I agree with Cheney. I want those “success” memos declassified, stat.

Declassify all of them.
Because, as with the shape of the Earth,
opinions may have differed.

On the Bill-George debate, I’d love to see Bill come on stage with one hand tied behind his back.

As with torture, we knew pretty much what was happening before the release of the memos, except (as could be expected), the details are a lot more gruesome than previously available info.

So, with “success,” publicly available info sez there wasn’t any. And I’d guess any other memos on that subject (assuming they exist) would be even more damning.

Maybe Bill should be limited to words with two syllables.

So, with “success,” publicly available info sez there wasn’t any.

And Robert Mueller said that too, iirc.

He was in the kewl kids’ klub, wasn’t he?

Probably one too many.

And W should be disallowed from saying terrist, evildoer, and nucular, which should pretty much put him out of business.

I don’t remember Mueller saying that, but it sounds likely. However, the kewl kids would argue that he’s biased because he’s interested in prosecution, whereas the folks who think they’re really protecting us would say that they’ve stopped oh so many attacks because torture got the ticking bomb disarmed.

“dickweed”
“moron”
“half-wit”
“traitor”
“sadist”

Maybe he could work in “criminal” if he says it real fast?

I was expecting this news from the government about more $$ to Chrysler and GM due to Barney Frank stating last night on Charlie Rose that he predicted that we would see a partnership with Fiat and we would see GM have success in restructuring and not going into bankruptcy.

I stood up when I heard that. It caught my attention. Charlie Rose asked no follow-up questions to Frank’s financials on the auto industry statement, so we never heard how Barney Frank was able to state that with certainty.

Now we have the confirmation of what I concluded, more gov $$$.

Good.

The number of times waterboarding was used on these two men invalidates any and all statements from the Shrub scumbags touting its effectiveness or justification.

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”? “I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004644

close….

Thanks for the documentation. Interestingly, it’s not just about prosecution, but about preventing attacks. That’s beyond Mueller’s usual portfolio. Good for him.

Cheney:

“And I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there.”

Um…. you’re not the VP anymore, shithead. You “formally asked? As my man Joe The Biden says: Who gives a shit?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HvYKGkfC5w

183 ticking time bombs in a month a new world torture record.

Where will Cheney get the Pixie Dust?

I just got around to reading Krugman’s column from yesterday. Dude really knows how to end a piece of writing.

And the lesson of Ireland is that you really, really don’t want to put yourself in a position where you have to punish your economy in order to save your banks.

Summers, Geithner, are you fucking listening?!

time to suit up. y’all have yourselves a day….

democracynow is doing a piece on Mitchell-Jephson (sp?), the private company that reversed engineered SERE for the CIA.

marcy is amazing

great quite sd, great frigging quote

forget whether or not guitnner is listening, how about obama

He can repeatedly call for the release of memos that don’t exist. That tactic is good in perpetuity.

If were going to see the success memo( high quality lies) let’s see the memo discussing how many innocents were turned into opposition through torture and disappearance? That seems like an unending conveyer belt to the endless war.

nicely put

Yeah, Jon Stewart suggested that, after about 180 times, the subject might have caught on that they weren’t going to kill him. The last three times would have been ineffective.

What a great Morning Swim and comments. Thanks to all! Thanks BT, especially, for the clip on Rachel about Marcy!

I like how Rachel even went to the section of the document where Marcy pulled her information. That will shut up the wingnut rumors that Marcy “pulled” the information from a poorly redacted line in the report, trying to put Marcy in a bad light that she “knew” she shouldn’t have made the 183 public. Learn to read Rush. It. Was. In. Unredacted. Print. Bucko.

Speaking for myself, death would have been a more appealing alternative after about the first or second one.

Obama’s a little light in the economics department. He’s a free trader corporatist so he’s going to follow the advice of those who are of like mind. All of his economic people are still Friedmaniacs but don’t want to admit the disasters those theories caused, e.g., Chile, Argentina, Poland, Russia. By Summers’ way of thinking, saving the likes of Goldman Sachs will save the market. The problem is the market they want to save is the stock market. You can’t eat securities nor will they keep you warm and dry.

