay. According to court papers, government lawyers said at the time that a formal order was not necessary because they were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."
...

In court papers filed last week, the Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because at the time [the prisoners shown on the tapes] were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas. The men were later transferred to the Guantanamo Bay prison.

That's a nice loophole they found there, no?

The New York Times says the White House was much more involved in pre-destruction discussions than the public has been told.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.
...

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes.

Sounds like a coverup, doesn't it? But what are they covering up?

A coverup, that's what?

Bob Parry says: "Surprise! Mukasey Covered Up Torture".

Last month, Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California joined Republicans to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, even though he refused to acknowledge that the simulated drowning of waterboarding was torture.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped the Bush administration, too, by rushing a floor vote on Mukasey before rank-and-file Democrats could get organized and push for a filibuster.

To show thanks, Mukasey [photo] now is slapping the Democratic-controlled Congress in the face by demanding it back off any oversight investigations into how and why the CIA in late 2005 destroyed videotapes of the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects.

Mukasey is covering up a lot more than torture, but the courageous Bob Parry won't go there. I have no such qualms. But first, let's recap, shall we?

The CIA may have violated a court order? To this administration, court orders are made to be (a) defied, or (b) used as "justification" for changing the laws they have violated, or (c) used against others. We'll see what they decide to do with this one.

The White House failed to tell the public the truth? That's been their policy forever. Get used to it. And please quit believing what they say, especially their non-denial denials!

Mukasey covered up torture? Of course he did. That was his litmus test for his appointment as Attorney General. And as Bob Parry points out, "leaders" from both parties made sure it happened.

Also: Larisa Alexandrovna says Paul Thompson has created a new section on the destruction of the tapes, at his invaluable site, Cooperative Research.

And finally, please see my previous piece on this matter: "Connecting The 9/11 Dots: Dead Cutouts, Destroyed Tapes, And The Hidden Assumption That Poisons Everything".

Stymied By Alberto: ABC Says Former DoJ Official Tried Waterboarding

ABC News is running a story about Daniel Levin, who was acting assistant attorney general in 2004 when he was "charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture". Levin became so concerned about waterboarding that he decided to experience it himself, according to ABC's sources.

The article, "Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic", says Levin told White House officials he found the experience terrifying, thought it clearly simulated drowning, and concluded that waterboarding could be illegal torture unless used in a highly limited way and with close supervision.

ABC's sources also say Levin believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for the use of waterboarding. It also details how Levin was "blocked":

The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin's predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed.

When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration's legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding.

In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.

But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.

Well, isn't that a big surprise? Now they tell us!

What's the hurry?? There's more at the link.

Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me: In Bushzarro World, Even The Good News Is Bad

Gonzo is gone but who will take his place?

Could the Devil be next?

And if not, Why not? Because somebody knows too much? And what would happen if that somebody decided to offer some resistance?

You are now entering a realm where speculation is even scarier than usual.

Chuck Shumer's optimism is startling:

Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."

Of course we all know how many potential AG candidates would engender such confidence, and how many of them Bush is likely to nominate.

Or if not then we really need to start paying attention.

Justice Accelerated: More Powers For Alberto Gonzales

Do you know how long it takes to get people executed in this country?

All these guys hanging around death row forever, claiming they're innocent or some such thing?

Enough, already! American justice is about to get a little bit faster!

Here's the BBC:

The US is preparing to bring in legal changes giving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales new powers to limit the time inmates spend on appeal on death row.

New powers for Alberto Gonzales? Why on Earth would we give more power to Alberto Gonzales??

The change in the rules, under which Mr Gonzales will be able to decide state requests to speed the appeals process, was a measure in the 2006 Patriot Act.

Wow. Because of the PATRIOT ACT, Alberto Gonzales gets even more power, and this time it's the power to limit the appeals process of people who've been sentenced to death. How quaint!! And that's the good news!

Death penalty experts argue that shortening the time allowed for inmates to appeal, in what are often very complicated cases, will make effective and fair review very difficult.

The new procedures will cut down the amount of time that death row inmates have to appeal to the federal courts, once the state court has ruled, from one year to six months.

The federal courts will also have less time to review the cases before them, which represent the only opportunity defence lawyers have to file new evidence.

Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California law school in Berkeley, told the BBC News website the new rules represented a "very dramatic change".

She fears that not only the few death row inmates who turn out to be innocent but also those who have been unfairly given the death penalty will lose out.

And, she points out, those who decide whether to limit the appeals process are the same people as are seeking a faster process.

You see the problem? We've got an attorney general who can't remember to tell the truth about simple things when he testifies before the people's representatives, a man sworn to uphold justice who has in fact done enormous damage to pillars of legal history, a man under threat of possible impeachment for these and other crimes including politicizing the nation's Department of Justice for partisan political ends. What do you do?

Give him more power, of course! Power of life and death over defenseless people!!

Elisabeth Semel wasn't kidding when she told the BBC:

"It's like giving control of the hen house to the fox, because it's the attorney general in the state going to the attorney general of the US and getting permission to do something that kills the chicken."

It's getting pretty cold, don't you think? It's been getting colder and colder for quite a while now, and it will continue to get colder and colder, and colder and colder, as darkness encroaches ever further on this shining beacon on the hill ... unless we do something about it ... now, while we still have a chance!

On The Importance Of Being Important

Here are the three most important news stories of yesterday, according to Larisa Alexandrovna:

FBI Director's testimony contradicts Alberto Gonzales.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress Thursday that the confrontation between then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in Ashcroft's hospital room in 2004 concerned a controversial surveillance program -- an apparent contradiction of Senate testimony given Tuesday by Gonzales.

