Login HereMy favorite paragraph from Cheney Chapter Two (my emph):
That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of specific interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA -- including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government classified as a war crime in 1947. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.
If you have a favorite paragraph to which emphasis should be added, please leave it in the comments....
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well then…
Teddy
Continuing analysis:
The eighth para sets up the fact that the “bybee” memorandum allowing torture was discovered and disowned, eventually attributed to John Yoo.
Ninth para fires point blank. “the “torture memo,” …, was not Yoo’s work alone. In an interview, Yoo said that Addington, as well as Gonzales and deputy White House counsel Timothy E. Flanigan, contributed to the [torture memo].”
This is the first fatal blow at Cheney. Yoo has carried this water for four years now, and seemed perfectly happy to do so. Now, he is speaking ON THE RECORD and directly accusing Addington, GONZALES, and Flanigan directly of being its real authors.
Tenth para: “The vice president’s lawyer advocated what was considered the memo’s most radical claim [that no one could restrict the President’s power to torture if need arose]” This pushes the majority of blame directly onto cheney’s lawyer.
Eleventh para: “Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. … that opinion approved as lawful a long list of specific interrogation techniques … the U.S. government classified as a war crime in 1947.”
Twelfth para: “Yoo said … in an interview [he warned] … Cheney and … Rumsfeld that it would be dangerous … to use the harshest techniques,”
MSM Take Home Message: “Cheney’s people originated the torture concept and forced John Yoo to sign off on it. He warned them it was illegal. They did it anyway.”
FN Take Home Message: “Bush’s lawyer John Yoo, a respected constitutional scholar, was forced to sign off on Cheney’s torture policy despite warning him it was illegal.”
Thanks, Teddy. I was starting to keep an eye on the # of comments. These articles are going to be fodder for many posts in the days to come. A four parter. Two more to follow and my gut says the best is yet to come.
Who even thinks up this sh*t? Burying a person alive is discussed in the White House?
Hello punaise!
looks like I missed some kind of Cheney bombshell.
hey, Loo Hoo and all, just passing through…
a 4 parter in the wapoo about cheney. gotta read it even it is isn’t froomkin. good stuff for sure, pun.
from epuville, brought upstairs
Felix, you come down from the tree line anytime you want and take advantage of some hammock time here in the trees lining the shore.
thanks Suzanne - I’ll check it out.
Best stuff since Walter Reed for the WaPo. Better in fact, because it comes just on the heels of Cheney telling congress to kiss his a*s.
analysis continues:
Twelfth para: Powell and Condi learn about the torture memo and confront gonzales over it at the white house.
Thirteenth para: “Rice “very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions [and] she threatened to take the matter to the president if Gonzales kept them out of the loop again. Powell remarked … Rice dressed down gonzales “in full Nurse Ratched mode,”"”. Condi and Powell strike a blow for righteousness and goodness; Fredo has no clue, is almost like a mental hospital patient (CCN is about a mental hospital where NR has patients lobotomized for sassing her)
Fourteenth Para: “Neither of them took their objections to Cheney, the official said, a much more dangerous course.” WTF? this is the bleeding SECRETARY of STATE and the President’s NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR. And if they talk back to Cheney, it’s “a much more dangerous course.” What is he gonna do, invite them hunting at gunpoint?
MSM Take Home Message: “Powell and Rice told Gonzales to stop the torture, but he was so dysfunctional it was like talking to a mental patient. They did this rather than risk confronting Cheney directly.”.
FN Take Home Message: “Powell and Rice tried to warn President Bush of Cheney’s terrible actions through Gonzales because they were afraid Cheney would shoot them in the face in his office. Unfortunately, Mr. Gonzales has no mind of his own and didn’t help the situation any.”
End of second topic, time for a break. Dang this is hard work. No wonder I retired!
Alfred Kelgarries @ 3
I bow to thee a thousand times for this … perspective/insight/wisdom … I will read the rest tomorrow,
now my bed calls … and unlike demi, no one is feeding me ice cream … *g*
G’nite all !!!
(waving g’nite to all the sleepy firepups)
can you imagine how awful it would be to work in the WH with all this horrible stuff?
I’m surprised someone hasn’t cracked sooner…
Good nit petrocelli and all sleepy pups.
Makes Rice look great. She comes out of Part Two with the endorsement of Powell, but afraid of Cheney. Will she be Cheney’s replacement?
Alfred Kelgarries @ 12
Nice work. You’ve convinced me that I’ve got to read this stuff.
