Bush's Guantanamo Legacy

Earlier this week, the NYT reported that a former Guantanamo detainee has emerged as a leader of the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda and is suspected in the deadly September bombing of the US Embassy in Yemen.

Thanks to the Bush Administration's policy of holding what they claimed are terror suspects for long periods of time without charges and torturing them while doing it, we're sure to see more cases like this. How can anyone be surprised? After what these detainees have been through, what would be surprising is if they weren't committed to inflicting as much harm as possible on the US. Bush cheerleaders bleat the canard that he kept us safe (as if 9/11 is on someone else's record), but he did anything but. When the next attack comes, the blood will be on Bush's hands. Again.

So this is the mess the Bush cabal has left for President Obama to clean up: either keep the victims of Guantanamo locked up for the rest of their lives simply because they've justifiably grown to hate the US with a passion that will know no satisfaction or do the right thing and give them their day in a fair court along with the possibility they may go free and wind up as a hero and leader of the next generation of anti-American jihadists created by Bush's neocon Middle-East policies.

This is the legacy of George W. Bush and his war crimes. It's why he and others of his administration must also face the American justice system, if not The Hague's.

The Taliban Cancer

Thanks to an administration full of neocons fixated on Iraq, the US failed to address the real problem of the region: the Taliban. A lack of attention and resources has allowed not only its return to Afghanistan but its control of areas of northern Pakistan as well. Here's a rather chilling article from the NYT describing how the Taliban has returned to the region with a vengeance (quite literally).

One can well imagine what this means for the future security of the US. Of course, because the Bush administration did nothing about our country's porous borders, freshly trained terrorists will have little trouble slipping inside the US. We were supposedly fighting them over there so we didn't have to fight them here. If only we had actually done that.

The state sponsor of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda was the Taliban. And it will be the Taliban again, with significantly more territory under its control. Isn't it finally time to eliminate the real threat to our country, especially since doing so would have the added benefit of support from the locals? We hope President Obama agrees, and takes the action that is a good seven years overdue.

Quote of the Day

Reality is not the same to the doer as it is to the sayer.
   - Haki Madhubuti

Change Is Coming

Over at 4&20 blackbirds, problembear captures the mood of the nation quite well.

we need to send a message that america is tired of being fleeced by quick buck artists. we expect companies to conduct themselves with good old fashioned integrity and good ethical business practices. this is your official notice that the scam artist model of business that was encouraged and rewarded under bush’s regime has stopped being acceptable in america as of Jan 20, 2009. the ground has indeed shifted. pay attention CEO’s, Health insurance managers, loan sharks and unethical landlords…

as for the irrelevant gnats and mosquitos who spread venom on the change taking place in america- bring it on because you look ridiculous, mean-spirited and sadly pathetic. americans are through with the failed greed-first, trickle down mentality of the far right. all you do is paint yourselves further into corners of your own malicious and jealous venal vituperation. everything you do or say to try to stop the change sweeping accross this nation will only build further resentment for your efforts.

now is a good time for some serious quiet time and a long nap for spoiled little two year olds who fail to see that americans have spoken and it is now time to work together to rebuild this country. any more temper tantrums out of the overly spoiled extreme far right and the greedy people and companies they support will be met with punishment. there’s a new sheriff in town now folks and he does intend to reward good behavior and punish bad…and the majority of americans intend to help him do just that.

There's Beer in Utah!

There's good news in Big Love land. The NYT reports on the growth of craft microbreweries in Utah. One of the great things (and there are many) about life in the northern US Rockies is the plethora of excellent craft beers (truly craft - not the crap AB and its competitors are cranking out hoping to play on the movement to quality over quantity in beer consumption) to enjoy. But we also remember our last trip through the National Parks in southern Utah and how difficult it was to find a place just to sit down have a beer. Maybe in the age of Obama the Mormons will loosen up a little and remember, as Ben Franklin observed, beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.

Quote of the Day

Well-being is not found in isolation, possessions, or power itself; it usually appears while serving others.
   - Manuel Arango

Investigate

In recent statements, PEBO has appeared to indicate that he won't push for an investigation into all the various criminal wrong-doings, war-related and otherwise, of the Bush Administration. Failing to conducted such an investigation would be a mistake of tragic proportions. To paraphrase George Santayana, "Forgetting the past will allow its perpetrators to repeat it."

Paul Krugman recently spoke to this very issue in his NYT column.

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies....

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

History already tells us that should Republicans return to power, this is exactly what they'll do. As Krugman recounts, Reagan-era conspirators (led by ex-CIA head and then-VP Papi Bush) ignored explicit prohibitions from Congress (iow, they broke the law) and violated the Constitution in order to sell arms to Iran and fund the Nicaraguan contras. First, Bush 41 pardoned the major players, and then Bush 43 brought them back into government. Over the past eight years, their collective attitude has blossomed like a malignant tumor, so much so this past week Dick Cheney not only openly admitted to authorizing war crimes, he took pride in it.

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder testified before the Senate that no one is above the law. He needs to prove that he means it by appointing a special prosecutor - preferably Patrick Fitzgerald - to investigate all senior Bush officials and to bring charges against anyone who violated his oath of office and/or the laws of our nation. To neglect to do so is to engage in the same kind of behavior as the last administration, and that's certainly not the kind of change we're going to accept or believe in.

Quote of the Day

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
   - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

43 Enablers

Dubya's always been a spoiled incompetent, protected from the consequences of his behavior by his father's friends and connections. While The Decider deserves the lion's share of the blame for plunging our country into a collection of crises it will take years from which to recover, he couldn't have done it alone.