Amy just got to the Cheney comments about releasing memos that shows that torture works. Guest 1 (Katharine Eban, sp?) sez evidence shows exactly the opposite.

Using Zubaydah as the example. Befriending got useful info, torture got garbage, which ate up a lot of CIA time chasing down false leads.

I’m still trying to figure out the work schedule on this. Were these guys working on a 8 hour day/5 day week torture schedule or an 8 hour day/7 day a week schedule … because depending, it’s either 6 times in an 8 hour day, 7 days a week…or NINE times in an 8 hour day, 5 days a week. I’m sure these assholes had weekends off. Do they get lunch and two 15 min. breaks a torture work-day too? If they were torturing after 5 p.m., did they get time and a half? Let’s work this through, really – because you know that management down there thought this entire thing through..down to the last detail.

Mornin’ All,

suspect lil media chubbies all around at news of the upcoming “debate” – big excitement being able to trot out all those horserace ! he said/he said templates from the campaign

suspect there is campaign debt cash involved in this um, exercise

Amy sez Tenet hit the roof when he heard that the FBI was getting the results & the CIA wasn’t, and upped the torture, which caused FBI to withdraw so CIA won the turf war.

Me too, but I wonder if Christopher Hitchens will try to experience the effect of 183 times, or just leave it to his imagination.

It seems that no matter how much these lies, myths, and illegal activities are exposed for that they are, no accountability is taking place.

This seems to be the main structural flaw in our system – absence of accountability.

Why?

Hear Hear!

Tis time for a hefty round of Hue and Cry!

Out, Damned Memos! OUT! I say!

Yes. Absolutely. Marcy is amazing, and I do think word is getting around, so the bigboyz are beginning to listen up whenever she speaks. That is a good thing, a good thing indeed.

Thank you Marcy and all Pups for the hard work it has taken to reach that point. Lets keep pushing.

Whether dick sees any reason to listen is immaterial. I suspect his big bowling-ball of a head is stuffed with cotton, so he’s become a self-made, cruel joke. For him, I’d suggest ridicule and shunning, the most cruel brand of torture for an ego-maniac. Ditto for rusher, ginger-itch & rover

Bonjour les pups. I’ve been out of circulation for ten days in the France profonde, where my internet doesn’t run. Quite a surprise to see all the news that’s popped up in the interim. Not too much has hit the French press, though they cover the highlights. Had an interesting conversation the other night with the Chatelain and Chatelaine of a castle we were staying at for a few days. They agreed with me that the wingnuts are defined by their absolute fear of the outside world. This something Europeans are used to, since they have a few nuts of their own to contend with, not to mention the Big One 80 years ago or so. I get a lot of people asking me what I think of Sarkozy — from both sides of the political spectrum, as if (as I think is the case) they are somewhat ashamed of him.

It would be very good to see Bybee impeached and convicted for his torture memo. He’s not the biggest fish, but he’s a keeper.

CIA Inspector General’s report condemned CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program.

As I see it they have bought into the idea that for better or worse we are now in a new banking world from the one out fathers thought they understood. They believe that if the big banks go down, so will the flow of credit, and so goes the economy. This is what Stiglitz, Johnson and Krugman contest. The pissy thing about this is that the banks and the gov are keeping the relevant facts under wraps, so that even those of us with noggins capable of sorting our ideas out on the subject don’t have anything to work with. We are going to have a Japanese style recession, unless the American people pull up their pants and start spending like they used to, which even with out the facts we all know is impossible given their level of indebtedness. Did someone say, clusterfuck?

dn talking about how CIA’s use of psychologists was a get-out-of-jail-free card for torture, analogous to OLC memos.

Believe me, government agencies know how to cover 24/7 work schedules. The guys wearing black hoods would have probably worked a six-shift schedule, with a 6-2 watch and a fast turn-around to come back at midnight on the last watch. Every six weeks, they would have gotten a 3-day weekend. It’s all very mundane. /s

As of a few minutes ago, the comments on Cheney’s performance (link) were running 100% against. I don’t follow The Swamp, so maybe this is normal, but for anything out of Washington, D.C. to be completely one-sided seems noteworthy.

