Journey Into Fear

Everything you need to know about the conservative view of the world is neatly encapsulated in this headline:

Former US vice president deems Canada too dangerous for speaking visit

I suppose I could fill in a few details too.

Last Sept. 26, Cheney was forced to stay holed up in the Vancouver Club for seven hours before it was deemed safe for him to leave. Demonstrators blocked the entrances and at one point scuffled with police.

Cheney critics accuse him of endorsing the use of water boarding and sleep deprivation against detainees while serving in former President George W. Bush’s administration.

How dare they accuse him of such things? Where do they get ideas like that?

Canadians. A savage, warlike people, known for their unpredictable ways and their dangerously low-quality prescription drugs. Even a guy as tough as Dick Cheney is terrified of them. Who knows what they might do next? Write a pro-American editorial? Release another Martha and the Muffins album? Allow William Shatner to tour in a one-man show about his life?

Cheney would be best served by doing all his public speaking via satellite, from a bunker deep, deep down in the Earth. Everything else is just too dangerous, n'est pas? OMG! Sorry, "isn't it?" Didn't mean to frighten you sir.

Good Luck Dick Cheney

Dude, you've survived worse. Godspeed.

Best Wishes To Dick Cheney

The former Vice President is said to be resting comfortably after a bout with chest pains today. I wish him the best.

Medically, anyway. Look let's be honest, I consider the man a war criminal. As it happens he committed his war crimes for the right reasons, because he believed that torture strengthened the country that he and I love. I disagree with him on that but, well, his heart was in the right place.

So again, best wishes to a man whom I wish had made radically different decisions than the ones he made.

Let's Not Look Back

FVP Richard Cheney has been lobbying the White House to unclassify memos which prove that torture yeilded valuable information from terror suspects, back when we were still doing that. Here they are!

Surprise number 1: They don't prove that the valuable information came from torture.

The first document, issued by the CIA in July 2004 is about the interrogation of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and whom, the newly released CIA Inspector General report on torture details, had his children’s lives threatened by an interrogator. None of that abuse is referred to in the publicly released version of the July 2004 document. Instead, we learn from the July 2004 document that not only did the man known as “KSM” largely provide intelligence about “historical plots” pulled off from al-Qaeda, a fair amount of the knowledge he imparted to his interrogators came from his “rolodex” — that is, what intelligence experts call “pocket litter,” or the telling documentation found on someone’s person when captured.

Surprise number 2: Cheney says that they prove it anyway.

This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States.

You may note that he avoids directly saying the TORTURE brought out the information, just that the people we tortured were the ones who gave us information. Distinction without a difference, if you regard torture as no big deal.

As a movie geek (news about that is a-comin', but let's not tangentalize) I can't help but think of Star Wars (A New Hope) or Marathon Man, or really, every single damn American movie up to 2004, in which the heroes were easy to spot because they were the ones who DIDN'T torture. The ones who torture are Nazis or stormtroopers. I know, I know, pre 9/11 thinking.

Farewell, Beloved Dick

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, deserved it when Cheney launched the f-word at him in 2004.

In an interview with "Fox News Sunday," Cheney was asked if he had any second thoughts or embarrassment. "No. I thought he merited it at the time," Cheney said, laughing.

...The encounter during the 2004 presidential campaign, sources said then, was brought on by Leahy's criticism of the vice president over Halliburton Co. Cheney is the former chief executive officer of the oil field services company, and Democrats had suggested he helped win lucrative contracts for his former firm while serving in the Bush administration.

"It was partly that, it was partly also … it had to do with — he is the kind of individual who will make those kinds of charges and then come act as though he's your best friend, and I expressed in no uncertain terms my views of his conduct and walked away," Cheney said at the time.

..."And we've since, I think, patched over that wound and we're civil to one another now," Cheney said this Sunday.

Re: the italics -- well, mission accomplished! And kudos to Cheney for alluding to wounds, considering the other thing he's famous for. Meanwhile:

WALLACE: According to the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll — and I know how much you like polls — you now have the lowest approval rating of the last eight years. Twenty-nine percent have a favorable opinion, 61 percent unfavorable... does that bother you?

CHENEY: No. We didn't — if — we didn't set out to achieve the highest level of polls that we could during the course of this administration...— is 29 percent good enough for me? Well, we fought a tough reelection battle. We won by an adequate margin in 2004. We've been here for eight years now. Eventually, you wear out your welcome in this business.