Think Progress has named the top 43 members of the Bush Administration responsible for helping Dubya fuck things up so completely. Check out the entire list here. We list our own favorites below, along with Think Progress' commentary, in the order we would have ranked them due to their ability to have moved the administration in a different direction had they chosen to do so.

1. Dick Cheney -- The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who shot his friend while in office. The "most powerful and controversial vice president." Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS's Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, "I don't buy that." His top placement in our survey says otherwise.

2. Karl Rove -- There wasn't a scandal in the Bush administration that Rove didn't have his fingerprints all over -- see Plame, Iraq war deception, Gov. Don Siegelman, U.S. Attorney firings, missing e-mails, and more. As senior political adviser and later as deputy chief of staff, "The Architect" was responsible for politicizing nearly every agency of the federal government.

3. Alberto Gonzales -- Fundamentally dishonest and woefully incompetent, Gonzales was involved in a series of scandals, first as White House counsel and then as Attorney General. Some of the most notable: pressuring a "feeble" and "barely articulate" Attorney General Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to sign off on Bush's illegal wiretapping program; approving waterboarding and other torture techniques to be used against detainees; and leading the firing of U.S. Attorneys deemed not sufficiently loyal to Bush.

18. Condoleezza Rice -- As Bush's national security adviser, Rice was another strong advocate for invading Iraq, once famously warning that the U.S. should attack Iraq and not wait for solid proof of its WMD because "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Rice also ignored an urgent warning from the CIA before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that a strike inside the U.S. was imminent.

6. Paul Wolfowitz -- As Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Wolfowitz was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war, arguing for the invasion as early as Sept. 15, 2001. Testifying before Congress in February 2003, Wolfowitz said that it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." Wolfowitz eventually admitted that "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction," as a justification for war, "because it was the one reason everyone [in the administration] could agree on."

7. David Addington -- "Cheney's Cheney" was the "most powerful man you've never heard of." As the leader of Bush's legal team and Cheney's chief of staff, Addington was the biggest proponent of some of Bush's most notorious legal abuses, such as torture and warrantless surveillance, and is a loyal follower of the so-called unitary executive theory.

9. Douglas Feith -- Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, Feith headed up the notorious Office of Special Plans, an in-house Pentagon intelligence shop devised by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to produce intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon's Inspector General found the OSP's work produced "conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."

12. Ari Fleischer -- Bush's first press secretary helped redefine the role as that of liar-in-chief rather than informer of the public, earning a reputation as "the world's most dishonest flack." Whereas his successors sometimes looked uncomfortable lying, Fleischer was having fun, spinning a cowed and gullible press corps through two massive tax cuts and the initiation of a war undertaken on false pretenses.

15. L. Paul Bremer -- This Presidential Medal of Freedom winner took over the Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2003. Under his mismanagement, the insurgency exploded in Iraq. Bremer claimed he had all the troops he needed to secure the country, overestimated the strength of the new U.S.-trained Iraqi army, disbanded the Iraqi army leaving thousands of Iraqi soldiers with no income and no occupation, and enacted a de-Baathification law that barred many experienced Iraqis from government positions.

11. John Yoo -- As a lawyer for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo authored a series of legal memos giving military interrogators authority to use torture and coercive techniques when interviewing terrorist suspects. Yoo said that only those techniques that inflict pain equivalent to "death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions" constitute torture. Last year, he refused to answer whether or not the president could order a detainee to be buried alive.

36. Christopher Cox -- Under Chairman Cox, the Securities and Exchange Commission censored internal reports showing that it ignored critical signs pointing to Wall Street's meltdown. Cox's SEC also failed to detect Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, despite a decade of warnings.

26. Harriet Miers -- Well-known for being Bush's failed Supreme Court nominee, Miers also thought it was "important" to her as White House Counsel that Rove protege Tim Griffin was installed as a U.S. Attorney, making her a central figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal. She is said to have called Bush "the most brilliant man she had ever met."

Clearly, Harriet's life has been one surrounded by dunces. And who would have ever thought that of Dubya's three Attorneys General, the best - by far - would turn out to be John Ashcroft, the only one who recognized that spying on American citizens without explicit court-approved warrants was illegal and unconstitutional and who refused to go along with it.

What a collection of criminals, thieves, lackeys, and whores. Good riddance to the entire lot of them. May they spend their remaining years behind bars contemplating their 'service' to our country.

The Past Eight Years

The past eight years have been an astonishing, overwhelming collection of illegality; incompetence; corruption; and craven, bitterly divisive politics foisted upon our country by the worst administration in US history. Although it's a far from complete review, Keith Olbermann takes us through the lowlights of George W. Bush's presidency.





Republicans constantly complain about how government isn't the solution, it's the problem. And no wonder. Every time they're given control of the machinery, they go about intentionally ruining not only the factory, but destroying everything around it as well.

We've tried it the Republican way for a generation and now our country is saddled with its greatest set of challenges since the Civil War, if not its founding. No more. From here on out, it's up to Progressives and others who understand the benefits government can deliver to the people it's supposed to serve (as opposed to the well-heeled corporate interests that are the sole constituency of Republicans) and who are interested in running its institutions well instead of pillaging its treasury; lying to its press; abusing its military; and violating its laws, Constitution, and international treaties at every turn. May Republicans all rot in the wilderness of political irrelevance until they finally wither and die.

Quote of the Day

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.
   - Morrie Schwartz