Govt will pay legal fees of anyone brought up on torture charges anywhere in the world, including for congressional testimony.

O dear….Don’t you think it is too late for Rush? I guess he has to eat instead of read; I think I heard he has a learning disability….not sure. I have to start my day…this stuff has fried my brain, I fear. Peace…

given their level of indebtedness

I see this every day. People are so deep in debt from credit card use they now spend only on food and other necessities. I see more people paying with cash than I have in many years. At Barnes & Noble the other day (my indy book seller didn’t have the book I wanted) almost every sale I watched rung up was paid for with either cash or debit card. Normally a very busy place there were few people in the store. I was talking to one of the employees at my natural foods store about the slice the card companies take off the top of purchases and said I’d never even applied for a credit card. An older woman standing next to me said she wished she never had.

or with tape over his mouth to show dubya can lose by himself.

Perfect.

I’m off for now. BBL.

Christopher Hitchens makes a credible spokesman for the horror of the technique, and the vicious insanity embraced by those indulging in endless repetitions. He visibly shudders whenever anyone brings up the subject in discussion.

It is hard to comprehend a fellow human being mentally warped enough to order, much less carry out such torture. Nevertheless, watching and hearing Yoo’s and cheney’s calm, measured rendition of the crafting there-of, it’s clear that for some sick individuals, the mere writing of apologia and reasoning seem all too easy, even though horribly unsettling for “normal” humans. Yoo and cheney and their companions in crime appear not right in the head, as it were. The more they profess their innocence, the more eerily depraved they appear.

May I say, it is a great joy for me to see Marcy’s fame grow and grow and grow. Brava Marcy!

Thanks BT for yet another bracing morning swim. I’m awake!

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

I don’t find Hitchens endearing, even when I agree with him, but that’s neither here nor there. I agree with you regarding the horror of banality. For some reason, a picture published decades ago in Time magazine, of two Nazi doctors coldly and unemotionally performing medical experiments on a Polish prisoner, brought the horor home to me more than anything else. They looked like they were dissecting a crayfish.

Have a good day Dragon. Pat the tigers for us. ;->

can somebody enlighten me about these (alleged?) memos Cheney “formally requested” be released. Any links? Is Marcy on that?

did i say endearing? eeeewwwwww! eloquent on occasion, especially his shudder on remembering the boarding, but no, no particular respect for the fella here.

Yes. The coldness. It’s horrible. Living, breathing humans, and yet…. no humanity there-in. It stands as a warning why there must be laws of the land, and the laws must be enforced.

my dad told me back in the 70’s it was a way to keep people poor and to stay away from them..retired c acct.
i don’t use them. harp on them all of the time. ‘went there’ a few times, then said no more.
is cheaper to go to the check places if you need to ‘charge ‘ something til the next month, like big something on sale where you are ahead a few hundred instead of behind by charging it and not paying it off. and if you pay off every month, you are screwed on the rates. i cut them up.

and on those offers that come in the mail in small print is a number you can call to get taken off of the mailing list for ALL credit cards, except for banks that you already have a relationship. those you have to do individually.

people are getting second mortgages to pay off credit card debt and then are back using their cards again. and a lot of it spent on things that are not even working or in the house anymore. by the time you add fees and interest, you paid an exorbitant price for something you no longer own. dunno.
paying off credit cards is a great thing, but don’t then use them and build it up again. living within your means takes getting used to, but it’s a game where you hold your own cards.

same goes for storage places—add up the worth of what’s in there, is anything in there worth the amount you are paying to store it?

/end rant/

It is said that with 5% of the world’s population the U.S. maintains 25% of the worldwide prison population. There is indeed accountability, but it depends on what side of the tracks you live.

Why doesn’t cheeeeeeeny just release them himself? Like he outed Valerie. MFSOB! I wish there were stronger words but them’s the best I gots.

Well, those are pretty good…anything more may not get passed the mods..

Two explanations outa my arse. They don’t exist. Cheney can’t release them because then there’d be culpable evidence that he was pushing hard for torture.