But I've — I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we achieved substantively. And frankly, I would not want to be one of those guys who spends all his time reading the polls. I think people like that shouldn't serve in these jobs.

Again, italics-wise, SOME administrations wear out their welcome. Nixon, Carter and Bush 1 for example. Reagan, Clinton and Eisenhower, not so much. And more introspective vice-presidents might pause to wonder if historical low approval ratings may mean you did something wrong. When they're out of office, perhaps Cheney and Bush will blame the antipathy on each other before insisting that we'll all praise them in fifty years time.

Double Negative Doesn't Not Speak Truth

Hat Tip To Wonkette: look at this item from Roll Call, a congressional publication!

Vice President Cheney isn’t not on the phone records of the alleged D.C. Madam, who is accused of running a high-price call-girl ring in Washington, the accused madam’s lawyer said on Tuesday.

This is the entirety of the item.

Let's examine the possibilities. The D.C. Madam's lawyer is being quoted correctly, in which case he's saying that Cheney paid for it. Or a copywriter misquoted, in which case the lawyer is or is not saying it.

I think they are trying to say Cheney was a client, but they're hoping that the message is confusing enough that the Administration won't understand and therefore take no action; such action presumably involving a black cloth bag and and a long drive in a windowless van, for starters.

And yes, for you to believe this you have to believe that Cheney has some element of human sexual response that you didn't think him capable of. Deal with it. At least it's not Ashcroft.

Did Valerie Plame Lie To the Senate?

No! No, dammit! The title was google-bait for wingnuts. Hi, wingnuts! Welcome aboard - I put out donuts for ya.

Valerie Plame, testifying before the senate on Friday, said that she had nothing to do with sending Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate claims that yellow-cake uranium had changed hands there. "She's lying!" the blogs all scream. "It's perjury! You guys prosecuted Scooter for perjury, and he didn't even DO anything!"

So, where to begin -- no one is disputing Plame's statement that she didn't have the authority to send Wilson to Niger. What they're saying is perjury is Plame's claim that she didn't suggest that he be sent there. The proof? An addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report, in which three Republican senators disagree with the report's conclusions that Valerie Plame didn't have anything to do with sending Joe Wilson to Niger.

The addendum quotes an unnamed intelligence staffer (they're willing to concede that SOMEONE in the office is covert) who said that she was going to recommend that Wilson be sent. However, according to Plame's testimony, "He said his words had been twisted and distorted. He wrote a memo, and he asked his supervisor to allow him to be re-interviewed by the committee. And the memo went nowhere, and his request to be re-interviewed so that the record could be set straight was denied."

It will be easy enough to get another statement from the guy, and the Senate is apparently requesting one. Once it comes in, sane people without an agenda can evaluate it. As for now, the whole talking point rests on this - the official record agrees with Plame, but an addendum to the record written by water-carriers for the administration says she's lying, therefore it must be perjury. You could pursue this argument, but it would be like me saying "hey, it DOES depend on what the meaning of 'is' is!"

Tenuous as the talking-point is, I'm guessing it will get continued traction on Fox News, because it's all they have to fill the news hole left by not discussing Alberto Gonzales resigning and Dick Cheney resigning. And the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war. And the blowback from Bush's South American tour. And whatever happens today, before lunch.

The President Links Iraq to 9/11!

You can look at that title and say, of course he did! But actually there's been a tremendous effort on the part of the administration to make you think they said NOTHING OF THE KIND! HOW DARE YOU! And as a matter of fact, I just spent the better part of an hour trying to find the money quote, the moment in a speech where Bush DID say that Saddam Hussein or Iraq backed the 9/11 attacks.

In all those speeches, he never says it.

He says that terrorists attacked the United States, and we have to go into Iraq to fight terrorists, but he never quite links 'em up. You know how a movie is actually a series of still pictures that relies on your persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement? Same thing, only verbally.

Anyway, I had despaired of never being able to find the smoking gun when miraculously, I came across this. It's from the White House website!

Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate
March 18, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH

The boldface is mine. I'm emboldening the text to point out that the stated reason we went to war with Iraq was because they aided the 9/11 attacks.

Whew! That guy's hard to pin down!

