it was all a lie

Those of us arguing that maybe perhaps torture was stupid and immoral even when applied to terrorists during the Bush Administration always had to answer for the case of Abu Zubaida, that high level Al Qaida operative that the CIA tortured for information they used to foil lots of potential plots and nab Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. How could we argue that torture doesn't get good intel? It got good intel from Abu Zubaida!

Except, we now learned, it didn't. From Washington Post reporter Dan Froomkin:

Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture.

That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.

Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."

Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House. Then he was President George W. Bush's Exhibit A in defense of the "enhanced interrogation" procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders.

But as author Ron Suskind reported almost three years ago -- and as The Post now confirms -- almost all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were wrong.

Zubaida wasn't a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn't holding back critical information. His torture didn't produce valuable intelligence -- and it certainly didn't save lives.

I was beginning to forget how George W. Bush makes my blood boil, how it felt to be ruled by police state conservatives. He and Cheney really were monsters.

"Daddy's making fajitas"

This is pretty funny.

Sunday is now Sanctity of Human Life Day

Yes, I'm serious. And yes, "every person waiting to be born" gets special mention.

And yes, he does still have the authority to do this shit to our calendar.

the Bush legacy: the big-ass hole on Church St.

I would like to assert, for the record, that everyone will expect the incoming president to start protecting us Tuesday afternoon. If terrorists engage in a major attack on American soil 9 months from now, the Republican party and the nation's media will have no compunction about placing the blame for it squarely at the feet of President Obama. This will be especially true if it becomes clear that President Obama was warned beforehand by such things as a National Security Memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike within U.S." and sidelined his Terrorism Czar to shut up his constant yapping about the gathering threat.

To this day, I still find it maddening that even liberals in the papers and on TV persist in giving Bush a pass on what is without a doubt his single most egregious failure as President, and one of two moments at which his neglect led to the deaths of hundreds (or thousands) of Americans. Quite the contrary: he was able to ride that failure to 80+% approval ratings in 2002 and 2003. It was the defining event of his first term (perhaps of his entire presidency) and the root cause of his re-election. It was the justification for Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, for warrantless wiretapping, the War on Terror, and the USA PATRIOT Act. It was the pretense for his entire foreign policy, and to my knowledge he had no domestic policy aside from tax cuts.

I still have yet to see any evidence refuting the biggest political blasphemy of the 2000's: that 9/11 was George W. Bush's fault. The only thing I see refuting it is the almighty narrative that Republicans Are Better On National Security Than Democrats. It is one of many reasons why our grandkids are going to cackle at our unending stupidity when they read about the turn of the 21st century.

up is down, black is white

Leading conservative blogger John Hinderacker:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

This is why I have no faith whatsoever in the judgment of the Republican remnant to know what they need to do to fix their party. They have completely lost touch with reality.

the transformation is complete

And thus John McCain became what he most despised. From TPM:

We've obtained yet another McCain campaign robocall, and this one levels perhaps the nastiest charge yet: It claims that Barack Obama callously denied newborns needed medical attention by opposing a measure to force doctors to preserve their lives when they survive botched abortions.

The call, which was sent in by a North Carolina reader, labels Obama "extreme" and to the left of Hillary, and charges Obama doesn't "share our values."
...
So let's take stock. We now have documented four McCain/RNC robocalls, some known to be running in multiple states:

* One that questions Obama's patriotism by saying he put "Hollywood above America" during the financial crisis.

* One that says that Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are" and claims they merely "say" they want to keep us safe.

* One that attaches him to "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," whose group "killed Americans."

* And, now, the above, which dishonestly paints him as indifferent to the lives of babies.

At what point do you think John McCain will finally look in the mirror and see George W. Bush, ca. 2000?

the future, a little too early

Looks like I should've waited a couple of days to write this post. The Dow is now lower than it was on the day that George W. Bush was inaugurated.

new movies and old devils

A real murderer's row coming up to a theater near you.

I dunno. I find it hard to believe such a loathsome human being could engender enough sympathy to make a good movie, at least this close to the disaster that was his presidency.

Then again, I guess one could have said the same thing about The Last King of Scotland. Plus, it did't help the first clip that the dialog was awful.

Speaking of loathsome human beings engendering just enough sympathy to make a great movie:

I was happy to find that the villain is Mathieu Amalric, the lead from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. That is one damn talented Frenchman.

And speaking of loathsome, well, you get the idea:

I'm actually very excited about this one.

put this one on TV

Nice.

the curtain's closing, time to ditch the props

Looks like the cowboy manly man president is hocking the ranch. From Huffington Post:

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.
...
Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker."

