corrente

Let me tell you now - Revoluton, evolution, exhortations - Flagellation, deregulation, interrogations - Mass media consolidation, Unitary usurptations - Secrets, lies, black operations - Congratulations! - All we are saying is give torture a chance, All we are saying is give torture a chance!

Greetings subjects of the Unitary Executive National Security Supralegal Dual State! And a glorious welcome to The Kowtow Twelve: Democrats Carper of Delaware, Johnson of South Dakota, Landrieu of Loozianna, Lautenberg of New Joisey, Joe "The Connecticut Snit" Lieberman of Connecticut, Menendez of New Joisey, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor of Arkansaw, Rockefeller of West Virginny, Salazar of Colorado, and Stabenow of Michigan. A snappy fully extended arm length salute to each of you for a job well done. Hail to the reinvigorated supremacy of the Unitary Executive! Likewise a hardy hip-hip-hooray for the high kicking goosesteppers of the Republican Party who hop-hop to attention at the drop of a jackboot. Except for that traitorous anarchist Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island who will no doubt want to be more careful about what he has to say in the future. Praise be unto the Power and the All Seeing Glory of the Unitary Executive Perogative. Now...

Please welcome Counsel and Unitary Executive Block Warden John Yoo who will deliver the Oath of Allegiance to the glorious Unitary Executive National Security State for which we have - by the powers vested in us - been blessed this very day. All rise and repeat after Yoo:

The authority of the Leader is total and all embracing: within it all resources available to the body politic emerge; it covers every facet of the life of the people; it embraces all members of the German [American] community pledged to loyalty and obedience to the Leader. The Leader's authority is subject to no checks or controls; it is circumscribed by no private preserve of jealously guarded individual rights; it is free and idependent, overriding and unfettered.

All may now be seated. And I'd like to also thank Nazi Party constitutional lawyer Ernst Rudolf Huber for that timeless 1939 pledge of loyalty. A snappy fully extended arm length salute to Herr Huber as well. Wherever in hell he may be. We shall now proceede to the business at hand.

4 The Heroic Supralegal National Unitary Executive Perogative Authoritarian State Marches On! All Hail The Will Of The Leader Embodied In The Warrantless Authoritarian State! Release the Winged Shadows of a Resurgent Neo-Fascist American Diktat.

Francisco Franco is NOT dead!

House approves warrantless wiretap law
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The House approved a bill Thursday that would grant legal status to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program with new restrictions. Republicans called it a test before the election of whether Democrats want to fight or coddle terrorists.

And the Kowtow 12 and the usual Republican Party Paradeground Rubber Stamp Goosestep Review will step faithfully to the tuck and roll of the drum.

X X X X X X X
TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME

Like, for example: Suppose I were to capture internationally recognized domestic terror suspect Dick Cheney sneaking around my porch one afternoon trying to shoot the humingbirds off my hummingbird feeder. Well, now I figure, I could whack him in the side of the head with a rusty scoop shovel, roll him up in a couple of yards of 2mil plastic sheeting, duct tape the bloodless swine to an ironing board, and haul him up to my hiding place to dunk him upside down in a pond a few times until he eventually divulges the exact location of his secret undisclosed location in the remote wilds of West Virginia. And then I could go to his secret newly disclosed location and loot his gun cabinet and make off with a few of his favorite knick-knacks. I like that life-size bronze statue of Don Rumsfeld in Bavarian goathide bundhosen and traditional suspenders. Oh look, a framed photo of Lynne Cheney bench pressing 275 pounds! And more photos of Lynne... Oh my, Jeezis!, is that a Lockheed Martin Aegis Warship tatooed on her ass?

And I could do all that as long as I wasn't too serious about it. Or severe. Whatever that means. Because, as I understand, thanks to John McQuixote McCain and his rustic sidekick Sancho Hayshaker Graham, and some old Virginian ass called Dapple Warner, I wouldn't even be in any kind of trouble from those nervous naysayers in Switzerland who are always wringing their old European hands over these kinds of unilateral free agent well-meaning pursuits. Plus, thanks to John "Full Mettle" McCain and his two steadfast loyal aide de camps, nobody's ever going to find out about any of it anyway. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.) So, what the hell.