Powell was used to deferring to Cheney from the time when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Cheney was Secretary of Defense. Perhaps Condi was taking her cue from Powell. But all of this was well before the invasion of Iraq and even before Powell catastrophic appearance before the U.N.
I wonder if Broder, Novak, Krauthammer, and Hiatt ever read the news section of their paper.
But old coastie, isn’t it amazing that it’s all coming out now? All within months of each other? I’m wondering if Leahy and Waxman have given some ol’ tomatoes to key people.
Loo Hoo. @ 5
I think the last despot known to bury people alive as an interrogation technique was our dear friend Saddam. Before that, I think I once read something that Hassan II in Morocco (considered to be one of the worst Arab despots ever) did it to interrogate some of the officers who tried to overthrow him. Dickus is in good company.
Loo Hoo - I’m thinking this is an inside job… Cheney must go - not sure who the power is that is making it happen… (my best guess is Poppy and the CIA) and somebody somewhere shouted, “war crimes!” - because it sure looks that way to me…
The WaPoo article will cause even more rats to leave the sinking ship. Loose rats have loose lips.
loose rats with loose lips with sharp steeling knives in their possession!
Alfred Kelgarries @ 3
Alfred,
Thanks for the summary!
But who sez Yoo is a “respected” constitutional scholar? He ought to be disbarred!!!
The fact that even Yoo thought Cheney’s torture policy was illegal shows just how whacko it was.
Bob in HI
OldCoastie @ 21
Someone somewhere gave permission for the waapoo to print this. Therein lies the key to learning the who of who did this.
Well now, this looks like a fun party.
Oh, and Cheney’s a dick. No, wait, I mean, ah hell. You know what I mean.
Suzanne @ 22
(Spook taking a break)
The really interesting parts to me so far are:
1) Addington is DEFNINTELY getting thrown under the bus.
2) Yoo is NOT GETTING THROWN UNDER THE BUS. He is allowed to whitewash himself onto Addington. Note that he speaks of actions that are clearly not only illegal, but potential war crimes. Nazi lawyer at Nuremburg were HANGED for handing down decisions like this. I am not joking, go look it up.
3) Gonzales is being flip flopped, but generally shown to be a bliteringly incompetent idiot.
4) Cheney is NOT getting THROWN under the bus. Rather, he has been staked out at a railroad crossing with dynamite sticks in every orifice with burning fuses as a train bears down. This is not an assasination piece, this is a media Weapon Of Mass Digustion.
Geeze…
pull up a highlighter, steve a - ak is going over the waapoo bus driving over cheney
Bob Schacht @ 24
Bob, the FN parts are of course bs. I’m including them to show how carefully this piece has been written to give FN’s puppets their talking points.
Hi, Suzanne and everyone else who’s still goin’ strong -
Having another weird non-sleep nite (guaranteeing tomorrow to be equally mucked up) so will join you for a cooling dip.
Alfred K’s analysis of the latest wapo article is veddy interesting. Quess my question at this point is if anyone *really* thinks the MSM will treat this series with more than its usual vast collective yawn?
Suzanne @ 25
Bingo!!! That’s exactly how it happened against Nixon. Somehow, for some reason, what everbody already knew became hot news. I never knew who gave that signal or why.
that bus is going to bend it’s frame and blow all its tires with so many bodies to run over…
Suzanne @ 28
no its not a bus. he has been staked out over a railroad crossing with dynamite up his (ahem) with lit fuses as the train bears down.
i know, ak, but the bus does such lovely thump thumps (metaphorically speaking of course and not advocating an actual bus etc etc etc)
Waccamaw @ 30
That is the key and we have to watch for it. If the MSM “ignore” this article, then it is not for immediate public consumption (ie cheney isn’t going to be jettisoned tomorrow) but is a warning to Cheney and his allies not to press the Bushco too hard. If the MSM scream it all over using the TPM i’ve outlined for them, its party time!
Alfred Kelgarries @ 29
Yoo is a tenured full professor at the University of California, Berkeley. (I have no idea how.)
What exactly does it mean for Yoo to be “forced to sign off” on stuff he knew to be illegal? “forced to sign off” would seem to imply to me that one is tortured or threatened (with violence) into doing something or that one does it because one’s child or puppy has been tied to train tracks. He could always resign. Weakly objecting doesn’t mean one is being “forced” into breaking the law.