I read on the same right-wing site (Biga's Rants, see link on the right) that no one is claiming Al-Qaeda had anything to do with 9/11. I'm tired... anyone want to throw a few Cheney quotes my way?

I Think Gates Is A Little Cranky

Check out the interview with Bill Gates in Newsweek. Here he is, stumping for his company's flagship product which is coming out 2 years late to little excitement, and on the heels of the Zune last fall which met with similar ennui. Can you blame the man for being short with the press?

Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?
I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.

Okay, I wasn't at the interview, but he throws in an awful lot of detail for someone who hasn't seen the spot, doesn't he? He almost goes Dick Cheney on this guy!

And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.

Oooooooookay. Wouldn't that last quote sound just perfect coming from Hodgman? I'm just sayin'.

!MON NOXIN

Apparently it's Richard Nixon's birthday today, suggesting that Gerry Ford checked out a little early just to avoid the whole issue. Wonkette is running Nixon stories praising him for his surprisingly liberal policies while vilifying him for giving jobs to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumfeld, the two men who would ultimately destroy western civilization.

I'm reminded of Harry Shearer, and why he recommends a visit to the Nixon Memorial Library in Yorba Linda: "It's like a theme park, and the twin themes are paranoia and revenge."

Nixon looks pretty good from this vantage point. Okay, maybe he was sweaty and shifty in that debate with Kennedy but he won on substance, if you weren't watching on TV. Vietnam? He inherited it from Democrats. Paranoid racist who overstepped the limits of his office? Okay, yeah. But it was nothing LIKE the power grab going on in that office nowadays (said to be Cheney's idea, by the way) and you don't get more paranoid/racist than carpet-bombing two countries because they house people who look like the 19 guys who blew up your office buildings.

Then again, it's early to say how GW Bush will be judged. Maybe 40 years from now I'll look back and say yeah, George wasn't as bad as I thought at the time - at least he allowed blogs! Then I'll shuffle back to my cot in the Atheist Internment Camp, gnaw on my boiled potato and wait for my weekly beating at the hands of ruthless guard robots.

(BTW, hat tip to Skot for the title of this post, an allusion to the helvetica medium typeface on the NIXON NOW! buttons, which spelled something else entirely when turned upside down.)

The Use Of Torture

Tell them what you're going to say: The only legitimate use of torture is to supress freedom.

Say it: I've been kicking around Townhall.com again, looking for people to argue with. And James Biga, of Biga's Rants, has supplied me with with an epiphany. Today he put up a post entitled "Is The Use Of Torture Legitimate?" To his credit, he shows some ambivalence on the subject and indeed, decides that he wishes torture wasn't necessary. This is refreshing because he is so strongly anti-Muslim.

The main thrust of his argument is that sometimes torture is the only way to get information, and even if only 20% of the information you get from torture is accurate or useful, it's still wrong to not torture if it can save human lives. Call it the Bauer Doctrine, if you will. It's on this point that he and I differ. And good liberal that I am, I'm going to take the devil's advocate side and demonstrate the good use of torture.

Let's dispense with this information argument first. Pure nonsense. People will say anything to stop the pain. Sometime it's a betrayal of secrets, but surely in the vast majority of cases it's whatever the torturer wants to hear. Otherwise, why stop? So you're as likely to get dangerously wrong information ("the, uh, the bomb is.... under the bridge! Send all your men there before 4:00!") as useful.

I'm going to assume good motives on the part of the administration. Only super villains run for office to destroy the world. Bush and Cheney and Company are in politics to make a positive difference. I can't see putting yourself through the hell of politics just to secure an oil investment. So, assuming they're good at heart, and not stupid (also probably true), why throw away all that political capital and international good will by publically supporting torture?

Because torture, while being a lousy information extraction mechanism, is quite useful as a threat.

Sensible people, seeing dissidents kidnapped and then returned with burn marks and rope scars, will seriously weigh the options of speaking out. How important is it to say their leaders are wrong, really? Dying for an ideal is one thing, but enduring extended pain for it quite another.

I think that the neo-con agenda is aimed at calming the world, at creating peace through the United States' unprecedented firepower. For obvious reasons, this idea doesn't sell well on its face because it sounds so much like, you know, fascism. So instead, we are doing all this to "protect ourselves" from "terrorists", such as "the democrats". Ha ha, just kidding Ann C. And George B. And Karl R and Tom DeL. Guess I'll throw in Michelle M. while I'm at it, and RedState.com. I hope they keep that graphic up!