Mueller said he spoke with Ashcroft soon after Gonzales left the hospital and was told the meeting dealt with "an NSA [National Security Agency] program that has been much discussed, yes."

Mueller made the comment as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Gonzales, now attorney general, said he had visited the ailing Ashcroft in the hospital to discuss "other intelligence activities," not the surveillance program.

and more from CNN.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats ask for special prosecutor to investigate Alberto Gonzales for perjury.

At a news conference this afternoon, four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Alberto Gonzales on perjury charges.

Sens. Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold, and Sheldon Whitehouse explained in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement that “it has become apparent that the Attorney General has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements” to the Judiciary Committee. They wrote:

We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress.

Yesterday, the AP revealed documentary evidence that contradicted Gonzales’ sworn testimony regarding the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Gonzales had said a White House intelligence briefing in 2004 were in regards to “other intelligence activities.” Then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte confirmed in a May 2006 memorandum that the meeting was in fact about the NSA program.

and more from Think Progress.

Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas Karl Rove.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Thursday issued a subpoena for top White House adviser Karl Rove to compel him to testify about the firing of several U.S. attorneys.

“The evidence shows that senior White House political operatives were focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases,” Leahy said. “It is obvious that the reasons given for the firings of these prosecutors were contrived as part of a cover-up and that the stonewalling by the White House is part and parcel of that same effort.”

Leahy issued the subpoenas, one to Rove and one to White House aide Scott Jennings, after consulting with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the committee’s ranking member.

“The Bush-Cheney White House continues to place great strains on our constitutional system of checks and balances,” Leahy added. “Not since the darkest days of the Nixon administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability.”

The move is a further escalation of the constitutional battle between Congress and the White House over whether Bush administration officials must provide testimony and documents to legislative branch investigators.

and more from The Hill.

According to Larisa, these are the

stories that EVERYONE should be talking about, thinking about, debating, etc.

You may imagine my joy at seeing this comment, implicitly relegating my hard day's blogging -- eight posts on such irrelevancies as the arrest of Korey Rowe, the conviction of Awaab Iqbal, prayers at Lal Masjid, and the Iraq Oil Law -- to the dustbin.

But in fact there's no need to imagine any such thing. I am only kidding, the imagined slight was clearly unintended, and in any case Larisa gave me a chance to wiggle off the hook when she mentioned

the 50 or so stories about Iraq, coming from Iraq, and so forth in which numerous Iraqi deaths, US military deaths, contract rigging scams, and so forth were discussed.

On the theory that one could "squeeze" the Iraq Oil Law into the category of "contract rigging scams" -- and how else could one classify the "greatest" heist in "legal" history? -- I see a chance to slip the hook and scramble to my frozen feet, but not without mentioning the three most important stories of the day, which as Larisa correctly points out

have to do with the state of our nation, as it affects ALL of us.

So here we go:

[1] Of course Alberto Gonzales lied! Did you think Robert Mueller was going to perjure himself to protect Gonzales? I didn't.

Anybody else? Ok.

Now: What's the probability that anything will come of this? Slim to none, maybe a shade less. Anyone disagree?

[2] A Special Counsel to investigate the Attorney General for perjury? Because four Senate Democrats say that's what we need to do? Good one! Next!!

[3] Does anyone seriously think Karl Rove is ever going to testify under oath anywhere?

The Commander Guy has already Decided that his conversations with eminent legal scholar Harriet Miers are protected by executive privilege. Do you seriously think he would Decide anything different for his political tactician?

Thus, in brief, run my thoughts on these stories that EVERYONE should be talking about.

In even briefer: This administration has shown brazen contempt for the Rule of Law and the prerogatives of Congress (which Congress has not tried very hard to protect, or exercise) -- and it has done so repeatedly, consistently, and very proudly.

These thugs have made no secret of their legal "philosophy": Law protects the weak from the strong, and we are the strong, so the law is our enemy. And they're not kidding; they've cheered the invasion of Iraq as a "victory" over international law, as you may recall.

And now -- with the stench of rotting blood unmistakable, with the bodies piling up everywhere, with phrases like "acts of treason" and "crimes against humanity" on the lips of everyone who's been paying attention, and with all the power of the "unitary executive" in their ruthless hands -- what makes you think they'll show any respect for the Rule of Law now?

Here's a clue from White House spokesman Tony Fratto:

"Every day this Congress gets a little more out of control — a new call for a special prosecutor, a new investigation launched, a new subpoena issued, an unprecedented contempt vote and an old score somehow settled ..."

Never mind that the contempt is unprecedented; never mind that this is not about any old scores, never mind that nothing is settled; are we really supposed to believe that it's the Congress that's out of control?

With administration spokesmen making such statements, what makes you think they'll show any respect for the Rule of Law ever?