Waccamaw @ 30
MSNBC has it up. This ain’t gonna die a quiet death.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19403183/
Alfred Kelgarries @ 35
This isn’t any old news article. This is a four-part series, and THE establishment newspaper has taken off the gloves. Names are being named. Asses are being kicked. This comes down from the highest levels of “the establishment.” Just like it came down on Nixon. This series declares the top echelons of the Bush administration to be “fair game.”
Blub @ 37
yeap, blub, it is an attempt to whitewash yoo. not gonna be successful but it is a nice try :)
FELIX?
Loo Hoo. @ 38
KO is gonna be a verying interesting show tomorrow night. From MSNBC online to KO is about as direct as it can get.
And we’ve only seen parts one and two!
Henry Waxman had to know this was coming, didn’t he? His letter last week about Cheney being a fourth branch unto himself (which we knew from earlier Cheney OVP statements that he’d given to that Archives office, being exempt and all) was a way of focusing on Cheney before this WaPo article appeared, I imagine.
ya gotta wonder if, now that Scooter is apparently going to jail, WHO exactly is so worried about him talking?
Alfred Kelgarries @ 27
wowza. (climbs on chair and applauds wildly) It’s fascinating to see this parsed by an expert. Hope you continue this thru the rest of the series.
Blub @ 37
Like Suzanne said. Sinking ships and rats.
Suzanne @ 40
It’s kinda like “My declining credit rating forced me to rob banks. I had no choice.” :P
For anyone who’s still up,
Bits and Pieces
TeddySanFran @ 43
I’d bet good money he did. He just set the stage for it to really hit hard. My god, the man’s attention to detail is downright scary and sexy all at once. We’ve been asking for an opening volley for some time now. This may be it.
Suzanne @ 40
Yoo has written far too many enthusiastic op-eds in the LA Times and elsewhere for him to be whitewashable.
Yoo’s extreme views are exemplified by the following exchange that
occurred in a recent debate in Chicago with Professor Doug Cassel of
Notre Dame:
Some legal scholars accuse progressives of “demonizing” and
“villifying” Professor Yoo. But in 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal
defined Crimes against Peace as:
Certainly Yoo’s guilt is no greater than that of say Joseph Goebbels,
and the Nuremberg Tribunal never got to rule on Goebbels’s guilt.
Was this first of the series?
Paints Cheney with Unitary Executive.
tw3k @ 51
Yes, that is part one.
wigwam @ 50
Good point.
Thanks, TSF
Okay, ‘pups, I am heading for my little Pride cot.
See you on the morrow, when I’m sure our legal analysts will weigh in on Cheney2.0.
Good Night TSF.
AK -
4) Cheney is NOT getting THROWN under the bus. Rather, he has been staked out at a railroad crossing with dynamite sticks in every orifice with burning fuses as a train bears down. This is not an assasination piece, this is a media Weapon Of Mass Digustion.
From your mouth to Dog’s ear! I kinda like the idea of being buried alive better but will settle for #4. *g*
p. s. to 12:03 - Parteeeeeee!!!!!!! How many days do you figure re. the scream/ignore decision to manifest itself?
——————-
Loo Hoo & wigwam - Boy, do I hope you guys are right! Guess I’ve just gotten so bloody jaded wrt to hoping for any assistance via the MSM.
I’m not a former lawyer, nor am I a professor, nor do I have a book education like so many of the lakers do. But what I do know is crooks and how they tend to act and think.
At some point, no matter how good they are at concealing their involvement in the crime(s), there comes a time when their bellies cramp up with the realization that the cops know or some other accountability agency (think IRS).
They may give no visible sign and will not necessariliy talk, taking the bullet so to speak like libby is. But on the inside, their lower gi tract turns to jelly and the sphincter muscle tightens up as if sheer force could prevent the floodgates from opening up.
Lots of puckering going on in DC this weekend and this weeks is going to get even worse. I predict a run on anti-diarrheal OTC’s.
okay on to topic three:
His Client, the Vice President
There are fifteen paras i believe….yes. I will do them in five groups of three unless topics require different breaks.
P1: first sentence puts a HUGE knife right into cheney’s back. This is the money quote people. Bush is doing this. Read: “leading lawyers began to warn that Cheney and his Pentagon allies had set the government on a path for defeat in court” Bing. Cheney and his pentagon allies…set the government up for defeat in court. Note that Cheney has “pentagon allies” like feith, rummy, and wolfowicz. Gee, what do they all have in common, let’s think….Yes. They are all depised by both the ordinary folk and the washington establishment. MSM equivalent, “Cheney and his co-conspirators Bonney and Clyde and Charles Manson…”.
next sentence is priceless. If I could write like this i’d be..dead cause my conscience would have leaped out of my brain and beat me to death. “One … was Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, … whose wife, Barbara, had been killed less than a year before when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon” Hear the mournful but resolute choir strike up as Saint Olson tries to follow orders that he knows are wrong and will fail.