Or, if I wanted to persuade crazy Dick to give me a timeline on when the hell exactly he and his crooked cronies plan to release the US Constitution they've been relentlessly beating and torturing and trying to saw the head off of for the last six years... well, I think I could now pursue a suitable line of inquiry without fear of being subjected to too much troublesome backlash from noisy do-gooder activist judges and pissy ACLU types. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.) All within the shifty boundries of the new "Freedom of Persuasion" program of course. And, afterall, Cheney himself intentionally fed all of us a serious heaping helping of plainly false and elaborately misleading information and altogether baldfaced lies about the pre-war intelligence in Iraq. And he continues to do so to this day. Which, as a direct result, has gotten an awful lot of innocent people seriously killed and maimed and generally very severely terrorized in a vast combination of ways. Not to forget all the hummingbirds he shot off my back porch. If all that doesn't add up to the schemings of an international evil doer I don't know what the hell does. Seems to me it's pretty much open season on Dick Cheney for anyone who'd lik eto try to get their hands on the crazy bugger. I'm proceeding on principle here. (I'm pretty sure The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

Let's face it. If anyone deserves to be be dunked upside down in a cow pond while turtles and minnows nibble on his eyelids it's Dick Cheney. I'd even be willing to drag the ironing board with Cheney on-board [secured with duct tape and wrapped in plastic sheeting] onto that Tim Russert TV blab show some Sunday morning or another and force feed carrot juice through a funnel jammed up his nostrils until he agrees to tell Russert where he buried the bodies of the two hitchhikers he killed on Christmas Eve in 1966 - outside of Upton, Wyoming - somewhere in the Thunder Basin National Grassland. Yup, that was Cheney who did that. [took me 10 minutes to persuade him otherwise]. That's high value information obtained by means of persuasion. High value information we can all use. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.) He'd confess to that mischief after a couple of memory refreshing dunks in the sluice. Lemme tell ya, five or ten minutes with the turtles and I wouldn't be able to shut the mumbling bastard up. He'd tell me anything he'd think I'd like to hear. I'd probably even have to spend a good deal of an afternoon debunking his own bullshit on his own behalf. Take me half an hour with the carrot juice just to convince him he hadn't shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Extracting reliable information is a slow plodding exacting process. Three steps forward, two back. But it's that one step forward that makes it all worth the while. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

Freedom through Semantics: I can find nothing inherently undignified or inhumane in any "serious" or "severe" sense of the word(s) about any of the interdiction and interrogation methods I've described above. Some of it may seem somewhat undecorous, or even rude, or unbecoming at times, but lets face it: it doesn't mention "undecorous," unbecoming," or "rude," in Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. I don't think. At least not anymore as far as we're concerned here in the good old USA. Maybe it does, but so what... you go to work with what silly little indignities you may have. Shit happens. Let's roll! (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

Lets be frank for the sake of clarity: A little duct tape never hurt anyone. And the tape would be mostly stuck to the plastic so there wouldn't be any painful tape-yanking bodyhair extraction methods involved here. Nor is a quick dunk in a refreshing 65 degree spring fed country pond full of bluegills anything to get too upset about. Not much bad about it at all as I see it. Builds character. I'm sure that that strung out gum-beater Rush Limbaugh would agree with me here. (And The Kowtow 12 will also back me up.)