I think there's a better chance they'll invade Pakistan!

~~~

And I thought this story was even more important, at least in the sense that it has the potential to affect some very passionate Americans who don't usually get involved in politics.

But surely the media will bury the Pat Tillman stories as deep as they've buried the subpoena for Karl Rove.

Speaking of which: the supposedly liberal New York Times gave the "Rove Subpoenaed" story only a cursory mention, buried deep within David Stout's story on Robert Mueller's testimony ...

... which counts as a feather in the cold blogger's cap, in my opinion. I may have neglected the "Rove Subpoenaed" story somewhat, and I may have pooh-poohed it a bit too, but even though I say so myself, I'm doing a lot better on this one than the New York Times ...

... and that tells you more than you could ever want to know about how much trouble we're in.

Great Big Surprise! Bush Stonewalls On Subpoenas

President Bush has refused to comply with the subpoenas issued by two Congressional committees, but that's not a big surprise. We can even expect more of the same soon.

Will the Congress bare its teeth? Now that's a much more interesting question! Here's Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times:

Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas

President Bush moved one step closer to a constitutional showdown with Democrats on Thursday, as the White House asserted executive privilege in refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

The move prompted Democrats to accuse the White House of stonewalling, and seemed to put the legislative and executive branches on a collision course that could land them in court.

... unless the Democrats decide to cave in before then. They would call it a "compromise", of course. And the Republicans are urging them to compromise, for the good of the country, of course.

On Thursday morning, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, telephoned the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which had issued the subpoenas, to inform them of Mr. Bush’s decision. The president also intends to invoke executive privilege to prevent two of his former top aides, Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying, officials said.

It's lovely when the President gets to decide which laws apply to which individuals. That makes us all so happy, because it is exactly at those moments that we can see most clearly that we are living in one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. And that may be only an intangible benefit, but it certainly makes it easier for us to enjoy our spacious skies and amber waves of grain.

“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path,” Mr. Fielding wrote in a letter to the committee chairmen, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. He said the committees had issued “unfettered requests.”

The "respect" Mr. Fielding shows for Senator Leahy and Representative Conyers is very small indeed.

Mr. Conyers, in a telephone interview, called the letter “an appalling response to a reasonable question,” adding, “This is reckless; it’s a form of governmental lawlessness that is really astounding.”

Come again? Astounding lawlessness? I'd have thought that he -- John Conyers, of all people -- would be used to it by now. And maybe he is. But I suppose he has to say something!

Omens for the immediate future are ominous but not entirely unexpected:

The letter seemed to lay the groundwork for how the administration will respond to a separate, unrelated, round of subpoenas, issued by the Senate panel Wednesday to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department for information about the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

Administration officials said they had not decided how to respond to those demands, but experts said it seemed clear that the White House would refuse to comply there, too.

Well of course they will fail to comply. They will fail to comply with every request that threatens them in the slightest, although they always pretend to offer something:

The White House offered lawmakers access to certain documents as well as private interviews — not under oath, and without transcripts — with top aides to Mr. Bush, including Ms. Miers, Ms. Taylor and Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. The Democrats, demanding formal testimony under oath, rejected the offer.

And of course the Democrats rejected the offer -- who running an investigation would ever accept such conditions on the questioning of witnesses -- let alone suspects?

And although government lawyers try to portray this investigation as a case with very limited ramifications, it actually threatens their bosses in a very serious way.

So ... can you spell "stonewall"? You'll be seeing that word a lot soon.

“Given the way in which both the U.S. attorney matter and the N.S.A. matter are now percolating through committees, I would be very surprised if there were not a major showdown over executive privilege,” said Peter M. Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University and an authority on executive privilege. “It might not get to court, but there will have to be some very high pressure negotiations at a very late stage to avoid that.”

Those favoring a government of laws must be hoping there won't be any late negotiations, since the pressure will undoubtedly be great and the Democrats' track record under pressure has been atrocious.

As always, the result of the dispute is going to depend in no small part on how the issues are framed, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg portrays this case as a small one:

The clash pits the Congressional right to conduct oversight — in this case, an investigation into whether the Justice Department allowed partisan politics to interfere with hiring and firing of federal prosecutors — against the president’s right to unfettered and candid advice from his top aides.

But the Congressional investigation is about much more than whether partisan politics was allowed to interfere with hiring and firing. It's really about whether (that is to say the extent to which) the Justice Department has become an instrument of partisan politics. Or at least one would hope so.

The possibilities are endless.

For instance, one relatively unexplored line of questioning goes like this: Suppose it turns out that -- as it currently appears -- eight of 93 U.S. attorneys were fired for not exerting sufficient pressure on Democratic candidates at election time. What does that say about the other 85, the ones who kept their jobs?

Stolberg sidesteps this hot potato and continues:

The next step is for Democrats to decide whether to try to negotiate with the White House or to vote on a contempt resolution, a process that could take months and would lay the groundwork for sending the matter to court. Democrats did not say Thursday how they intended to proceed, although by the sound of their comments, negotiations did not seem likely any time soon.

Personally I prefer to live in a nation of laws and therefore I hope the Democrats do not decide to negotiate at all. They should just vote the contempt resolution and be done with it. So this is probably a very unlikely outcome.

I had to laugh at a comment by Senator Leahy:

“This is a further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances,” Mr. Leahy said.

Sorry, Senator, but they've gone way beyond Nixonian. Even Spiro Agnew didn't tell any Senators to go f-ck themselves.

Nonetheless, the scent of Watergate is now in the air, and this sets up a some very interesting possibilities. As Larisa says, "I would like to officially welcome you to Watergate..."