Aside from styling himself as "bilingual," Bush making his home at the Prairie Chapel Ranch has been the most absurd act of political theatrics ever uncritically sold to us by our sycophantic press. The "ranch" was a pig farm until 1999, when Karl Rove convinced the Texas governor to buy it. The "ranch house" (actually the mansion) wasn't completed until Election Day 2000. It has no horses, supposedly because the president is afraid of them, and it has some cattle, but they aren't his. The estate includes a helicopter hangar, but no barn. And lo and behold! his presidency isn't even over yet, and he's moving back to the city.

Long after his presidency is over and America has either stood up for change or boarded the Crazy Train, we'll suddenly hear George Stephanopoulos and David Brooks talking matter-of-factly about the obvious phoniness of George W. Bush's cowboy antics, as if they have always spoken openly about the surreality of watching a sitting president, the son of Connecticut yankees who spent his youth at Andover, Yale, and Harvard, dressed up like a 9 year old Will Rogers fan, clearing brush from a ranch that doesn't raise anything and despite having paid staff to maintain the estate. As if anyone in the press scoffed when Bush tried to sell his good ol' boy image with lines like how his best moment as president was "when I caught a 7 ½-pound largemouth bass on my lake," except that by "lake" he means man-made pond he had professionally constructed and stocked with 600 largemouth bass. As if any of the pundits who ridiculed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for feigning a southern drawl ever questioned the authenticity of blue-blooded George W. Bush's exaggerated, mealy-mouthed twang.

Not that anyone else found it a little obvious or anything.

the steel chair!

Because I'm sick of conventional sports metaphors in politics. We need more unconventional ones. This incident this weekend, then, was a pivotal moment. A Goldberg spear. The capturing of the queen. Losing Australia. From The Washington Independent:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." Within hours, U.S. Central Command -- at the behest of a clearly worried White House -- released a statement arguing that Maliki was misquoted through a botched translation. But Monday, Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the government was talking about "a timetable which Iraqis set." Asked when that timetable would run out, Dabbagh quickly specified, "2010."

As a result, the positions on Iraq of the Bush administration, the U.S. military and Sen. John McCain, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, now face numerous challenges. The administration's plans for a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq have been profoundly undermined. The military will have to adjust to a strategy of extrication. The McCain campaign is presented with one of its nightmare scenarios: the Iraqi premier embracing the judgment of its opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, which strengthens Obama's bona fides on a national-security issue McCain has largely staked his presidential bid on owning.

The weak link in all this, of course, is the media reporting of the events, which is a genuine X-factor considering their long-time love affair with St. John the Maverick. They've buried his flip flops and papered over his cringeworthy foreign policy gaffes, but can they avert their eyes and pretend not to notice that Maliki totally bankrupted McCain and Bush's primary argument for a permanent occupation of Iraq, handing Obama complete control of the crucial yellow/green corner of the board?

The Obamafication of the Republican Party, part 2

Josh Marshall notes the trend of the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign both quietly adopting Barack Obama's positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran:

Let's run the list.

McCain and now the White House (via the DOD) are moving toward more US troops in Afghanistan -- a position they've each long opposed and which Obama has been on record in support of for at least a year.

Bush and McCain have each also in different ways tried to nudge closer to Obama's position on withdrawing troops from Iraq. The key shoe falling today is President Bush's embrace of a "time horizon" for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain's declaration of military victory in Iraq seems very much like an effort to get people thinking the troops are coming home soon within the conceptual architecture of his professed goals in Iraq.

And finally Iran. I'm not certain what McCain himself has said about Iran in recent days. But over recent months a key line of attack from the president and John McCain has been that Obama is a latter-day Neville Chamberlain for saying we should negotiate with Iran. And now over recent days we've learned that the White House is sending one of its top diplomats to negotiate directly with Iran's nuclear negotiator. And there are growing signs the White House is poised to open a diplomatic interests section (an unofficial diplomatic outpost) in Tehran.

It may all just be an attempt to build some last-minute bragging rights while taking Iraq off the table in the election, but at the end of the day this is still John McCain and George W. Bush tacitly conceding that Barack is right about getting out of Iraq and negotiating with Ahmadinejad, and they were wrong.

One hell of a story, if you can find someone to report it.

the Obamafication of Republican foreign policy

We learned yesterday, despite a nearly complete media blackout on the story, that John McCain has abandoned his policy on Afghanistan and has adopted Barack Obama's. From the Huffington Post:

John McCain likes to paint Barack Obama as a naive follower on key national security issues. But by moving up his planned Afghanistan speech by two days to follow Obama's, and by agreeing that more U.S. troops are needed there, McCain appears to be following the Illinois Democrat on a major proposed shift for U.S. foreign policy.

