So Frank Rich says it all in his Op-Ed piece this weekend. What information did the Bush Junta want from these “High-Value” detainees? They wanted a smoking gun that linked Al Qaeda and Iraq. They needed this to sell the Iraq war to Congress and the American public. We knew this already on an instinctual level, but to read it, see it in print makes the last 8 years seem more sinister somehow. Now the question is….Do we prosecute?

Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

Read the article here.

The War on America's Future | Comments Off

What was it called? The Fourth Estate? All the pressure that the fucking Fourth Estate put on the Democrats when Bush was filling cabinet positions, Supreme Court Justices, and appointing criminals to the office of the Attorney General, with the asshole right-wing doing what the left was too fucking afraid to do wouldn’t you think something would be reported? What is needed is an boycott of all news outlets and their sponsors.

These are the assholes that are acting like they have a right to impose their right-wing crap on the rest of us. When will we be rid of assholes like these?

Department of Defense: Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced today that “they are blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Ashton Carter as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.” The senators want assurances that Carter will not “change the criteria” on which the Pentagon considers a refueling tanker contract that could benefit defense contractors in their state.

Department of Veterans Affairs: Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) asked the Senate Veterans Affairs committee to delay voting on the “nomination of Tammy Duckworth, an injured Iraq war helicopter pilot, to be an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Contacted by ThinkProgress, Burr’s Press Secretary, David Ward said that Burr is waiting for the answers to several questions he’s put to the White House and Duckworth, but would not disclose what those questions were.

White House Office of Legal Council: Dawn Johnsen’s nomination as head of the OLC has been delayed in part because Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has ideological differences with her. As the Legal Times explained, “citing Johnsen’s criticisms of Bush national security policies, [Cornyn] accused her of lacking ‘the seriousness and necessary resolve’ to fight terrorism,” while “other Republicans have targeted her work as legal director for NARAL Pro-Choice America from 1988 to 1993.”

Department of State: Right wing commentators are working to block the appointment of Harold Koh to the State Department’s top legal adviser, smearing him as a “threat to democracy” for his being an international law expert. As the Century Foundation notes, “The fervent opponents of Harold Koh turn out to be enthusiastic defenders of John Yoo.”
From Think Progress

The War on America's Future | Comments Off