A few minnows and turtles ain't gonna do any severe damage neither. And carrot juice is actually pretty good for you too. Nutritious. It's not like I intend to force Cheney to stand around for 40 hours shackled to a cold wet concrete basement floor directly under a dripping 40 watt light bulb wearing nothing but five inch Hussy sandal strap high heeled shoes and pair of pink nylon thigh-high stockings while Lilith my one-eyed pet jackal hisses at the bloody broken chunks of hot drill bits (gotta have the right "tools" for the job) that scitter across the floor and a recording of the Howard Dean scream plays in a continuous loop from a crackly loudspeaker suspended nine inches from the back of his hooded sweating head. Nuttin' like that. It's just a joke! I'm not that serious. In fact, I'm not serious at all. Nothing like that has ever even entered my mind.

But even if it did: as far as I can determine from my reading of the latest "compromise" on such creative inquests being outlined and redefined and modified and innovated in the new and compromised Article III of the Geneva Conventions - or any of that other legalistic mumbo jumbo stuff they are reforming - I'd probably escape any kind of severe challenges or charges of wrongdoing or serious objections that might arise from my less than serious rigorous aggressive efforts to reign in global and domestic evil wherever it may rise up on its broken hind legs. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.) And a little frat-house ironing board prank ain't gonna do any serious damage to an old warhorse quarterback hero like Big Time let alone get me dragged off kicking and screaming to some dungeon in the Alps. Or wherever it is they drag you off to. Besides, what's tricky Dick gonna do, tell it to a judge or jury or something like that! Ha. Indeed. LOL.

I could always get a permission slip from president Bush if I wanted to. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

I know what you are thinking. You're thinking that our Supreme Paperfamilias the Swaggerlord George W. Bush would never let me cart Dick Cheney around wrapped in plastic sheeting and taped to an ironing board because the 'W' has the final say on who gets the old workover and who don't. Thanks in large part to the valor, temerity, and hardihood of Midway McCain and his Hip-Hip-Hooray Cut-n-Run Carnival of Congressional Compromise. (and the subsequent blessings of The Kowtow 12). The High Priest of Brush Clearing and Faith Based Flatulence would certainly never allow such an indignity to befall the mastermind Cheney. Well, I think junior will change his own mind pretty fast when I remind him of the time his mother was found splayed out in front of the monument of "Iron Felix" in Moscow's Lubyanka Square giggling like a summer brook with her party dress up around her pearls and her pantyhose flapping around at her swollen ankles while a fat oily Boris Yeltsin stood over her in his underpants waving around a half empty bottle of Moskovskaya and singing "Glory To Our Free Fatherland". That visit cost Poppy the START II Treaty. The Ruskies almost got South Padre Island as a incentive to keep it all quiet. Fortunately, a $100 dollar gift certificate from LL Bean pacified a dangerous situation on both sides. I'll bet you're wondering where I might have heard a story like that aren't you?

Dick Cheney. Thats where! He volunteered up that sensitive information just before we had our carrot juice one bright and shining morning in America. At the base of a bright shining city on a hill. Just after I threatened... I mean persuaded... persuaded him that I might accidentally shove... I mean spill! Accidentally spill... a 12oz bottle of gasket blowing swamp rot Looziana habernero hellfire and brimstone hot sauce up his fucking carrot funnel. We reached something of a compromise after that brisk exchange of gentle physical contact and joking around and he promised to provide me any additional high value intelligence details I would need in order to persuade 'W' that turning Big Time loose at this stage would not be in the best interest of national security or Bush family values as he understands them. Especially since I would have the KGB file photos from Lubyanka Square which I retrieved earlier from Dick's smoking hole of undisclosed knick-knacks. In fact, I'm thinking of having the entire Soviet sex with the beetch spectacular Cheney described to me restaged in bronze and put on display at the Simon Bolivar Center in Caracus Venezuela. Just kidding. A little practical persuasion and joking around and gentle backslapping is sometimes necessary when it comes to gaining the trust of your detainee guest. Keeps things hopping right along too. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up on that.)