And in some ways her analogy is a good one. But this is different.

First of all it's a very different Congress, one divided against itself in a very different way than the population is divided. In the electorate, most people, including many nominal Republicans, oppose this President, his wars of choice, and his quest for unfettered power. But in the Congress, some (many!) nominal Democrats actually support the president and the war, and would have it last for decades, if it were their call. So they may choose to support the commander-in-chief for the duration, and all of this might be moot. We'll have to wait and see.

Second, Nixon was losing it! He was going to pieces right in his own office, pacing the floors, talking to dead presidents, praying with his accomplice in war crimes, Henry Kissinger (who couldn't wait to get out of there, especially if he had a hot date). But Bush? No problem. The Decider rocks on!

Nixon was terminally frightened of losing another election -- this fear motivated many of his excesses. So he was devastated by the loss of support from the Congressional Republican heavies. But what does Bush care? He doesn't have to stand for election again. And anyway, the electoral system is now taken care of. Bush and his friends have assurances that Richard Nixon never even hoped for.

Does any of this matter? Probably not. If the removal of eight U.S. attorneys at the same time were a routine procedure, and if everything had been done above-board, if there weren't millions of e-mails missing and stories floating around about serious attempts to subvert what remains of our Constitutional republic, there would be no need to put restrictions on Congressional oversight, and there would be no reason why administrative aides could not testify in public, with oaths and transcripts and everything else that people do in civilized countries, because the administration would have nothing to hide.

But -- even more so than the Nixon administration -- this bunch has nothing to show! So they have to resist every attempt at transparency. Of course this doesn't prevent them from howling at other governments for not being sufficiently "democratic". And only Nixon could go to China.

Even if the USA is no longer the world's greatest democracy, even if it is no longer be a democracy at all, surely it doesn't anymore matter as long as we remain the world leader in at least one equally important category. And beyond any doubt, such is the case: the USA is now -- and has been for at least six years -- the world's greatest hypocrisy!

How about that?

We're number one! We're number ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!

Congressional Democrats Subpoena Harriet Miers And Sara Taylor

David Stout of the New York Times says:

Congress Subpoenas Miers and Former Bush Aide

WASHINGTON, June 13 — Two former White House officials were subpoenaed today as Congressional Democrats intensified pressure on the Bush administration over the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

From the House Judiciary Committee (PDF):

House and Senate Investigations Revealed Significant White House Involvement In US Attorney Firings:

Key White House political advisors Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were involved from the beginning in plans to remove U.S. Attorneys. According to documents obtained from the Department of Justice and Mr. Sampson’s testimony, Mr. Sampson discussed the plan with then-White House Counsel Gonzales not long after President Bush’s re-election in late 2004. A January 9, 2005 e-mail released by the Department shows that Karl Rove initiated inquires as to “how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.” In his response to queries from David Leitch, a White House official, Mr. Sampson expressly deferred to the political judgment of Mr. Rove as to whether to proceed with plans for the replacement of U.S. Attorneys, writing,“[I]f Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I.”

Mr. Sampson, who has testified that he “aggregated” the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, was in frequent contact with White House officials about multiple versions of proposed lists of possible U.S. Attorneys for dismissal and potential replacements over the course of nearly two years, sending draft lists for review in March 2005, January 2006, April 2006, and several drafts in September 2006 through the firings on December 7, 2006.

David Stout:

The Senate and House judiciary committees ordered Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara M. Taylor [photo], a former deputy assistant to President Bush and the White House director of political affairs, to appear before their panels.

House Judiciary Committee:

According to documents and testimony, Sara Taylor, the head of the White House political operation and deputy of Karl Rove, and Scott Jennings, another aide to Mr. Rove, were involved in the discussions and planning that led to the removal of Bud Cummins and bypassing the Senate confirmation process to install Tim Griffin, another former aide to Mr. Rove, as U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. They were part of a group that discussed using the Attorney General’s expanded authority under the Patriot Act Reauthorization to avoid the opposition of the Arkansas Senators by appointing Mr. Griffin as interim indefinitely. In one e-mail, Mr. Sampson described Mr. Griffin’s appointment as “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.” After the firing, writing from her RNC email account, Ms. Taylor writes that “Bud is lazy – which is why we got rid of him in the first place.”

Mr. Sampson testified that Ms. Taylor was upset when the Attorney General finally “rejected” this use of the interim authority -- a month after telling Senator Pryor he was committed to finding a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney.

David Stout:

Ms. Taylor was ordered to appear before the Senate committee on July 11. Ms. Miers, who was briefly a nominee for Supreme Court justice, was told to appear before the House panel the following day.

House Judiciary Committee:

John McKay, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, testified that when he met with Ms. Miers and her deputy William Kelley in August 2006 to interview for a federal judgeship, he was asked to explain “criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor's election,” in which Republicans were upset with him for not intervening in that closely contested election.

David Stout:

The committees had already voted to authorize such subpoenas, so it was not surprising that they decided today to go ahead and issue them. Still, the action stepped up the political confrontation over the dismissals, and over the general performance of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the state of the Justice Department.

So far, the White House has said it will not make any current or former officials available to testify before the panels on the matter except in private interviews, with no transcripts kept. The lawmakers have disdained that arrangement as unacceptable.

“By refusing to cooperate with Congressional committees, the White House continues its pattern of confrontation over cooperation, and those who suffer most in this case are the public and the hard-working people at the Department of Justice,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate committee, said in a statement today.

Representative John D. Conyers of Michigan, the chairman of the House committee, said the subpoenas were “a demand on behalf of the American people.”

House Judiciary Committee:

