From Our Favorite Dick's Own Pie-hole (part Five)

Q So much of the debate on the war on terror,
(Well, not exactly debate – blather, rather; hand-wringing.)
particularly as Democrats
(Damned Dems…)
have encapsulated in Congress,
(to encapsulate: to epitomize, to express in brief summary. So WTF?)
is focused on the legality of the tactics.
(Legality – you say po-tay-to and I say ‘spud’.)
Could you talk a little bit behind the scenes
(Where you’re most comfortable – living on the ‘Dark Side’.)
of some of the discussions that might have focused on the morality and the ethics of the tactics,
(Not that you’d have even the most tenuous gasp of the concepts…)
and whether those things weighed into the discussions that went into --
(Oh, I’m getting lost in my own fractured syntax!)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: What kind -- which tactics?
(You better re-phrase that or I’ll have you head, you friggin’ mutt!)
Q Oh, anything from rendition to waterboarding to --
(Gawd, I hope he doesn’t snarl at me. I’ve heard he snarls!)
Q Sleep deprivation.
(Gulp!)
Q -- to deprivation, tactics that were used at Gitmo. Is there any -- I'm sure –
(Fake a weak chortle here.)
were there discussions that also focused just on American values
(Hay-rides, quilting parties, lemonade at the July Fourth picnic… We’re looking for a Norman Rockwell moment.)
and whether those can be preserved in the course of trying to protect the country from terror attacks?
(There, have we left you enough wiggle room to sufficiently dodge the question?)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let me, before I respond to that,
(Since that’s why you’re paying me the honorarium.)
let me state a proposition.
(So as to side-track you and avoid actually giving an answer.)
It's very important to discriminate between different elements of -- or issues that are often at times conflated and all joined together and balled up.
(Like the following non-answer is obviously going to be.)
People take Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib
(with a double-dose of Pepto-Bismol)
and interrogation of high-value detainees
(a delightful euphemism; ‘high-value detainees’- sounds much better than prisoners)
and sort of throw that all together
(in a big naked goose-pile…)
and say, characterize it as torture policy.
(snort! Preposterous, what the simple-minded John and Jane Q Public come up with.)
You've got to, I think,
(I know it’ll be a strain for you two knuckle-draggers)
back off and recognize that something like Abu Ghraib was not policy.
(Even though there’s ample proof that it was policy, we’d prefer it wasn’t recognized as such.)
It was, in fact, uncovered and then exposed by the military.
(With the New York Times and 60 Minutes giving them a gentle assist.)
There were people involved in that activity who were not conducting themselves in accordance with the standards that we would have expected,
(The standards we expected were much lower and more brutal. Underwear on the head? Naked goose-piles!? Come on! That’s kid stuff. We were thinking more of bamboo-under-the-fingernails and electrodes-on-the-genitals - you know. School of the Americas techniques.)
and they've paid the price for it.
(And luckily – knock wood – those of us who made the executive decisions to flout international law haven’t.)
Guantanamo I believe has been a first-rate facility.
(As a symbol of the American iniquity and neo-conic depravity.)
It's one we absolutely needed and found essential.
(By ‘we’ of course I mean those in the Bush administration; it was essential for us to cover our asses for criminal activity.)
It's been primarily a military facility.
(Even you dorks probably know that. But did you know that it’s held in violation of treaty?)
If you're going to evaluate how it's functioned,
(And I strongly advise that you do NOT.)
the policy that we adhere to at Guantanamo basically is the U.S. Army Field Manual.
(Although most of what is done there is in direct violation of the Field Manual in regard to torture or detainment.)
With respect to high-value detainees and enhanced interrogation techniques,
(The euphemistic jargon is so vital to the proper functioning of propaganda. Don’t you think?)
totally separate proposition under the jurisdiction of the Central Intelligence Agency
(They had carte blanche with the blessing of John Yoo and Gonzo.)
and applied to only a few people who were individuals like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
(a few hundred or so)
the mastermind of 9/11,
(Keep repeating that. It takes away some of the P.R. sting from the horrific things we authorized done to him.)
who we believe possessed significant intelligence about the enemy,
(Whoever we say that is on any given day.)
about al Qaeda,
(Which means ‘network’ and the title of a CIA databank used in recruiting Islamic extremists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.)
about their future plans, about how they were organized and trained and equipped, where they operated.
(Since we were- ahem - totally in the dark (wink-wink) about all of this even though, as mentioned, the CIA ran and funded the Mujahidins in the jihad against the Soviets which became the al Qaeda network – if you’ll pardon the redundancy.)
And after 9/11, we badly needed to acquire good intelligence on the enemy.
(Since we had no good intelligence in Washington DC. None that we wanted to pay any attention to, anyway.)
That's an important part of fighting a war.
(So I’m told.)
What we did with respect to al Qaeda high-value detainees, if I can put it in those terms,
(And since that’s the standard party line we’ve been using for years, don’t even think of denying me.)
I think there were a total of about 33 who were subjected to enhanced interrogation;
(A magical term, isn’t it: enhanced interrogation. A good quick round of ’20 Questions’ followed by tea and cucumber sandwiches.)
only three of those who were subjected to waterboarding -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and a third, al Nashiri. That's it, those three guys.
(It’s not like we did to thousands or millions. So, since it was only those three guys –and we all know what nasty dudes those guys were (take our word for it) - international law and the US Constitution outlawing torture can be waived under those conditions. Right? Ask John Yoo.)
Was it torture?
(Of course it was. Oh, sorry. That was meant to be rhetorical, wasn’t it.)
I don't believe it was torture.
(“And what a fool believes… no wise man has the power to reason away”.)
We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice,
(To cover our asses…)
legal opinion out of the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where you go for those kinds of opinions,
(Otherwise we’d have called it something different like the Office of Obfuscation or the Department of Dissemblance.)
from the Department of Justice as to where the red lines were out there in terms of this you can do, this you can't do.
(That’s how we asked them to lay it out for the Frat-boy Brush-cutter – color coded. He still couldn’t follow it. )
The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately.
(They were doing what they do best after all – torture and undermining democratic process.)
They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration,
(Of course, they talked with me first since I’d summoned them to my office. Addington was there along with those other knuckle-heads – they always reminded me of those little toy dogs in the back windows of cars, their heads bobbing up and down, up and down… very gratifying.)
about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.
(Since, as I said, we had none of our own in DC.)
I signed off on it;
(Gulp!)
others did, as well, too. I wasn't the ultimate authority, obviously.
(George W Bush.)
As the Vice President, I don't run anything.
(LOL!)
But I was in the loop.
(Hell, I WAS the loop.)
I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
(Which goes to show I haven’t the foggiest notion anymore about what is right or wrong.)
I thought the legal opinions that were rendered were sound.
(Because we had lawyers write down what we wanted in legalese.)
I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they were asking to be able to do.
(Reasonable as far as criminal activity and in terms of what we demanded that the CIA do.)
And I think it produced the desired result.
(Although we got nothing as far as actionable intelligence as a result of our non-torture torture.)
I think it's directly responsible for the fact that we've been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for seven and a half years.
(That and the fact that I’ve had interns continuously shredding newspapers in my office, lighting incense and ringing a little silver bell. Oh, and the monkey paw blessed by Alexander Haig that I wear under my shirt.)
And come to the question of morality and ethics, in my mind,
(Comes up blank…)
the foremost obligation we had from a moral or an ethical standpoint was to the oath of office we took when we were sworn in on January 20th of 2001,
(What was it again…?)
to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
(Actually, it’s ‘protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic’ – not the neo-conic ideology.)
And that's what we've done.
More or less. Probably less than more.)
And I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11.
(In hopes that we could somehow make up for the fact that we didn’t do diddley-squat – ethical, immoral or fattening – to stop those attacks in the first place despite multiple reports, memoranda and advisories warning us of imminent attack.)
We made the judgment, the President and I and others, that that wasn't going to happen again on our watch.
(Not again. Getting caught flat-footed with our pants down once was enough. Heh-heh.)
And I feel very good about what we did.
(And so do the stock-holders of Halliburton, etc)
I think it was the right thing to do.
(Whatever that means to you. It means shit to a tree.)
If I was faced with those circumstances again, I'd do exactly the same thing.
(Because I am that freaking stupid, insane or obstinate.)
To be continued...

