"In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false."
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| rock and roll means fuck "In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false." |
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004 not so fast, crisco-boy.. 
In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill today, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he was not aware of any order by President Bush that would violate U.S. laws or treaties banning torture of military prisoners captured in Iraq or elsewhere in the war on terrorism. the more i think about it, the more i'm convinced that something rather significant transpired this afternoon as the crisco kid appeared before the senate judiciary committee. a worm turned, shoes dropped and it seemed that there were many more pieces of the puzzle out there for the world to see than the AG was ready to address. i saw something in one of the cabal that i had yet to see before. i've seen the big fish in this enterprise be clueless, smug, mean, arrogant, cooly efficient and hapless. but, before today, i'd never seen one scared shitless. and, well, he should be. they all should be. and i think i know why. as much as mr. assclown tried to deny (or, more accurately, non-deny deny) that the president had not personally authorized, through some sort of presidential finding or directive, the aggressive and arguably criminal interrogation techniques so absurdly detailed in recently leaked memoranda, the more hollow it sounded and the tighter those gospel spewin' lips got. i posit this: that document exists. there exists a document with language jumping through every twisted rationale and bizarre psuedo-legal construct offered up in these memos that effectively loosed the hounds. that document is affixed with shrub's signature. it's out there. i can feel it in me bones. think about it. there are a number of career uniformed folks at the pentagon who were horrified but what they learned about abu ghraib. they have equally horrified counterparts at CIA and state. why are all these memos floating around? because the ones tasked with getting ugly and committing what for all intents and purposes are war crimes wanted something to cover their ass with. take this from today's WaPo: The August memo was written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as agency operatives began to detain and interrogate key al Qaeda leaders. The fact that the memo was signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office Legal Counsel, who has since become a federal judge, and is 50 pages long indicates that the issue was treated as a significant matter. .... The former administration official said the CIA "was prepared to get more aggressive and re-learn old skills, but only with explicit assurances from the top that they were doing so with the full legal authority the president could confer on them." i think the president gave it to them. i mean all the memos we've seen so far seem to touch on the perception in the WH general counsel's office and in the civilian legal dept at DoD that the president, in a time of war, can grant such authority and that the power to disregard any law the chief executive saw fit was 'inherent in the president'. hell, president's own counsel advised him that the limitations on torture and confinement required by the geneva conventions were, in his words, 'quaint' and 'obsolete'. what i'm saying is that i think the dumb little shit was just fucking stupid enough to sign off on something so immeasurably dubious and ultimately criminal. the manner in which the AG became more and more evasive about what the president may or may not have OK'd seems to bear that out. this is what 'high crimes and misdemeanors' actually look like, kids. futhermore, the crisco king painted the administration even further in to the corner by not only refusing to release the documents to the senate committee specifically designated to oversee DoJ, (a panel assclown himself served on) but absolutley refused to say exactly why he refused to do so. as was explained to mr. ashcroft repeatedly and at length by the likes of senators biden and durbin, there are only two acceptable excuses to fail to produce them. 1. an assertion of executive privilege from the president or the invocation of a relevant statute that would prohibit such a release. he refused to to do either, placing himself, in a pretty black and white way, in contempt of congress. the only thing standing in the way of such a finding is my favorite fossil, senator orrin hatch. hell, assclown couldn't even say if any or all of the documents in question were classified. i love this from the times: Over the past few weeks, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have disclosed memorandums that show a pattern in which administration lawyers set about devising arguments to avoid constraints against mistreatment and torture. Mr. Ashcroft's appearance before the committee had been scheduled before most of the memorandums were disclosed, and he looked deeply uncomfortable under the harsh questioning. but, wait, it gets better. even after putting the administration in the tightest possible corner regarding these memos, as mr durbin pointed out, good chunks of what the committee is seeking have already been leaked. i have a feeling that these won't be he last of the leaks about such documents either. the folks who are at most jeopardy up and down the chain of command are trying to show the world (or potential future grand juries) that the legal rationales and direction came from above. it would appear that they're succeeding famously. touche'. the afghan whigs "honky's ladder" "got you where i want you, motherfucker. don't you try to move.." posted by downtown | 8:35 PM |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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