Never Having to Say I'm Sorry

Robert Parry acknowledges what the Republican National Chairman Michael Steele doesn't seem to understand. In his article, The GOP's "Era of Apologizing," Parry looks to the history of the GOP to counter Steele's argument that the GOP is done apologizing.

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele says, "the era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over." But that must have been a very brief "era," since it's hard to remember any significant mistakes that the GOP has owned up to - except perhaps that George W. Bush wasn't right-wing enough.

Instead, leading Republicans - and right-wing pundits - have engaged in a steady campaign of defending almost every controversial action of the Bush years, including torture of detainees, a war of aggression in Iraq, disregard of constitutional rights, failure to address global warming, massive tax cuts for the rich, the absence of financial regulation, etc., etc.

Nor has the Republican Party apologized for its ugly chip-on-the-shoulder tone and divisive tactics. It continues to exploit "wedge issues" designed to split the nation, now focusing on "gay marriage" as the party earlier relied on the "Southern strategy" to attract white voters upset about civil rights for blacks.

The GOP also won't stop its extreme rhetoric. Its national committee even contemplated demanding that the Democratic Party change its name to the "Democrat Socialist Party" - though the idea was ultimately rejected.

In recent weeks, a GOP governor in Texas mused about secession and pro-Republican hosts at Fox News bantered about armed insurrection. One such host, Glenn Beck, has accused the Obama administration of engaging in "progressive fascism" because of its efforts to restructure and save the U.S. auto industry.

The only noticeable "apologizing" on the Republican side has been about Bush violating conservative precepts against government spending and federal debt, although the GOP enthusiastically supports higher military spending and rejects any tax increase that might reduce the ballooning deficit.

Instead of an "era of apologizing," most Americans have witnessed continuation of the long era of the unapologetic Republican, now epitomized by former Vice President Dick Cheney who is on a speaking tour defending every excess of Bush's "war on terror."

In Cheney's May 21 speech to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, he also deployed the same sneering tone - common to the modern Republican - in demeaning critics, including President Barack Obama, along the lines of the old right-wing caricature of liberals as "blame-America-firsters."

Cheney derided the common-sense claim made by Obama and many other Americans (including senior military commanders) that the images of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the mistreatment of "war on terror" suspects have helped al-Qaeda and other extremist groups recruit more terrorists:

"This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left. We brought it on ourselves."

Nixon's Legacy

Cheney's intolerant tone, of course, is nothing new to Americans who lived through the eight years of the Bush administration - or for that matter who have listened to Republican rhetoric dating back at least to Richard Nixon, whose Vice President Spiro Agnew dismissed Vietnam War critics as "nattering nabobs of negativism" while Nixon called anti-war students "bums."

The Watergate political spying scandal - and the resignations of Agnew and Nixon - offered the Republicans a chance to change course. They could have repudiated Nixon's imperial theories and his belligerent style. They could have committed themselves to traditional American constitutional principles and begun treating adversaries with respect.

However, by the late 1970s, with the enlistment of the clever neoconservatives and the launching of a right-wing media infrastructure to wage a "war of ideas," the Republicans opted for a different lesson from the Watergate scandal: make sure you have the capability to cover up.

For the last three decades, the Republicans, the neocons and their right-wing media allies have run roughshod over the American political system.

They did virtually whatever they wanted, ignoring laws (e.g. the Iran-Contra scandal); flooding the public with propaganda (what they called "perception management"); running dirty political campaigns (see Lee Atwater, 1988); engaging in sleazy scandal-mongering (hounding Bill Clinton in the 1990s); getting away with election theft (Bush v. Gore, 2000); spreading fear (post-9/11 rhetoric); restoring the Imperial Presidency (George W. Bush's secret legal theories); plotting for a one-party state (Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority"); and more.

Dick Cheney, whose career spanned nearly the entirety of this modern GOP, is now mounting a vigorous defense of these Republican tendencies, essentially advocating the replacement of a constitutional Republic (founded on the principles of individual liberties and the rule of law) with a national security state based on fear, smears and a selective rendering of history.