I wonder if Lindsey Graham would like me to persuade anyone to back his VP candidacy in 2008. Or maybe he'd like me to have a go at... I mean have a persuasive tete-a-tete with Lincoln Chafee on behalf of the GOP and the divinely inspired glory of the Unitary Executive National Security Supralegal Dual State. Maybe His Hallowed Judeo-Christian Holiness Joe "Lone Wolf" Lieberman could arrange for me to do some arm twisting... I mean backslapping, up there in the Nutmeg State. A little incentive to vote Right never hurt anyone. If ya know what i mean. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

It's the least I could do considering they both helped define our new "Freedom of Persuasion" program. Nothing serious or anything severe mind you. Just take some folks out for some "tobogganing" later on this winter. Once the ponds freeze over real good the ironing boarding looses its appeal for me. So, I like to explore other more seasonal methods and avenues of persuasion and inducement. If ya know what I mean. And I think ya do Besides, some idiot would always manage to get their tongue stuck to the metal on the cold ironing board at least once a winter and I'd have to boil it off with hot coffee while they thrashed around like a beached mackerel. Which just ain't dignified or decent-like or something. Or they'd get cold and frostbit and pass out from the agonizing tissue blistering pain and I'd have to drag them all the way back to the damned hideout like a sack of frozen sod and prop 'em up in front of a roaring hearth fire to thaw out. Set em up right beside my life size bronze statue of Donald Rumsfeld in Bavarian goathide bundhosen and traditional suspenders. I feel a snappy fully extended arm length salute coming on. All I am saying, is give torture... i mean persuasion!... give persuasion a chance. Heh. (And The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

Oh no. There are scary looking men with wires in their ears running up my driveway... (And I doubt The Kowtow 12 will back me up.)

Come Lilith!... we must flee into the forest.

The End.

UPDATE:

Published on Thursday, October 26, 2006 by the McClatchy Newspapers
Cheney Confirms That Detainees Were Subjected to Water-Boarding
by Jonathan S. Landay

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Jack Balkin:

I am puzzled by and ashamed of the Democrats' moral cowardice on this bill. The latest version of the bill blesses detainee abuse and looks the other way on forms of detainee torture; it immunizes terrible acts; it abridges the writ of habeas corpus-- in the last, most egregious draft, it strips the writ for alleged enemy combatants whether proved to be so or not, whether citizens or not, and whether found in the U.S. or overseas.

[...]

The current bill, if passed, will give the Executive far more dictatorial powers to detain, prosecute, judge and punish than it ever enjoyed before. Over the last 48 hours, it has been modified in a hundred different ways to increase executive power at the expense of judicial review, due process, and oversight. And what is more, the bill's most outrageous provisions on torture, definition of enemy combatants, secret procedures, and habeas stripping, are completely unnecessary to keep Americans safe. Rather, they are the work of an Executive branch that has proven itself as untrustworthy as it is greedy: always pushing the legal and constitutional envelope, always seeking more power and less accountability.

If the Democrats do not stand up to the President on this bill, if they refuse to filibuster it or even threaten to filibuster it, they do not deserve to win any additional seats in the House or in the Senate. They will have delivered a grievous blow to our system of checks and balances, stained America's reputation around the world, and allowed an obscenity to disfigure the American system of law and justice. Far worse than a misguided zealot is the moral coward who says nothing and allows that zealotry to do real harm. ~ [read full post: follow link above]

Digby:

I'm with Atrios. If these religion scolds vote for this bill I will never stand for being lectured by them again about how liberals need to be more respectful of the faith and values crowd. The time is now for them show what they are made of. Let's see it.

Rewind the projection machine

This is what Jeane Kirkpatrick (Ambassador to Right Wing Doubletalk)wrote in Dictatorships and Double Standards (published 1982):

When an unrealized goal becomes the operational aim of an elite endowed with coercive power and a sense of righteousness, tragedy becomes more probable than progress. Historians may contemplate the irony of liberating revolutions that enslave, of brotherhood that ends at the guillotine, of equality enforced by a maximum ruler; the people, on the other hand, are left to suffer.

[...]