A Summer Reading List for Madam Pelosi

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has been telling us over and over on television, on-line and in print that she can find no reason to put the impeachment of George W Bush back on the table. If Representative Pelosi cannot find adequate reason for the impeachment of Mr Bush, then she is simply stupid, blind or both.

Books detailing and documenting the many high crimes and misdemeanors of George W Bush (et al) have been written, published and have made the ‘Best Seller’ lists. Here is but a small sampling that is strongly recommended for Ms Pelosi’s summer reading list:

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean

The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment by John C. Conyers and Elizabeth Holtzman

A Bird in the Bush: Failed Domestic Policies of the George W. Bush Administration by Dowling Campbell

The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America by Eric Alterman and Mark J. Green

United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values by Philippe Sands

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, and Howard Zinn

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack L. Goldsmith

Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (The Terra Nova Series) by David Levi Strauss, Charles Stein, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Gra

Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Walter Brasch

Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution by James P. Pfiffner

Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle over Presidential Power in the War on Terror by Howard Ball

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series) by Bob Brecher

Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law by Marjorie Cohn and Richard Falk

Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror by Jordan J. Paust

Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium by Chris Floyd

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey

Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War by Tara McKelvey

Torture Central: E-mails From Abu Ghraib by Michael Keller

Bush and Cheney's War: A War Without Justification by Homer Duncan

Bushit!: An A-Z Guide to the Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality, and the American Way by Jack Huberman

The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America by Jennifer Van Bergen

The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency by Howard Zinn

Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

And last but not least…

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi

This should fill up your summer reading list, Madam Speaker. Do us all a favor and ask one of your aides to Google ‘Bush Impeachment’; I got 580,000 hits in 0.28 seconds on August 8^th.

