It was legal "because the lawyer said it was"

You know, we really needed another one of these:



Thank you, George W. Bush. Thank you.

Many Dark Actors [updt]

The Bush-Blair legacy gets darker and darker. More here:

"The official heading an inquiry into the suspicious death of a British weapons inspector who cast doubts on the main argument for invading Iraq has secretly ordered all evidence locked up for 70 years.

Lord Hutton, who chaired the 2003 inquiry, which controversially concluded that Doctor David Kelly's death has been a suicide, secured a 70-year seal on all major evidence, including medical records — none of which had ever been made public.

The unprecedented move was revealed last week, sparking fresh uproar and allegations of a government cover-up, since by 2073 anyone with the least interest, or stake, in the case will probably be long dead.

Kelly was mysteriously found dead in the woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003, just days after his name was leaked as the source of a pre-war BBC documentary that undermined the now-notorious 45-minute dossier as highly exaggerated."

David Kelly may have killed himself - how the hell would I know? But a 70-year seal on medical records? That protects national security how? This horrible story just got much, much worse.

Emptywheel has much more.

Update, 1/27/10: The medical records will be released to a group of doctors.

"Where Were the Tea Parties?"

Good question.

"I Wish the Intelligence Had Been Different"

No, actually it was "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."

He wishes the intelligence had been different? There are too many layers of idiot and asshole in that little statement to count. God, what an small person.

The One Billionth Call For Impeachment

How much more do they need?

A former top CIA official, Robert Richer, told a journalist, on the record, that senior Bush administration officials ordered the production of a letter that made it appear that Saddam Hussein was tied to the attacks of 9/11. That fake letter was leaked to the press, and was used to justify the Iraq War. Richer, being in a position to know such things, believes it came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Suskind's new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document "proving" that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam's intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.

The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium -- based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain.

The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush's efforts to take the US to war.

That former top CIA official, Robert Richer denied it when the story came out, and the journalist basically said, "Fine. Here's the transcript of the tape I made of you saying it."

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.

That's evidence. That's credible evidence that the Vice President HIGH crime.

The "Gotcha Journalism" Defense

"Yeah, they got me on tape selling access to the White House in exchange for huge donations to George Bush's presidential library - but that's just gotcha journalism."



The worst part of that is the reporter repeating that Payne says it's just "gotcha journalism," without noting that it makes no sense at all. He may as well have said, "Yeah, they got me on video shooting that guy - but that's just 'gotcha journalism'."

Bush and Sending the Wrong Signal

Our pathetic excuse for a president said yesterday that he quit playing golf in August 2003 after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the UN's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Bush said the event moved him to give up the game he loved out of respect for the men and women he sent to war. He said it "sends the wrong signal."

He was lying, it turns out, having played golf two months later. A round of golf is not the kind of thing you do without noticing, nor is a catastrophic event like the one that happened on August 19, 2003, which took the life of a man Bush knew, the kind of thing you mix up with some other memorable event. Did it later occur to him, in some twisted idea of sacrifice for our soldiers, to stop playing golf? I don't know. Maybe. But something that happened seven months later tells me the man is incapable of even such a trite idea of honor.

In March, 2004, President Bush spoke at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. March, 2004. This was seven months after his alleged conversion by bombing. You probably remember:

It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Somewhere around 550 American troops had been killed in Iraq by this time, and several thousands more had been shot or blown up and damaged forever. They had risked that fate for one reason: because Sadaam Hussein had WMDs. That's what they were told. And our president, out of his deep respect for the sacrifice of these courageous, mostly young, soldiers, a respect that drove him, he tells us, to not play golf because it would "send the wrong signal," deems it "good signal" worthy to make jokes - jokes obviously practiced and even with video accompaniment - about the very thing that those people gave their lives for. I'm supposed to believe, now, that George W. Bush gave much of a shit about the destruction and death he brought to those people?

No fucking way.

George Bush, you're a liar. I honestly can not at the moment think of a worse kind of one. You do more dishonor to the people you sent to unnecessary war with this pathetic attempt to rescue your reputation.

Some video, if you can stomach it.

Bush Cheats at Golf

The guy is just broken.

Bush Makes WH Video For Company Applying For Military Contract

From the lowest drawer in the Holy Friggin' Crap file:

Sitting at the head of the table, Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein, the highest-ranking officer in the room, leaned forward and told the officers and others assembled before him that they should steer a multi-million dollar Air Force contract to a company named Strategic Message Solutions.

[...]

It was during that meeting in November 2005, according to a 251-page IG report obtained by The Washington Post, that a controversial $50 million contract was awarded to a company that barely existed in an effort to reward a recently retired four-star general and a millionaire civilian pilot who had grown close to senior Air Force officials and the Thunderbirds.

[...]

According to the report, Goldfein even arranged for President Bush to videotape a testimonial in the White House Map Room that was included in the SMS contract proposal as a demonstration of the company's credibility and access.

Don't you love it how some stories veritably scream, "I have a front-page half-life of seventeen months"? Let's hope that scream is right.

More at the Air Force Times. The contract regarded producing "multimedia presentations for Thunderbirds air shows":

And it later came to light that Goldfein worked through the White House and got President Bush to tape a video testimonial for the Thunderbirds. Goldfein provided this testimonial to Shipley [president of SMS], and SMS included it in its proposal.