Since the firings of these U.S. Attorneys for political reasons became public, there has been an effort to minimize, and in some instances, cover up, the role of White House officials. According to documents and the testimony of Mr. Sampson, the Attorney General was upset after the February 6, 2007, testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty because Mr. McNulty’s testimony put the White House involvement in the firings into the public domain. Former Justice Department White House Liaison Monica Goodling recently told the House Judiciary Committee that she was told not to attend a briefing by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, 2007, because of the concern that her presence might prompt Senators to ask questions about White House involvement.

The Administration’s February 23, 2007, response to a letter from Senators Reid, Schumer, Durbin and Murray regarding the firings stated, “I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the AG’s decision to appoint Griffin.” Earlier e-mails indicate that the appointment of Mr. Griffin, another former deputy to Mr. Rove, was important to Mr. Rove. The White House, Associate White House Counsel Chris Oprison, signed off on this letter. Before Griffin was installed, Mr. Oprison, who signed off on the letter, had written that the Griffin issue was “front/center on [his] radar screen” and that he had “had several conversations with [Rove aide] Scott Jennings” about “the controversy.” Many parts of this letter have since been retracted by the Department.

David Stout:

“The breadcrumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania,” Mr. Conyers said, referring to the White House by its street address. “This investigation will not end until the White House complies with the demands of this subpoena in a timely and reasonable manner, so that we may get to the bottom of this.”

House Judiciary Committee:

According to the testimony of Department officials, Mr. Rove and other White House officials attended a meeting at the White House on March 5, 2007 -- the day before Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella testified before the House Judiciary Committee -- to “go over the admin position on all aspects of the US attorney issue.” Rove is reported to have spoken at this meeting and directed the Department to provide reasons to explain the firings in the next day’s testimony.

David Stout:

The White House reacted quickly today to the subpoenas, arguing that the committees could easily obtain all the facts they need through interviews and relevant documents, but that the Democratic chairmen “are more interested in drama than facts,” as Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, put it in an exchange with reporters.

Quite a publicity stunt, no? There's nothing at stake -- unless you count the future of the world's most belligerent former democracy.

Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here ... just another publicity stunt by the Democrats; you know how those Democrats are!!

Tom Toles: Gonzo Passes The Low-Bar Exam

Ain't It Da Truth?

VIDEO: The Case For Impeachment Of Alberto Gonzales

For more information, please visit Impeach Gonzales dot Org.

Tom Toles: Why Bush Won't Pull The Lever

I'm assuming you are keeping up with Gonzo-Gate, as many other blogs have been covering it extensively.

If not, Greg Palast can bring you up to speed quickly.

A Whole New Form Of Government

Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, wanted to testify in Washington before Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose Commission was "investigating" the JFK assassination. Ruby felt intimidated in Dallas and repeatedly asked Warren to take him to Washington; Warren replied falsely that it was not in his power to do so.

Seeing that his chance had slipped away, that the Warren Commission was about to whitewash the JFK assassination, Ruby sounded a warning: "a whole new form of government is going to take over the country".

Warren thought Ruby was delirious, and many writers have sneered at this comment over the years. But it keeps coming to mind, much more often lately than ever before, and much more powerfully...

Take for instance the following excellent column, from Joe Galloway in the Salt Lake Tribune of May 17, 2007:

Hang in there, America: Only 613 more days of Bush

There are 613 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.

We HOPE they shuffle off!! ... and by the time you read this the number will be less than 613, but it's still a long, long time.

So much of what they talked about doing in a new century and a new and different world never came to pass.

That was all deliberate. Those were promises they never intended to keep.

So much of what they did to grow the power of the presidency and prune the constitutional safeguards crafted by our founding fathers, they never talked about.

Exactly. And this was deliberate too.

There are many here among us who've been saying so all along. We were mocked six or seven years ago; now that everyone can see we were right, is it too late?

Chris Floyd has touched on this point quite recently:

It's not a question of "spin," of "putting the best face on things," or being "clearer than truth," in Dean Acheson's sinister Cold War phrase -- gilding the lily, exaggerating for effect. Nor, conversely, is it a case of self-deception, of "true believers" unable to take off their blinders, of "idealists" unwilling to bend their dreams to mucky reality, or even of fourth-rate dullards too stupid to see the filth and ruin caused by their own cretinous policies. They are not just spinning, they are not deceiving themselves, they are not too stupid to know what's going on.

They are lying -- lying deliberately -- lying brazenly and cynically [...] They are lying because their causes are evil and cannot be spoken of openly: aggressive war for loot and domination; the callous rape and despoiling of their own nation for the profit and power of their wealthy cronies; the construction of a global gulag of secret prisons, eternal captives, carefully refined and officially approved torture; the deliberate, systematic destruction of the Constitutional system of government in favor of arbitrary, militarized tyranny; the deliberate, systematic sowing of division and rancor and hatred and fear among the people, to keep them disunited, weak, scattered, unable to resist the depredations of a small, criminal elite. If these be your gods, then of course you must lie to do them service.

Joe Galloway continues:

The American people have turned their backs on George Bush and his dreams of planting the seeds of democracy in Mesopotamia at the point of a gun and seeing them spread like kudzu across the Middle East.

There are those who no longer believe the president ever had such a dream -- that it was all only a public relations strategy. And there are those who never believed it for a moment, even at the beginning. Let's see now, democracy for Iraq, did that come before or after human rights? I know it came after weapons of mass destruction. We've had so many different reasons for liberating these damned ungrateful Iraqis, it's no wonder nobody can keep all the justifications straight.

And yet, those who said so all those years ago were moonbats! Are you with us or against us now?

He's failed in his quest for victory in Iraq and for a world put in order by a new and stronger United States, and his brash blundering into a dangerous land has made us all much less safe.

There are those who say this was intentional, and it's tough to argue with them. in my opinion, it's the vilest protection racket ever developed; Bush knows his war in Iraq makes the US weaker and generates more global terror, but that's fine with him; without more global terror, his chief political advisor would have to learn a new trick.