Then, Madam Speaker, do yourself a favor: up-date your curriculum vitae and start preparing a defense against own impeachment for gross dereliction of your duty to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Scalia's Thumb on the Scales

The best fake news program ever, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, alerted me to Lesley Stahl’s interview of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes. I watched the first half of the interview and have not the stomach to watch the second half. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290_page3.shtml

What I saw and heard has haunted me; my dreams have been pervaded with rebuttals, retorts and reproaches. I have been stricken with nausea brought on not only by Ms Stahl’s fawning, gushing school-girl act but the pompous arrogance of Justice Scalia and his school-boy debate team games of rhetoric.

I’ll leave the legalistic punditry to others to parse but I will posit that El Nino’s description of himself as a ‘Constitutional originalist’- someone who insists the US Constitution be viewed through the same myopic, racist, theocratic lens as was used by most of the Founding Fathers and the framers of the constitution - is just another word-game (of which Scales is quite fond as was shown in the interview).

Now, I’m all for the Founding Fathers. Please consider, however, that with few exceptions, they were all wealthy, educated, white male Protestants of western European decent. Not exactly what anyone would call a democratic cross-section of society, then or now. They were visionary, progressive, brave men but they were also men of their own times. Times have changed. Not many politicians and statesmen in modern America could own slaves, for instance.

Scalia is a firmly out-spoken opponent of what is called the ‘Living Constitution’ whereby the modern connotations of terms such as liberty, freedom, and cruel and unusual punishment are the accepted norm when reading the document. The term ‘originalist’ serves to obfuscate the fact that Scalia is a ‘literalist’ and a fundamentalist who claims to have the only correct interpretation of the fundamentals much like the Bible-belt preachers that insist the world was created in 7 days, 5 to 10,000 years ago.

It must be remembered that ‘Scales’ was appointed by Ronnie the Communicator at the height of the Iran-Contra era, a time when Nicaragua was the devil at our door, when selling drugs to buy arms for a private army was a ‘cool idea’, when Grenada and Panama loomed threateningly and Ronnie, Ollie, Bush the Elder, Schultz and Henry the K were hell-bent on destroying the ‘Evil Empire’ along with our economy. This context must be kept in mind so that the absurdities which ‘Scales’ so charmingly espouses might be clearly seen as balderdash in high resolution. That he is a fundamentalist and a reductionist should place him under the same heading as most other fundamentalists – a nutter to be carefully monitored. (To be quite honest, I have had my fill of fundamentalists. I can only hope that there is a growing number of people who feel the same.) It is a shame and a travesty that he is a senior member if the Supreme Court.

He offers arguments that are both specious and facetious while posturing as a playful wise-guy dismissive of his inferiors. He claims his own position of authority as support for his arguments; i.e. ‘I am Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, therefore, ipso facto, I am right.’ I can’t help but ask how this guy made it onto the Supreme Court or even on a high school debate team. My friends would pick him apart if he tried to pull any of his malarkey without the smoke and mirrors of his lofty position. Too bad Ms Stahl was so ga-ga over meeting him that she left her journalistic cred and her ‘Baloney Detection Kit’ in her other suit.

Here’s in an extended excerpt from Ms Stahl’s interview with Justice Scalia. El Nino’s own words during the interview reveal the flaws in his arguments regarding the 2000 election scandal and the current controversy regarding torture. The interview opens with an appearance by Justice Scalia at the Oxford University Union and a very cleverly worded question from an Oxford student regarding the 2000 US presidential election.

“Of all the cases that have come before him on the court, Bush v. Gore may have been the most controversial. It has been reported that he played a pivotal role in urging the other justices to end the Florida recount, thereby handing the 2000 election to George Bush. The subject came up at the Oxford Union.”

"Supposing yourself as a Supreme Court justice were granted the power to appoint the next president of the United States, who would you pick and why? And would he or she be better than your last choice?" a student asked Scalia.

"You wanna talk about Bush versus Gore. I perceive that," he replied. "I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush versus Gore. We did the right thing. So there!"

“So there!”

‘I’m right and that’s all that needs to be said.’ A very fitting rebuttal for a Supreme Court Justice to make at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of learning, don’t you think? Then, Ms Stahl’s interview begins.

"People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics," Stahl asks.

"I say nonsense," Scalia says.