I don't think Bush could exactly say he didn't know it was going to be used on a presentation for a Pentagon contract - y'know? I mean the people who'd see kind of like know him and stuff. And if he does say that, well, so he's calling Goldfein a liar? This will be interesting.

The Pope Says Nope!

Oh schnapp! Pope benedict won't be attending a White House dinner in his honor next week. (He's going to be in the country at the time.)

George W. Bush Sewage Plant

I realize it's awful close to April 1, but I think this is real.

If not, well, I got to give this post some satisfying tags.

(And...we can call that a "shit-eating grin" now.)






Warrants are a Grave Danger to Your Life

President George W. Bush, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey are lying to us.

Piture it this way:

• The police need a warrant before they can break into your house. They need to have a judge view evidence and agree that you deserve to have your house broken into. This is one of the very basic rights we have as citizens, one that is specifically listed in our Constitution. It has been law since this country was founded.

• George Bush and company secretly told the police that they don't need warrants to break into certain houses. The police broke into those houses. This was and is against the law.

• George W. Bush, Mike McConnell, and Michael Mukasey are now saying that we are in grave danger...if we go back to the way it has been for more than 200 years. We are in grave danger if we go back to police needing a warrant to break into your house.

• George W. Bush, Mike McConnell, and Michael Mukasey are now saying that we are in grave danger if we follow our Constitution.

There are differences, but they do not change the issue regarding the Constitution and the lawbreaking of the Bush administration.

President George W. Bush, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey are lying to us.






Mr. Lowest Approval Rating Ever: 19%

The American people are officially (and finally) pissed.

Bush: Rich People Cheat on Taxes - So We Shouldn't Bother Taxing Them

An unbelievable moment during Bush's recent interview on FOX:

BUSH: Because there’s two big issues. One is, who’s going to keep your taxes low? Most Americans feel overtaxed and I promise you the Democrat [sic] party is going to field a candidate who says I’m going to raise your tax.

If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.

That needs a couple reads to get the full impact of the meaning. He's doing the regular R thing about taxes (Rs = lower taxes; Ds = eat your children with taxes), but goes off script into an area I've never heard a Republican go before. He admits what has been known forever: that the very wealthy find ways to get out of paying some part of their taxes, and do it in a way that the less well off can't (they "hire good accountants" in Bushspeak).

Remember what this was in response to: "If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people." In Bush's thinking, apparently, wanting to tax the wealthy is a bad idea because they find ways to not pay taxes anyway. so the proper thing to do is...lower their taxes.

We're doomed. This is just one of so many obviously perverted and screwed up things about our country right now, things so obvious that any self respecting person should be pissed off enough to want to do something to stop them. But no. Not only are such things not condemned, they're defending by hordes of followers.

Depressing.

President Bush at CPAC

Ship of Tools:

“Over the past seven years, we engaged the opposition with a clear and consistent philosophy.”

And what was that philosophy wherewith we so engaged? "We're not only stupid - we're CRAZY stupid!"

Or: "Bush is TEH AWESOME. And so is Ron Paul! And Mitt Romney! And Huck! And, uh, John McCain!" (Consissssstent, baby.)

Major Romney (and Bush/Cheney) Fundraiser Indicted in Massive Fraud Case

Ouch. Go get em, Willis.

A federal grand jury indicted a corporate executive who allegedly ran a scheme to make $32 million in false purchases of computer equipment, spending the money instead on beach real estate and private jet travel, prosecutors said Thursday.

Alan B. Fabian, 43, of Cockeysville, is charged in a 23-count indictment with mail fraud, money laundering, bankruptcy fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice. The grand jury handed up the indictment Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and it was unsealed Thursday.

At a news conference, U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein called it one of the largest monetary theft cases ever prosecuted in Maryland.

President Bush Has Lyme Disease?

Weird.

White House to Congress: Bring it On

We are truly in bizarro land.


Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

"Never." Wow.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

.

Strange move. It really does seem like another "Bring it on" move from Bush. Given his and his administration's level of support right now (and for the last few years), it doesn't seem like the brightest move. And they defended the stance by pointing to a similar conflict in 1984 - a conflict that administration effectively lost, if not in the courts then by the turning over of the documents that Congress had demanded. How can they expect to win this?

Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

Well, there's always that.




Executive Privilege: The Pat Tillman Docs

Hot off the wire at Raw Story. The WaPo has it too.

Those would be docs showing whether Bush knew about the cause of Tillman's death earlier than he said, I'm guessing,

As many as 30 DOJ Officials Threatened to Resign

Newsweek:

Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense—and sober. "This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.

Comey has said that the mass exodus was averted only when he met personally and alone with President Bush, where one can assume he told the president what would happen if he tried to push the program through. It would be speculation, but I don't think misplaced or silly speculation, to think that words close to or exactly "Worse than Watergate" were spoken in that room that night.

The thing I think is important about that night is: The fact that they tried to do what they did makes them as guilty of it as if they had. You don't get a pass when you try to rob a bank and fail. Bush, Gonzales, and Card, and who knows who else, tried to go around the actual Attorney General to get the not-Attorney General to sign off on what the Attorney General and not-Attorney General had already told them was an illegal program - while the not-Attorney General was ill.

Someone tell me how that's not a "high crime."