And here comes lew koch! “Olson[’s] … job was to win cases. Two that particularly worried him involved … Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi”
Saint John knows these are evil men. But he is worried that Cheney’s screwup will set them free.
P2 (yes all of that was P1. Whoever did this is at the top of their game.) - Olson says the courts won’t accept cheney’s policies. The CIA feels this will prevent getting useful info out of them.
P3 — “Flanigan said … Addington … beat back the proposal to [change the torture and detention policy] “because that was the position of his client, the vice president.”" (note that flanigan was dissed in the first topic of tonight. He is being quoted on the record here against Cheney, but not totally let off the hook.
MSM Spin: Cheney and his gang of Pentagon thugs were so hell-bent on torturing detainees that they set the government up to be forced to release these dangerous men because of their bad legal opinions. Cheney forced his lawyer to prevent anything changing this, even against the wishes of the sainted federal lawyer Ted Olson, whose wife tragically died in 9/11 (cue scenes of plane hitting pentagon, swell weepy organ music…)
FN Spin: Cheney cooked this scheme up with liberal idiots at the pentagon and refused to let Saint Olson fix it. Cheney’s people acted like Lawyers and Lobbyists the whole time.”
I don’t see anything about this on CNN or FOX. Geez, what a crappy website Fox has.
Loo Hoo, I’m here. Got sidetracked over a S,N and the “Dick Cheney is so secretive…” contest.
Jack, and Steve Allen, said it LONG ago, in 1959 . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ_Nk_aPWnE
I . . . think . . . of . . . . Dean . . . Moriarty.
Damn them sparkler dims . . .
aliasofwestgate @ 12:14 -
Was it modo who said recently something to the effect that the Waxman looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull? Spot on!
g’ night all… must. sleep. now.
Okay, next 3 paras on topic 3:
P4 - This is essential a stage setting para, but note how is is subtly slanted: “Decision … in a heated meeting in … the West Wing’s second floor … Olson was backed by associate White House counsel Bradford A. Berenson, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy” First use of term “heated”. This is msm code for a shouting match perhaps leading to drawn weapons. Next note the shout out to Saint Justice Kennedy, who “has olson’s back”. Right here we know Olson is the good guy, before we are actually given real information.
P5 - We learn that Saint Justice Kennedy actual sent his clerk over to warn them. “Berenson [said Kennedy] would never accept [cheney’s policy on detention and torture]. … Addington accused Berenson of … a fool’s prophecy about an inscrutable court.” Addington is dissing Saint Justice Kennedy. This is bad.
p6 — Oopsie! It’s gonzo under the bus time! “Gonzales listened quietly [… and] decided in favor of Cheney’s lawyer.” Note that this is the worst possible way to phrase this. Gonzo didn’t decide on the merits of the argument by Addington. He decided “for the Lawyer”, indicating ad hominen influence instead.
MSM Spin: The most moderate Justice on the Supreme Court, sent word through very respected channels to warn about coming court problems with the Cheney Doctrine. Unfortunately, Cheney’s lawyer browbeat Attorney Gonzales into submission.”
FN Spin: “The liberal lawyer Addington beat the cheeze-whiz presidential counsel Gonzales to a pulp with trick arguments and got him to keep the government on a road to ruin.”
g’nite OC - nice to see ya back at the Lake.
So Alfred, what’s your gut feeling about what’s going to happen? Any sense yet?
Totally OT question to AK
Alfred, do you ever sleep? If you are this sharp in the wee hours of the morning, I can only imagine how formidable you must be after a full nights rest.
Waccamaw @ 63
I have no idea. I just remember there being an article in Time magazine before the Dem majority came into being in the House. The small man that everyone in DC is afraid of. *evil grin* A grocery store owner’s son with all the attention to detail implied in the upkeep of even a simple operation as that. I swear that’s where most of it came from. I WORK retail for a living and it’s not as easy as it looks. There’s no where else he would have learned that attention to detail at, short of the military. The tenacity is all his own though, i’ve my own brand of that.
wigwam @ 31
Call me a political naif - or worse - paranoid but this story must have the gang in the WH in full anxiety attack mode….adding a most dangerous element to our collective anxieties for the very survival of our noble Constitution.
larue @ 62
is there anyone, anyone, in television these days who could sit down at a piano, play, and talk to a TV audience at the same time with such effortless ease as Steve Allen? No. Way.