Since the idea of jettisoning liberty and privacy is distasteful to Americans, I can only assume the PNAC looked at the horizon and saw Islamofascism rising, and decided that their only good option was an American version. Am I right? I don't know, but this narrative sure makes more sense than the one they're putting out.

And no, I don't think it's a good strategy. Based on my myriad of assumptions here, this is a bold and unbelievably stupid strategy. I think the best way to keep islamofascism down (if there would ever be such a thing) would be to stop buying their oil, because their tourism and agricultural resources are somewhat more limited. But hey, what do I know? I'm on my way to an Atheist Camp any day now. I look forward to showing off my scars.

Tell them what you said: The administration is lying to us about why they want to use torture. They think they have a noble reason to do so. They are wrong.

The Path To 9/11 Is A Nowhere Road

It was gratifying to see that ABC's partisan docudrama, THE PATH TO 9/11, didn't do better than to tie CBS's twice-aired 9/11 documentary, which was hamstrung but some local stations failing to carry it due to dangerous bad language.
However what really comforts me was seeing that both programs were handily beaten by Sunday Night Football on NBC. As Dick Cheney so often says, "I really think we've turned a corner here."

Joe Lieberman: The Manchurian Candidate

I feel like elaborating on my thoughts about this guy, especially after an appearance by Ken Mehlman on the Sunday chat shows in which he professed a preference for Joe Lieberman over the Republican candidate for Senator.
First of all, the spin is that Lieberman going independent is bad for Democrats. That's stupid. We have nothing to lose. Worst case scenario is Lieberman wins, goes back to senate, votes with Republicans. WE ALREADY HAVE THAT. We wouldn't be losing a Democratic seat, we'd be losing a Republican seat with a D on it. Joe has been the Zell Miller of the senate.
On the other hand, Republicans want him in there. They can't put much support behind him because he's not running as a Republican. The real Republican candidate is much weaker, has some kind of scandal dogging him (sorry, can't recall the scandal or his name) and could very well lose because the state leans Democratic. Still, RNC campaign funds must go to him.
Or he could drop out, and they get a candidate who is a failed Democrat and who said mean things to Dick Cheney in the 2000 debates. And of course there's the whole Jewish thing, which was probably a factor in Lieberman choosing to be a Democrat in the first place.
Joe Leiberman is, most of all, a wild card. He's the element that nobody wants in any race. And while he could do some damage to Democrats by staying in, it seems to me he's much more dangerous to Republicans. If Ned Lamont is nimble enough, he can kung-fu this challenge into a tidal wave of Democratic victories in a number of states beyond his own. He's been handed some great material.

Who Designed Your Dress?

Arianna Huffington gets around, and she publishes this account of meeting Condaleeza Rice at a party a couple of days ago. After running through a half dozen questions in her head she decides that the only unguarded answer she could expect would be the answer to, "who designed your dress?" Condi answers and they have a brief friendly chat about fashion.

The blog isn't as notable as the comments section, in which most people are screaming mad; either at Arianna for not attempting to kill Condi when she had the chance or for writing about this little moment instead of something important; or at Condi for destroying the world and for wearing an unflattering dress. The remarks are all coming from liberals so far. The angry left.

This disturbs me because the right has risen to its current position mostly by the careful use of anger, hate and devisive tactics. We're the left; we're hippies. Our strengths are feeling the other guys pain and engaging in dialogs. We throw our money at problems but we never, ever, bash them with sticks. It's worrisome to see us angry enough take action because we're not good with anger. We'll hurt ourselves and others.

See, I think it's great that A & C can talk fashion in the middle of the most polarized political climate ever. Condaleeza Rice is a person. George Bush is a person. Even Dick Cheney is one. If we demonize our enemies and refuse to understand them, we make bad strategic decisions. I don't have any problem with sharing the planet with the Bush family as long as they aren't in charge of any aspect of my life. Otherwise they all seem like interesting folks and I'd have them over for dinner.

Just kidding. Not Cheney obviously. I'd hate to watch a man succomb to angina pectoris right in front of me. It is just a matter of time after all.

The point is, hate the decision, not the Decider.