Was it political?

"Gee, I really don’t wanna get into - I mean this is - get over it. It's so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was seven to two," Scalia says.

Moreover, he says it was not the court that made this a judicial question.

"It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the Florida courts. We didn't go looking for trouble. It was he who said, 'I want this to be decided by the courts.' What are we supposed to say? 'Oh, not important enough,'" Scalia jokes.

Here, El Nino jokes to cover the simple, obvious truth while blaming the victim. What else is one expected to do when confronted with a matter of legality except to take the matter to court? It is as if Scalia would deride Al Gore’s right and the rights of the American people to a court hearing to insure that is justice done. (In this instance, injustice to our republic was done, IMHO.)

Scalia’s position is preposterous. To determine legal matters, to render judicial decisions, such matters are precisely what our courts are for. The courts were the only proper place for Gore to go to rectify such an important legal matter as the sanctity of votes and an honest, accurate count thereof. Does ‘Scales’ think Al should have just slunk away with so much riding on an accurate count? Whatever his answer, he places the onus of the infamous decision in Gore’s lap.

Now back to the interview:

"It ended up being a political decision" Stahl points out.

"Well you say that. I don't say that," Scalia replies.

"You don’t think it handed the election to George Bush?" Stahl asks.

"Well, how does that make it a political decision?" Scalia asks.

Duh!

"It decided the election," Stahl says.

"If that’s all you mean by it, yes," Scalia says.

"That’s all I mean by it," Stahl says.

"Oh, ok. I suppose it did. Although you should add to that that it would have come out the same way, no matter what," Scalia says.

‘No matter what?’

Does ‘Scales’ actually believe that there was no other outcome to consider in the 2000 election? Bush won and that was that; foregone conclusion at that point in the game? No bit of lingering uncertainty regarding the thousands of uncounted, mis-counted and ultimately discounted votes by the citizens of Florida who were in effect, dis-enfranchised in a presidential election?

How is it that this man made it through law school? Or even through a basic course in logic?

The interview now enters El Nino’s views on the matter of torture.

"I don't like torture," Scalia says. "Although defining it is going to be a nice trick.”

Well, Nino, one attempt was made in 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations following the horrific abuses of World War II in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 5 states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This ban on torture and other ill-treatment has subsequently been incorporated into the extensive network of international and regional human rights treaties. It is contained in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by 153 countries, including the United States in 1992, and in the Convention against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Convention against Torture), ratified by 136 countries, including the United States in 1994. It is also codified in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights.

(For information regarding laws defining and prohibiting torture please visit the Human Rights Watch web site. http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/TortureQandA.htm#What )

Evidently, these declarations, conventions, covenants, and codes are deficient in the view of Scales Scalia. Perhaps he prefers the views of Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo as expressed in the infamous ‘Torture Memo’. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1

“But who's in favor of it?” Scalia continues. “Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the - everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution," he says.

"If someone's in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression 'cruel and unusual punishment,' doesn't that apply?" Stahl asks.

"No, No," Scalia replies.

"Cruel and unusual punishment?" Stahl asks.

"To the contrary," Scalia says. "Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so."

This beggars the imagination. Scalia tries to equate ‘punishment’ to ‘torture’ in the attempt, as a literalist, to undermine the implied Constitutional ban on torture. A quick look at a decent dictionary will reveal that punishment has the additional meaning of ‘rough handling or mistreatment’ as well as penalty for infraction. Torture is used as punishment and punishment, generally speaking, is a form of torture. (Punishment is never intended to be pleasant, after all.) Once again, Scalia’s attempted resort to tricks of rhetoric is feeble, hollow and even devoid of the lexical grounding necessary for such a cheap trick to pass logically.

Fortunately for the charming El Nino, the formulation of logical discourse is not Ms Stahl’s forte. She continues moony-eyed.

"Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody…," Stahl says.

"And you say he's punishing you?" Scalia asks.

"Sure," Stahl replies.

"What's he punishing you for? You punish somebody…," Scalia says.

"Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know," Stahl says.

"It's the latter. And when he's hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he's punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He's trying to extract…," Scalia says.

"Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he's going to beat the ‘you-know-what’ out of you…," Stahl replies.

"Anyway, that’s my view," Scalia says. "And it happens to be correct."

What view? He only obstructed discourse in this segment of the interview. His bludgeon of choice is to laughingly pooh-pooh the half-hearted challenges offered by Ms Stahl. He gave no credible argument on either topic, the 2000 election debacle or the torture scandal highlighted by Abu Ghraib. Since he was stammering and painting himself into a corner on this one, he sought his last refuge and fell back on his status of authority.

What a major Dick!

If Scales is “one of the most prominent legal thinkers of his generation” , it’s easy to see why the Constitution has been gutted and why the US is in such deep doo-doo.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290.shtml

http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html