…gawd, I just got back from a business meeting with the stars and…frankly…have not read the article from the Washington Post? but reading AK’S point by point it sounds like a fucking disaster for Cheney…or ? but that he could be saved? help me here…to think he is “running” things and he is a moron…
Here’s a disgusting passage that I found memorable:
“Gonzales listened quietly as the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT and HIS OWN STAFF lined up against Addington. Then he decided in favor of Cheney’s lawyer”.
What was Addington’s position? He argued that the president had absolute power to declare a U.S. citizen an enemy and to lock him up without giving him representation or a chance to be heard.
Atta boy, Gonzales. You are a TRUE CHAMPION of justice. NOT.
Night everyone. And big thanks, AK.
mr paws loves Steve Allen, in fact we all do over here…
hey spidey, does do the stars say about the boosh administration? i remember you saying that the admin had been charted. looks like july is going to be a bumpy ride.
okay, i’m combining the remaining three sections into one because they are really one continuous narrative.
P7 - Ashcroft (who is currently slightly sainted) says Cheney “compelled people to think carefully about whatever he mentioned.” This is code for government by extortion, later confirmed in subsequent paragraph.
P8 - Cheney tries to put his muscle on a federal judge, only ends up ticking him off, with more harm to the government’s case.
P9 - Note how the whole thing is now “cheney’s strategy”. Bush was in cleveland reading My Pet Goat at the time.
P10 - The good us lawyers ask for “modest changes” to prevent “wrongful detention.” “Please sir, can I have some more?” (puppy dog eyes)
P11 - “The vice president’s counsel fought and won again.” US takes it in the shorts at the Supreme Court, and its all Cheney’s fault.
P12 - This is the first paragraph I don’t actually believe in, though it is there in print..”Eleven days later, Olson stepped down as solicitor general. His deputy succeeded him. What came next was a reminder that it does not pay to cross swords with the vice president.”. This is the kind of sentence historians put in history books about insane tyrants like Stalin and Richard III. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it in a MSM newspaper in my life (all 60 years of it)….
P13 - Lots of good stuff here. Philbin is set up as a minor saint asking for a new better job, who actually helped Cheney. But “he had tangled with the vice president’s office now and then, objecting to the private legal channel between Addington and Yoo and raising questions about domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.”. Here we get a little extra bitch-slap out to Yoo to remind him not to get cocky. We also demonize Addington for a “private legal channel”. WTF is that, did they rent a apare PPV feed on Satellite TV and do video conferences on it or what? But it sure sounds bad, doesn’t it? And he is a stalwart against the NSA’s bad evil domestic surveillance program. Funny, I thought Bush did that one. My bad, it was those evil techies at NSA (watch enemy of the state on cable, you’ll figure it out…)
P14 - “Cheney’s lawyer [said] Philbin was an unsatisfactory choice. The attorney general and White House counsel abandoned their candidate.” Note how we bitch-slap both Ashcroft AND Gonzales in one sentence here. Cowardly nerds, backing down like that! Poor Mr. Philbin, abandoned! (cut to Tom Hanks in Cast Away…)
P15 - “”OVP plays hardball,”" followed by some cleanup quotes. Notice we have gone from Vice President Richard Cheney to OVP in less that 21 paragrpahs of the same article….
MSM Spin: Cheney is a stupid, vindictive old man whose eagerness to torture people let him to set the government up to lose vital information from captured enemy combatants. He even stooped to low as to knife one of his own lawyers in the back for minor infractions.
FN Spin: Cheney almost got Padilla and Hamdi released! And then he stabbed one of his own guys in the back in front of his wife and kids. The man’s a monster, I tell you!”
Suzanne @ 68
Sleep? I’ve heard that term before…let me look it up…
spiderpaws @ 75
a prince. and Jack Paar. television actually had some class back in the day …….
Loo Hoo. @ 74
I live to serve the lake. and my dad. and my granddaughter. and…never mind. :)
spiderpaws @ 72
As AK points out, this article has been ingeniously crafted for two different audiences.
I realized that this was possible many years ago when a friend moved from California to Texas. I asked him about it, and he said that Texas was a very different place. I asked, “how so?” His prime example was that in Texas people thought that Archie Bunker was the hero of All in the Family, rather than the butt of its jokes.