Last month, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said he needed at least three brigades shifted to Afghanistan, but that "troop constraints were preventing such a move."

Democrats trumpeted the statement as vindication, but McCain's campaign held its line and "resisted calls for more [U.S.] troops" in Afghanistan.
...
Flash-forward to today. As the AP reported, McCain was set to discuss the economy, with an address on Afghanistan scheduled for Thursday. But the campaign ditched its planned focus on jobs (although not its banner) to follow Obama's lead -- not only by talking about national security but by joining him in calling for more American troops in Afghanistan.

Nearly an hour after Obama finished his D.C. speech, in which he repeated his call for "at least two additional combat brigades" to be sent to Afghanistan, McCain stepped to his podium across the country in New Mexico and tried to one-up his Democratic rival. As McCain's website now says, the Arizona Republican wants "at least three additional brigades" for the fight in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama: a leader John McCain can believe in.

Following that, we hear this morning of a striking reversal in a notorious Bush Administration. From AP:

In a break with past Bush administration policy, a top U.S. diplomat will for the first time join colleagues from other world powers at a meeting with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, The Associated Press has learned.

William Burns, America's third highest-ranking diplomat, will attend talks with the Iranian envoy, Saeed Jalili, in Switzerland on Saturday aimed at persuading Iran to halt activities that could lead to the development of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official told the AP on Tuesday.

Now who was it again who not only advocated talking to our enemies as a central feature of his foreign policy plan, but took an enormous amount of grief from both George W. Bush and John McCain, as well as his fellow primary candidates for it?

more of the same

Funny.

McCain flip flops, now supports Unitary Executive Theory

John McCain throws another keg of Bush Lite on the Crazy Train. From Wired:

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.
...
McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

What a maverick. I wonder, will pundits in our liberal media characterize this as a "flip flop" or ask if his foreign policy views are "serious?" Then again, perhaps this statement was pre-empted by the worst prebuttal speech ever.

the coming storm

The floodgates open and Obama has clinched the nomination.

Meanwhile, John McCain gives a smarmy prebuttal in New Orleans where he lambasted Barack for comparing McCain to President Bush. Anybody remember what John McCain was doing last time New Orleans was in the news?

Here's John McCain on August 29, 2005:


Here's New Orleans, August 29, 2005:

Worst President Ever

61% of historians agree. Seriously:

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.
...
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

Ouch. Can't be good for his BFF John "Crazy Train" McCain.

the George W. Bush reality distortion field

From Reuters (via Matthew Yglesias):

In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for other crops.
...
"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

I guess we know what's wrong with our foreign policy now: nobody bothered to tell G-Dubs that "Dulce et Decorum Est" was meant as an ironic title.

It also goes without saying that the president didn't have quite the same reaction to being on the front lines of helping a certain young democracy succeed when he was himself "slightly younger and not employed here."

elections have consequences

So you know all that work Clinton put into lowering not just the deficit, but the ratio of national debt to GDP? The work that consumed nearly his entire second term and that required him to concede significant cuts to the social safety net? The work that exhibited one of the rare true compromises between Republicans and Democrats to achieve something useful in this era of Rush Limbaugh and casual comparisons to Nazis? The work that had us on track to pay off the national debt entirely by 2012?

It's now all gone. Thanks, Mr. MBA President.

civil warrior

I saw this in Valley News (NH)'s endorsement of Obama, and I'm pulling it out because I think it's articulates something I've been thinking about:

Clinton is a formidable candidate -- knowledgeable on the issues, a sharp debater, tenacious. She is more polished and more practiced than Obama. But she is less candid and less likely to create the working majority needed to govern effectively. She describes herself as battle-hardened, the candidate most able to beat back the Republicans. But that's precisely the problem: She is an armored warrior in a country weary of partisan and cultural warfare...

That last point is actually a pretty huge reason why I don't support Hillary: I don't want a candidate who's declared war on the press and war on the GOP. Fighting various individual battles is all well and good and, of course, inevitable, and there is a certain element of struggle endemic in politics, I understand that, but after 8 years of George W. Bush the last thing I want is another PR president, another executive who's molds her strategies not as a problem solver or peacemaker, but as a general and lead propagandist in the red/blue kulturkampf.

After all, can you really tell me you don't see where all this us vs. them, militaristic rhetoric ultimately leads?