Showing posts with label White House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label White House. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Rice, Ashcroft Approved Torture in July 2002

More details have been revealed on high-level Bush administration involvement in authorizing torture. According to a timeline in the newly declassified Senate Intelligence Committee report, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top White House officials approved torture methods, including waterboarding, as early as 2002. Attorney General Eric Holder has described waterboarding as illegal, while President Obama now says he won’t rule out prosecuting top Bush officials who approved illegal acts. Rice’s backing came in July 2002, when she gave a green light for the interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. One year later, the list of officials voicing approval grew to Vice President Dick Cheney, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and National Security Council legal adviser John Bellinger.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

VPs Say the Darndest Things (part 2)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081222.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008

The Annotated Interview of almost former Vice President (and soon to be convicted felon if there is a speck of justice in the world) Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times (well-known brown-nosers and sycophants.)
Vice President's West Wing Office –

3:20 P.M. EST
December 17, 2008

Q You've been described
(By us...)
and attributed to be (sic) one of the most powerful and influential Vice Presidents in history.
(Mind if I gush?)
How would you describe your influence, your power, and your contribution to this administration?
(And please do feel free to be as candid and forthright, as brutally honest in your assessment as you wish. You really, deep down know that you and the ‘Frat Brat’ screwed the figurative pooch. Right!?)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: In terms of whether or not I'm the most powerful and influential,

(I’m glad you asked that question… precisely as Addington wrote it…)
I'll let somebody else make those judgments.
(Someone well-paid.)
I think
(Something I’m very good at if I do say so myself. And I do…)
-- I do believe
(I do. I do. I do. I do believe in pardons. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.)
that the vice presidency has been a consequential office, if I can put in those terms,
(And of course, I can; seeing as I got me a ‘consequential office’. And you young putzes aren’t about to contradict me for anything I say.)
in this administration.
(Mine.)

But that's, first and foremost, because that's what the President wanted.
(Ever since I told the little screw-off that’s precisely what he wanted if he harbored having even a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting and keeping the White House. And still have time to clear brush and play golf.)
He's the one who asked me to take the job.
(Right after he hired me to find him a running mate. I told him that I was my first choice and his only choice if he wanted to do any brush-clearing.)
He's also the one who decided
(He is the decider, after all.)
during the course of his search process eight years ago
(When I told him to hire me. See penultimate annotation above.)
that he wanted somebody who could be another member of the team,
(Team Arbusto; the ‘A’ team.)
who had a certain set of experiences
(…which had lead to anti-social behavior, a loss of moral compass, frequent psychotic episodes of paranoia, an authoritarian mind-set, delusions of grandeur, megalomaniacal tendencies, rapacious greed…)
and so forth, and could be an active participant in the process.
(…of ruining nearly every aspect of the United States; its economy, its environment, its reputation, its institutions, its government, its political position in the world, …)

I know the job of vice president has been terribly frustrating for a lot of people.
(Especially those who felt consigned to a traditional role or one who felt the Constitution a constraint on their ability to grab power.)
Jerry Ford once told me it was the -- the worst nine months of his life were the years he lived, the months he spent -- it seemed like years -- but the months he spent as Vice President.
(Or something like that. Jerry wasn’t much of a story-teller. You get the idea.)

I watched Nelson Rockefeller in the Ford administration

(Not his best role, in my estimation.)
- - he was never happy with the post.
(4 shows a week for three years. Matinee on Saturday. That close to the Oval Office. It broke him.)

And everybody is familiar with the history that it has not been a consequential office in the past.

(Right? Dan Quayle ring any bells for you dim-wits?)
I think that began to change, I think in particular, during the Carter years.
(Blaming it on the Democrats is a tried and true spin to put on anything, don’t you know.)
I didn't agree with much of what Jimmy Carter did,
(Duh… )
but I thought Mondale as Vice President was a good choice for him,
(He sure was easy for Big Ron to thump in the election, that’s for sure.)
and that the office began to have a more significant role in those days.
(How, for example? Better PR? More press conferences? Bigger desk?)
And I think that's gradually grown over time.
(Like a cyst.)
And I think, as I say,
(and I will, and I do, as I have in the past, and will have done in the future, when history looks back at what I thought, and, as I say, I said, time and again.)
I do believe

(I do. I do. I do. I do believe in pardons. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.)
in this administration it's been a consequential post,
(More like a pillar than a post. A stanchion. A shaft, even.)
because that's what the President wanted to have happen,
(or at least so I told him every morning before the briefings.)
and he's been true to his word for eight years.
(Unless you count all that campaign guff about smaller government, personal privacy, lack of foreign entanglements, taking a more humble international role, lower taxes for the middle-class, other similar malarkey, he’s been true blue.)