[...] The distinctive characteristic of the misery wreaked by Nazi and Soviet regimes on millions was precisely that it represented deliberate policy. The torturing, enslaving, freezing, starving, gassing, shooting, were not the acts of furtive madmen, but the purposive, collaborative action of thousands who had achieved in their societies a role of authority and access to the coercive power that is a defining characteristic of government. These authorities justified their policies - as authorities always do - by reference to a public purpose: a vision (however diabolic) of a public good that grants permission to torture, murder, and otherwise indulge aggressive instincts.

Yes, "contemplate the irony" now, Jeane. Interesting isn't it, how Rigth-Wing authoritarian elites, "endowed with coercive power and a sense of righteousness", have managed to "enforced by a maximun ruler" (unitary executive power) "a vision of a public good that grants permission to torture...."

Any of that sound familiar to you today? How about you Harry Reid? How about you Barak Obama? How about you Holy Joe (the Connecticut snit) Lieberman? What about you Nancy Pelosi, you find anything thuggish in any of the above so-called "justified policies" at hand?

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Excerpt below from previous post (Sept. 08, 2006)

WASHINGTON DC, CIRCA 2001:

Steve Coll, (Washington Post South Asia bureau chief 1989-1992) writing in Ghost Wars:

The warnings did not register. The CIA briefed Bush's senior national security team about al Qaeda, but its officers sensed no deep interests: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz - the four with the strongest ideas and the most influence - had spent many months thinking and talking about what they would emphasize during their first one hundred days in the white House. They were focused on missle defense, military reform, China and Iraq. Neither terrorism nor South Asia was high on the list.

In their early briefings, Clarke's office described bin Laden as an "existential" threat to the United States, meaning that the danger he posed went beyond the dozens or hundreds of casualties al Qaeda might inflict in serial bombing attacks. Bin Laden and his followers sought mass destruction in American cities if they could, Clarke and officers at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center firmly believed. But they failed to persuade Bush or his top advisers. [...] CIA briefers sensed that Bush's national security cabinet viewed terrorism as the kind of phenomenon it had been during the 1980's: potent but limited, a theatrical sort of threat that could produce episodic public crises but did not jeapordize the fundamental security of the United States. [Coll, page 541]

Sandy Berger, who felt the first President Bush had failed to arrange adequate transition briefings on national security for the incoming Clinton team, vowed to run a handoff fo the sort he would have wished to receive. The "number one" issue on his agenda, he recalled, "was terrorism and al Qaeda.... We briefed them fully on what we were doing, on what else was under consideration, and what the threat was." Berger ordered each directorate in the National Security Council to write an issues memo for Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. The memos were then enhanced by oral briefings and slide show presentations. Berger himself attended only one, the session organized by Richard Clarke to talk about bin Laden and al Qaeda. "Im here because I want to underscore how important this issue is," Berger explained to Rice. Later, in the West Wing of the White House, Berger told his successor, "You're going to spend more time during your four years on terrorism generally and bin Laden specifically than any issue. [Coll, Ghost Wars; page 541]

Clarke saw the early weeks of the Bush administration as an opportunity to win a more receptive audience for his ideas about bombing the Taliban and challenging bin Laden. He had on his desk analytical papers, recommendations and discarded Cabinet agendas from the last weeks of the Clinton administration. Clarke and his aides composed a three page memorandum to Rice dated January 25. A Cabinet-level meeting about al Qaeda's imminent threat was "urgently needed," he and his chief fo staff, Roger Cressey, wrote. This was not "some narrow little terrorist issue." Suspected al qaeda "sleeper cells" inside the United States were "a major threat in being." [Coll, Ghost Wars; page 542]

Clarke's January 25 memo went nowhere. No Cabinet meeting about al Qaeda, Afghanistan, or regional policy was scheduled. weeks later Rice completed the first phase of her NSC reorganization, and Clarke formally lost his cabinet-level status on terrorism issues. [Coll, Ghost Wars; page 543]

full post back here

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