If the center is truly moving left, then an entry from Bloomberg et al could be a good thing. It would simply push the Conservative Bush Right Republicans into a dark corner where we can mostly ignore it. I wonder if Bloomberg himself is far enough Right to truly establish a new Right. He’s been a Democrat and a Republican in New York City. Where does that place him on the national political scale?

A Unity government could possibly be a good thing in some times (war time for example), but for now I think we need to solve a lot of problems very aggressively and I don’t think Bloomberg is a Teddy Roosevelt.

Maybe in the future we can look forward to a New Right Republican party which is at least sane and truly cares about America.

At least for now, I think Edwards is our best choice.

John Edwards for President — Leadership for these times!

George Bush doesn’t want to be an accomplice to his own criminal activity? Huh.

All these scandals are so far out of the norm that there’s no way they would have been done without a directive from the highest level (and I don’t mean Cheney).

It doesn’t matter if he says he didn’t know anything. It’s implicit.

Everyone should take note that when you’re in charge and wild & crazy things happen, then either you’re gonna take the fall or there will have to be some other people who were clearly not under your control. For example, the Abu Ghraib crew were pretty crazy, but from a distance it appears they were receiving some kind of direction from above. Covering it up doesn’t change the facts or the public impression and, frankly, the international impression which harms America so much.

“According to several current and former officials, lawyers in the agency’s clandestine branch gave Mr. Rodriguez written guidance that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that such a move would not be illegal.

“One day in November 2005, Mr. Rodriguez sent a cable ordering the destruction of the recordings. Soon afterward, he notified both Mr. Goss and Mr. Rizzo, taking full responsibility for the decision.

“Former intelligence officials said that Mr. Goss was unhappy about the news, in part because it was further evidence that as the C.I.A. director he was so weakened that his subordinates would directly reject his advice.

“Yet it appears that Mr. Rodriguez was never reprimanded. Nor is there evidence that Mr. Goss promptly notified Congress that the tapes were gone.

“The investigations over the tapes frustrate some C.I.A. veterans, who say they believe that the agency is being unfairly blamed for policies of coercive interrogation approved at the top of the Bush administration and by some Congressional leaders. Intelligence officers are divided over the use of such methods as waterboarding. Some say the methods helped get information that prevented terrorist attacks. Others, like John C. Gannon, a former C.I.A. deputy director, say it was a tragic mistake for the administration to approve such methods.

“Mr. Gannon said he thought the tapes became such an issue because they would have settled the legal debate over the harsh methods.

““To a spectator it would look like torture,” he said. “And torture is wrong.””

Here’s how the Knight-Ridder/Pioneer Press version concludes:

” According to several current and former officials, lawyers in the agency’s clandestine branch gave Rodriguez written guidance that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that such a move would not be illegal.

” In November 2005, Rodriguez and his aides decided to use their own authority to destroy the tapes, officials said.”

That’s it. No where in the Knight-Ridder version do you get any sense that thjere might be some current issue of cover-up or scapegoating by higher ups. The comments by ex-CIA director Gannon are completely omitted. The way the article is edited and rewritten, you get the opposite sense: Rodriguez and the CIA undertook the torture on their own and they decided on their on to destroy the tapes. In other words, just a few bad apples and nothing here of interest, folks so just move on along.

Knight-Ridder also ran an apologia of sorts written by Mark Bowden (”Blackhawk Down”). Bowden agrees that waterboarding is illegal as torture and usually wrong but tries to argue that it is sometimes justifiable. Bowden’s defense boils down to another variation of the “ticking time bomb” baloney used on TV shows like “24″: if it saved lives being conducted by intelligence in wartime, it is worth it. Waterboarders should not be prosecuted or punished. Nothing about the enablers, Bush, Cheney, Addington or Yoo who brought this on.

The PiPress has become the print version of Fox News in the Twin Cities so this is not surprising. What is surprising to me is that they would stoop so low as to blatantly edit and rewrite an article from another newspaper to fit the paper’s right wing editorial slant. I guess you just don’t have to dig very deep anymore.

I’m reading Craig Unger’s new book, Fall of the House of Bush (next week’s Saturday Book Salon, BTW, and a fascinating read, highly recommend) and it is almost inconceivable to me that anyone can hold the notions and enforce the policies the neocons do and not be a gleefully sadistic bastard.

the interrogators have informed us they got “crap information” once they went to the methods these sicko’s insisted on using

THEY GOT MUCH BETTER INFORMATION BEFORE THE SICKOS GOT THEIR WAY!

and THAT’S how this subject MUST be discussed, things like;

“who knows how many more lives we would have saved if we continued to use the more effective methods to gather our information”

“because of the depraved minds insisting on using these methods, we will never know the lives that would have been saved”

“we have known for quite some time we loose information when we resort to the depraved practices forced on our intelligence community by people in this information WHO HAVE PROVEN TIME AND AGAIN HAVE NO MILITARY CLUE”

“HOW MANY TERRORISTS HAVE BEEN CREATED BECAUSE OF THE SICK MINDS IN THIS ADMINISTRATION THAT ACTUALLY BELIEVE TORTURING COMBATANTS IS A GOOD IDEA?”

do you see that?

turn it around, make it THEM who have lost information because they INSISTED on using practices that PUT OUR SOLDIERS ARE GREAT RISK AND LOOSE INFORMATION

we need our politicians to understand these things and we need them to HAMMER these points

That’s brilliant. If I read Dante will I be able to write like that?

Read Alan Bennett’s ‘The Uncommon Reader’, pehaps.