So far as I can tell, Cheney fans will read that article with pride and delight.
Loo Hoo. @ 67
Bush is throwing Cheney and his whole staff under the bus (or worse). We are about to experience a civil war like never before. Holy Frak.
Congress needs to get off its collective ass and contain it. ye gods, AK. I really hope they do, since it seems Waxman likely had wind of this coming. His setup the others mentioned earlier in the week make me hope they can.
aliasofwestgate @ 69
My Dad was a grocery store owner’s son, too. Waxman’s dad would have worked his store during the Great Depression, which either ruins you, or teaches you the value of accounting for every penny. Those are hard lessons, but by the time my Dad retired, he was able to have a very comfortable retirement. Those life lessons make an impression.
Bob in HI
AK -
In your reading on wapo II, did you happen to notice any uneven editorial intervention as mentioned in a link in the last (?next to last) post? Can’t remember which paras were noted……..can go back to try and find the link for you but it will take a bit on dial-up.
Alfred,
Kudos and applause. i’m wondering if the people who gave the word for WaPo to go to press with this are not actually in fuckwad’s administration but rather in the “special club” that never leaves town. maybe you are implying this. is that even a possibility?
i’m giving your book a working title:
“The Mighty Wurlitzer for Dummies.”
Waccamaw @ 85
IIRC, it was to Laura Rozen’s piece over at War and Peace
yes, I agree, Cheney under bus or worse, just run ‘em over!!! but don’t you think it’s Pappy’s Gang trying to save the little bushie? I mean you can’t have the bush name dragged through any more mud.
I’m debating on turning the TV on. It’s almost 4.30am in MI. If this shows up on GR’s local news there’s a good chance it wont’ be totallly ignored by the media.
But it might be best to wait a few days, this soon into things. The pots only just now being stirred.
that is the big question, spidey. the who. condi? rove? boosh? pappy? the folks over at the CIA? someone gave the ok for this to be published. and that it was ok for these folks in the article to talk to the reporters.
Suzanne @ 90
I think we’re all wondering about that one, Suzanne. Any of us that have any amount of common sense.
That is the question going to be going around DC all week - who? Followed by who’s next?
what I recall re Bush’s chart is that he would have bad til the end of this month when Saturn leaves his Venus behind and moves on lightening Bush’s load considerably…not only that but he will be even more grandiose and bubble headed because of a Neptune aspect and completely and suddenly more looney, aggressice and unpredictable with a particular Uranus aspect. Gonzales is also losing a repressive Saturn and probably will come out in the clear…if he doesn’t resign…I say this because it looks like in Gonzales chart that he gets really busy with some other stuff entirely - like maybe a life change.
Another thought: remember how Foomkin was keeping track of the silence of the waapoo editorial board (hello fred hiatt) regarding the lack of an editorial taking a stand about libby and potential pardon after libby’s sentencing.
That silence may now be explained by this set of articles.
Suzanne -
That’s the one & bless you! Just got back from looking w/no success…..shoulda known someone would have it right off the bat.
spiderpaws @ 88
But they have to have a reason for throwing Cheney under the bus. Which works?
* As you suggest above, Pappy’s gang is trying to save Georgie-boy with a double message: Weakening Cheney’s power, and warning Georgie Boy that Cheney is toxic to his health.
* They’re just tired of Dick’s meddling in their affairs and just want him out.
* Bush has a plan to make Condi VP and thereby secure the succession if things go bonkers, so they need Cheney out of the way.
* Someone (The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB)? See Marcy’s post at TNH) is paying Darth back, big time, for being punked by Cheney previously.
* The faction that wants to prevent a war with Iran wants to weaken Cheney and keep him busy with other tasks.
* Other?
Which one makes the most sense?
Bob in HI
My pleasure to have been able to help out, Waccamaw.
About time for this tired pup to head off to bed herself. Was a busy weekend with all that blankity blank housework and the open house today. I plan on getting lots of sleep, resting up, and will be here tomorrow nite, same bat time, same bat channel.
g’nite everyone
well I remember a predictive astrologers report from Bulgaria and it was a lulu…not many astrologers will really do predictions but this guy says that Bush & Cheney’s “handlers” would finally tire of their stupidity and remove them and Bush himself would probably be locked up somewhere …I think his words were “taken away somewhere and kept apart so he couldn’t hurt anything” It was a chilling report and it described Bush as being impotent and an alcoholic who still drank in secret and that he was in a constant state of anxiety living in absolute fear all the time of some unreal scenario happening…ther