The president's approval ratings are below his knees, sinking to 28 percent in one recent poll, and he cannot recover short of the kind of miracle that parts seas and feeds the multitudes.

Bush's numbers are three times as strong as Cheney's, for all the difference it makes. Cheney still struts around the world, telling America's allies what he expects of them, and his buddy Georgie has already accomplished what he set out to accomplish. And yet, somehow, most of America's best dissident writers still have not figured this out. So they write such as:

The war that was never ours to win by military means -- the only button this president who never learned war ever learned how to push -- is lost. Bush and Cheney and the rest of their cronies and co-conspirators are toast.

I disagree! In what sense are they toast?

Chris Floyd gets this right, too:

They have taken the measure of the Democratic "opposition" and now realize that no one is going to seriously hinder them in the pursuit of their sinister agenda. Oh, they may have to toss a few bodies overboard -- Gonzales himself is probably being fitted for a winding sheet even as we speak -- but it is now obvious that the leaders of the criminal organization are not going to be held legally accountable for their high crimes. They are not going to be impeached -- although the many causes for impeachment cry out to the heavens. They are not going to be tried; they are not going to be jailed. They are not going to suffer the slightest inconvenience. They can see already that they will retire to lives of staggering wealth and privilege.

Joe Galloway continues:

The question is: How did such ordinary-looking men -- seemingly unable to carry out even the smallest non-political tasks of governing -- succeed in doing such extraordinary and lasting damage to our country, our military and our body politic in so few years?

Actually, both the question and the transition itself were easy. And in both cases, the answer is the same: 9/11!

The attacks were false but the reaction was genuine. And they needed the reaction, so they didn't mind that the attacks were bogus -- so long as they were never properly investigated!

And by the way, they're not as incompetent as you might think. It's only a disguise.

They're very good at implementing their private agenda, and utterly incompetent at doing what they said they would do for us! How ironic!

With Congress in the hands of the Democrats, and the 2008 election looming dead ahead, the president can't even count on key figures in his own Republican Party to stand behind him as he embarks on a long and painful lame duckhood.

But it doesn't matter -- this particular president is the least lame of any duck in presidential history. The electoral system is wrecked -- not worn down and broken, but deliberately smashed! Vandalized for political gain! And the payoff hasn't even started to roll in.

His hopes of crafting meaningful immigration reform and fixing Social Security are dead on arrival.

Hang on a minute: Immigration reform was a campaign promise nobody ever intended to fill. And they were hoping to loot Social Security but that hasn't happened -- yet. So apparently you can't have everything, at least not all at once, even if you're a born to wear the chimperial visage, so to speak. But that was all a distraction, anyway. And the ship of crime sailed a long time ago.

The legacies that George W. Bush will carry into retirement are the war he started, lost and stubbornly refused to end, and the corruption that he and his team visited on our democracy and Constitution.

But he doesn't care about all that. He will have a retirement of wealth and privilege beyond measure, rather than the justice he deserves. And his extended crime family of despicable drunken evil pricks will roll on untroubled.

The president's lawyer, "mi abogado," Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, dangles in the wind as we learn, day by day, of how grotesquely this administration politicized the professional staff of the Justice Department.

The AG will be kept on as long as practicable, not a moment longer. When he's gone there will be another to take his place. And another, and another...

It was Gonzalez, as White House counsel, who provided legal cover for the torture and maltreatment of prisoners and suspects that led directly to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the CIA's secret Kafkaesque prisons scattered around the world where "enhanced" interrogation methods were generously, if unproductively, employed.

It was Gonzalez, as attorney general, who hired and gave unprecedented hiring and firing powers to a 33-year-old attorney, Monica Goodling, who'd graduated from a TV evangelist's law school. It was Goodling who resigned and took the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions that hadn't even been asked. It was Goodling who was Justice's liaison to the White House and Karl Rove.

Meantime, the White House can't find 5 million e-mail messages involving official business and refuses to provide many of those it can find to the congressional committees investigating the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Right!

Helen Thomas explained it perfectly:

Picture this: Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care at a local hospital where he is being treated for pancreatitis in March 2004. Comey, then the acting attorney general because of Ashcroft's illness, was in the hospital room with Ashcroft when Gonzales, then Bush's White House counsel, arrived and tried to pressure Ashcroft to approve the legality of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

Ashcroft refused to do so. But Bush went ahead anyway with the illegal wiretapping, relenting later when Comey and others threatened to resign.

Bush later promoted Gonzales to attorney general.

I'm not making this up.

Helen Thomas rocks!

Joe Galloway continues:

The agencies of government - the CIA, FBI, Treasury, Department of Defense and who knows who else - use secret executive authority to suck up databases of personal information about ordinary Americans, without regard to their privacy rights, in a search for suspected terrorists.

Have they found any, using that information? Have they unearthed terror cells with more potential than the ones in Florida and New Jersey that were penetrated and perhaps manipulated by FBI informants?

No! They haven't, and we can strike the "perhaps". "Manipulated" it is! Hooray for Joe Galloway!

That sort of terrorist isn't half so frightening as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Half? A tenth!!

Over in Iraq, 150,000 American troops soldier on, attempting, at the cost of their own lives and limbs, to follow the orders of a president who still thinks he can pull victory out of defeat.

Ahh, but he can, he can!

It's called the Oil Law, and if he can get Congressional Democrats to endorse it as a benchmark (which they seem utterly and spinelessly willing to do) then he's a winner! No matter what Joe Galloway or anyone else says about it:

A democratically elected but hopelessly divided Iraqi parliament feuds and dithers and contemplates its summer vacation while Americans and Iraqis die in increasing numbers in the streets outside the Green Zone, and the mortar and rocket fire lands inside that sanctuary with increasing frequency.

The Iraqi government is neither as democratically elected nor as sovereign as one might suppose.

Six-hundred-thirteen days, and counting. Nineteen months. It doesn't seem possible or even bearable.

No possible, not bearable, and everyone knows it.