(to be continued)

Monday, October 27, 2008

Phun Presidential Phacts: not-so-trivial trivia

Here's a little brain-teaser the answer to which will make any Liberal or Progressive suffer gastro-intestinitis and probably make many Libertarians and old-school Conservatives blanch.

On Hardball - in case you missed it - Chris Matthews brought forth this little bar-bet fodder:

"When was the last time the Republican party won the White House without Nixon or a Bush on the ticket?"

For the answer go to:

http://votersthink.org/?p=664

Get your Pepto ready...

Is there anyone in this country that hasn't yet gotten the idea that the USA is very flawed as an example of a truly Democratic Republic? This nation is governed by the business elite through their appointed lackeys - and Bush I & II and Nixon are only three on a long list of Oval Office stooges.

Should Obama win (knock wood), he will be castigated by the Righteous Right for simply out-spending poor Sen McCain in a further attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency.

(They will of course fail to mention that Bush II set the bar that Obama bested because that would negate their point and rob Bill-O and Rash Limberger of an opportunity to riff and rant)

The Right will be (gulp) right. It takes a bloody fortune to gain occupancy of the White House. Is another metric necessary to convince Americans that we are governed by the elite? You have got to be super rich or make lots of back-room deals with those who have the money to burn because they have even vaster amounts to make should their candidate win.

Is it any wonder that social programs get such short shrift?

Friday, June 27, 2008

Cheney's 'Genius'

“I think Cheney’s true genius is that he lets George Bush wake up every morning and actually think he’s president.”

John Dean, White House Counsel under Nixon, in an interview with Robert Scheer, Los Angeles, California, 6/12/08

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

US Politics

You know, my grandfather, Papa, was a real pro wrestling fan way back when. Killer Kowalski, Mad Dog Vachon, Gorgeous George. Crusher. Haystacks Calhoun.

He was totally rapt with the action bristling from that little black ‘n white picture tube.

By ten years old, I suspected that what was taking place was something other than a pure athletic competition. To Papa, it was real. I couldn’t tell him otherwise.

It was stage play. Sure people got hurt – two bruisers going at it in tights, somebody was bound to get banged up. Andy Kaufman found that out.

But win or lose, each wrestler got paid because they both worked for the same company. Whichever grappler got the champion’s belt depended on what back-room deals were made.

It’s the same today; the owners of the ‘league’ market muscle-bound goons as entertainment.

Is it sport? No. The outcome of a sporting contest is not known beforehand. If the outcome is pre-determined, it’s called a ‘fix’. The fix is in and the sport is out.

There have been more than a dozen US presidential campaigns during my life-time. Several, I have actually paid some attention to. Some I’ve even voted in.

The US presidential race, to me, is just a more wordy, less physical form of the Sunday afternoon wrestling shows that kept my Papa on the edge of his chair.

More stage craft than states craft. More showmanship than statesmanship. More PR than policy.

And when the ‘pin’ is made and the votes are counted will the results have already been determined?

Well, you figure it out. Presidential campaigners go begging for upwards of $500,000,000US to get a job that pays $200,000.

$500 million bucks comes with strings attached and those purse strings lead straight back to the fixers.

The fix is not for which of two representatives of big business gets to live in the White House for a few years. Whichever one will be awarded the temp job in the Oval Office, the new administration's policies have been determined in advance by the fixers. And, dollars to donuts, they will have little to do in the long run with what was promised on 'Meet the Press' except those that would further sweeten the pot for the moneyed elite.

Is it politics? Sure, down and dirty.

Is it democracy? Not even close.

OpenSecrets.org - Race for the White House

Dems, What About the Military Budget?