Major changes are afoot, methinks. Long before we see those nineteen moons, we will see indisputable evidence of what Jack Ruby would call "a new form of government tak[ing] over the country."

All the pieces are in place; they have been for some time now.

As the counter-terror experts keep telling us, it's not a question of "IF".

Imploding In Slow Motion: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rove, Bush -- And A Tumbling House Of Cards

It hasn't been a very good day for blood-soaked warmongers.

Paul Wolfowitz is leaving his post as President of the World Bank -- but he's getting a $400,000 severance package.

Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are claiming immunity from prosecution over the Plame-Wilson leak, saying that whatever they said amongst themselves and to reporters was part of a "policy dispute".

And George Bush has refused to answer questions about whether he sent his Chief of Staff and his future Attorney General to the bedside of former Attorney General John Ashcroft when Ashcroft was hospitalized, in order to try to persuade him to authorize the warrantless wiretapping program which Ashcroft had previously declared illegal.

So ... it finally looks as though the blood-soaked warmongers are imploding.

It's not free-fall speed ... but I'll take it.

And kudos to my Australian friend Gandhi, without whom I could never keep up with this stuff!

Another Victory For Torture: Germans Reject Investigation Request

German federal prosecutors on Friday rejected a U.S. group's formal request to investigate allegations that current and former Bush administration officials were complicit in the torture of military prisoners.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights accused former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and eight other officials of either ordering, aiding or failing to prevent the torture.

According to a report from David Rising of the AP in the Washington Post,

German law allows the prosecution of war crimes regardless of where they were committed, and permits any citizen or group to formally request a criminal investigation.

In rejecting the complaint, prosecutors said that it was up to the U.S. to hold any inquiry, adding that there were no indications U.S. authorities or courts would not conduct one.

Of course they'll conduct one. They'll conduct as many as they have to. But there is no indication that it will be anything other than a whitewash, just like the "investigation" they did last time. And even the lapdog WaPo virtually admits as much:

Attorneys leading the case had said [...] they had documents from 2005 congressional hearings suggesting that Rumsfeld approved harsh methods [...]

After FBI agents raised concerns, the documents showed, military investigators began reviewing the case and in July 2005 said they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment [...] Still, the Pentagon determined that no torture had occurred.

So once again we're left with questions, such as:

Has it not dawned on the German prosecutors that the Pentagon will always determine that nothing illegal has occurred? Of course it has.

Would these same German prosecutors let a fox investigate mysterious death and destruction in a chicken coop? Apparently they would.

Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner vowed to pursue an appeal in Germany or action in another country.

"If Germany is not willing to enforce their law we think other countries will be. We're not going to leave a stone unturned," Ratner said by telephone from New York.

Splendid sentiment, but it seems rather unlikely that Ratner will find anyone with more backbone than the Germans who rejected the request.

The attorneys were also hopeful that testimony from former U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski -- the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq -- would bolster their case.

When the complaint was filed, Karpinski [...] told reporters in Berlin that she would testify against her superiors because only a handful of low-ranking soldiers have been convicted in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

"People who are far more culpable and responsible have walked away blameless," Karpinski said.

But they wouldn't even talk to her.

So what have we learned?

Witnesses don't matter, testimony doesn't matter, the law doesn't matter, and the facts of the case don't matter.

Torturers should investigate their own crimes.

Welcome to hell.

Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction And Alberto Gonzales Is Not

Click here to watch Alberto Gonzales squirm under the weight of some vital truth.

... from CSPAN via RBN ...

and a tip of the frozen cap to our good friend 99 for this among much else.

Tom Toles: About Those Missing Emails ...

And here's another open thread, for those who dare ...

REVEALED: Rove Deleted His Email Accidentally!

Finally! Here's a story that will put to rest all the idle speculation about one of the ugliest pseudo-scandals in recent American history. Now, finally, all has been revealed:

Karl Rove didn't mean to delete all the email which the White House says it can't find. He was just doing the usual housekeeping that people do when they organize their email, and he had no idea that messages were being deleted from the server as well as from his inbox.

Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored server, saying Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.
...
"His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.

And everybody knows attorneys never lie, and Rove never lies, so it's simply inconceivable that Rove's attorney could be less than truthful about this.

So.

There's no need to lose any further sleep over the "loss" of thousands of potentially incriminating documents, because they weren't deliberately shredded, they were just accidentally deleted. And there was nothing to hide anyway.

That's why the White House can confidently state that

the administration is making an honest effort to recover any lost e-mails.

You see? It's all quite simple and above-board.

So just move along, there's no story here.

Nobody lied, nobody died, nobody cried.

It's just a political witch-hunt. That's all.

And it's pointless, because everybody knows there are no witches in the White House.

Just a bunch of slimy bottom-feeders who will say anything to stay in power for another day, and whose lies are getting more transparent all the time.

The prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame spy case saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee, Luskin said.

The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, subpoenaed the e-mails from the White House, the RNC and Bush's re-election campaign, he added.

"There's never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record," Luskin said.

Yeah, sure! That's a good one. How would a prosecutor know if there was anything missing? Unless Rove kept a list of the email messages he had deleted, there would be no way to know what was missing ... and because Fitzgerald never complained that anything was missing, that proves what, exactly?

Oh, it just doesn't say. How unfortunate. But whatever...

The mystery of the missing e-mails is just one part of a furor over the firings of eight federal prosecutors that has threatened Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' job and thrown his Justice Department into turmoil.

For now, Bush is standing by his longtime friend from Texas, who has spent weeks huddled in his fifth-floor conference room at the Justice Department preparing to tell his story to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

New documents released Friday by the Justice Department may shed additional light, but their release prompted Gonzales' one-time chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to postpone a closed-door interview with congressional investigators.

Again, more evidence that this is nothing but a pseudo-tempest in a pseudo-teapot.

If Alberto Gonzales had done anything wrong, do you think it would take him weeks to prepare for a little bit of testimony?

And if Kyle Sampson had anything to hide, would he be postponing interviews with investigators?

Of course not. Move along. Lah-de-dah. Pfft.

Tom Toles: You Can Relax Now

We don't actually need a new open thread but we can't very well blog on without this cartoon.

Tom Toles rocks!

I should be back later with more (about something!), but this thread is yours.

Was Paul McMulty Less Than Candid? Does The Pope Shxt In The Woods?

So much spin, so little time, part two:

I'm sitting here watching the wheels fall off again as the Washington Post reports the current White House spin:

The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the unfolding U.S. attorneys scandal, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, her attorneys said today.

Monica M. Goodling -- who is on an indefinite leave of absence from Gonzales's office -- also said that at least one senior Justice Department official blames her for failing to fully brief him prior to a Senate appearance, leading to "less than candid" testimony.

The reference is to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty [photo], who told the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February that most of the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said that McNulty called him to apologize for not telling the truth and blamed it on incomplete briefings.

There's something about this explanation that doesn't make any sense. But you'd be hard pressed to find it on your own. Fortunately, ABC has a much more convincing explanation:

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal.

McNulty's testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.

Paul McMulty said too much; he sparked a political firestorm by going against orders.

Now he's under new orders: squelch the fire!

So he's calling Senator Schumer to "apologize for not telling the truth" and he's blaming it on "incomplete briefings".

I wonder if Schumer's thinking:

Ha Ha Ha!! You were less than candid? What do you think we are, stupid?

The answer to that question would be "YES", by the way ...

Oh what an odious web they weave, they who think they can deceive... But ABC has a nice, detailed scoop!

Until McNulty's testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's approach when he testified before the committee in January.

But weeks later, McNulty — confident he could draw on a long relationship with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat — decided he would instead try to explain in more detail, sources told ABC News.

In doing so, he went well beyond the scope of what the White House cleared him to say when it approved his written testimony the week before the hearing, according to administration sources closely involved in the matter.

Most important, part of McNulty's testimony also appeared to directly contradict the earlier testimony by Gonzales.

Those inconsistencies — and McNulty's characterization of the firings — fueled a firestorm over the dismissals, prompting the U.S. attorneys to aggressively defend themselves and their work and angering senators demanding to know what role politics played in the process.

"That's what lit the fuse," said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "They should've expected pushback — not only from the U.S. attorneys but from their supporters once they characterized the reason as negative performance, inadequate performance."

There's a lot more, and it's beautiful! Go read it! Ha ha ha!!

Paul McMulty was "less than candid". And I am less than stupid. ;-)

I'm just sittin' here watchin' the wheels fall off and off
I really love to watch them roll...

OOPS! Did I say "wheels"?

'Bush Rejects Show Trials' -- A Politically Correct Response

The president muttered incoherently in public again yesterday, about the extraordinary measures he and his staff are willing to take to bury the fast-spreading scandal over the firing of eight US Attorneys, apparently for purely political reasons. After Bush tried to explain what he would and would not allow in the way of an investigation; the BBC summarized it this way:

Bush rejects Senate 'show trials'

US President George W Bush says he will not allow his advisers to take part in "show trials" in the escalating row over the firing of federal prosecutors.

He has offered to let his staff give evidence, but only in private and not under oath.

The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee has rejected the offer.
...

Mr Bush has backed Mr Gonzales, a long-time confidant, and warned Democrats against seeking a fight over the issue in order "to score political points".

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honourable public servants," Mr Bush said.

If I may ...

First: There are no honourable public servants involved in this case, so we can dispense with that red herring from the outset.

Second: This is not about scoring "political points". It's about fighting what appears to be wanton political corruption at the highest levels of the federal justice system [sick]. Serious questions have been asked here and the American people deserve straight answers -- for once! -- at the very least. Spin-meisters need not apply.

Third: People in civilized countries are required to obey the law of the land no matter where they work, so when the president's aides are called to testify under oath, that's the way they should testify, the same as any other potential witness to any other potential crime. In no civilized country is it considered suitable for the suspects to control the terms of an investigation. And that's been happening a lot around here lately, so it's time to revert to the tried-and-true method.

Fourth: The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee was quite correct in rejecting the offer, but could have made a counter-offer to keep the process moving. Don't worry; that's what we're here for.

Finally: The question of "show trials" is a very simple matter. If the president objects to show trials, let us have the trials without the show. Let's have secret tribunals instead.

The details are all figured out already. We can hold the accused incommunicado in secret prisons without charge or hearing indefinitely. We can use the most vigorous interrogation techniques we can imagine, as long as we're careful not to cause death by organ failure. And after four or five years, or whenever it becomes politically convenient necessary, we can release "transcripts" of their "confessions".

By that time some of the suspects may have been shipped to foreign dungeons to be tortured, and some of them may even be dead. But what difference would it make? In a secret tribunal, nobody expects to see the suspect, anyway. We won't have to release any audio or video of the trials; we can even recirculate an old photo or two from the files. What difference would it make? All the information would be classified, anyway. National Security.

Do you think I'm kidding? I'm not! We've seen the system in action already. And we know it works, or at least that's what we've been told.

So now let's use that system to do what it was designed to do -- to neutralize the people who threaten our way of life, to hunt 'em down, smoke 'em out of their caves offices, and hang 'em from the ceiling at Gitmo.

What are we waiting for?

Tom Toles: Overblown

The most recent Open Thread is well buried so here's another.