His May 21 speech, which directly followed an address on terrorism by President Obama, was a classic in the genre of presenting your opponents as cowardly buffoons and ignoring all evidence of your own mistakes.

For instance, when Cheney's referred to al-Qaeda and A.Q. Khan, the Pakistan nuclear physicist credited with building the "Islamic bomb," Cheney might have noted that he was part of the Republican leadership in the 1980s that turned a blind eye to Khan's nuclear work in exchange for Pakistan's cooperation in shipping U.S. weapons to Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, including a young Osama bin Laden.

Cheney might have cited how his own excessive concern about what was then a rapidly deteriorating Soviet Union helped create the danger of al-Qaeda terrorism, which is made dramatically worse by the existence of a nuclear arsenal in Pakistan.

In referring to Saddam Hussein, Cheney could have noted how Republican icon Ronald Reagan, funneled covert support to the Iraqi strongman - including precursor materials for chemical and biological warfare - in another misguided American intrusion into Middle Eastern affairs.

Or when Cheney talked about people "with known ties to Mideast terrorists," he might have noted how the Reagan administration conspired with terrorist elements in Lebanon and shipped missiles to Iran - then deemed a terrorist state - or how U.S. governments have long supported right-wing terrorists operating across Latin America. [See Secrecy & Privilege.]

Cheney also might have acknowledged how George W. Bush and his top aides pooh-poohed warnings from the Clinton administration and from the CIA about the threat from al-Qaeda in the months leading up to 9/11.

Times Bashing

When Cheney bashed the New York Times for exposing the warrantless wiretap program in December 2005, he again demonstrated how imbalanced and unfair his complaints could be. He accused the Times of "publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda," and added:

"It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country or the safety of our people."

Though it's still a cheap applause line on the Right to kick the New York Times, Cheney was unfair to suggest that the warrantless wiretap story was illegitimate. By any standards, it raised important legal and constitutional questions -- even within Bush's own Justice Department.

Plus, the Bush administration never presented a plausible explanation for why the Times' sketchy account of the program was harmful to national security, since al-Qaeda operatives were surely aware that their communications were the target of U.S. intelligence.

Besides that, Cheney didn't mention how much assistance the New York Times had given to the Bush administration for its war policies.

In 2002, Cheney favorably cited the Times' bogus story about Iraq importing aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges, a tale that helped sell the case for the invasion. Nor did Cheney note how the Times had suppressed the wiretap story for more than a year at the administration's behest.

Even on the morning of Cheney's speech, the Times was hyping a dubious report from the Bush administration's Defense Department about how one in seven released Guantanamo prisoners supposedly "returned" to terrorist activities. Cheney approvingly cited the leak but not the newspaper that published it. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Helps the Bushies, Again."]

But Cheney, the neocons and their right-wing cohorts have never been about making a full and fair presentation of the facts to the American people. They have been about manipulating the American people with selective information mixed with combinations of fear and tough talk.

Mocking Legal Principles

For Cheney and similar authoritarians, American principles of justice are not something to have pride in, but rather silly inconveniences that only effete and foolish liberals would care about. For instance, in his speech, Cheney made this comment about the alleged 9/11 mastermind:

"Maybe you've heard that when we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand."

Instead of being afforded basic legal rights or even humane treatment, "KSM" was subjected to forced nudity, long periods of sleep deprivation, painful stress positions and the near-drowning of waterboarding at least 183 times. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross and every other objective observer, he was tortured.

However, in Cheney's world - where information is selective, principles are a la carte, and words are malleable - the treatment of KSM and other "high-value detainees" wasn't "torture."

"Torture was never permitted," Cheney said. "And the methods were given careful legal review before they were approved. Interrogators had authoritative guidance on the line between toughness and torture, and they knew to stay on the right side of it."

Cheney went on to accuse the administration's critics of "feigned outrage based on a false narrative" about torture, adding:

"Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. . But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half-exposed."

In other words, Cheney is advocating an anything-goes mentality that appeals to some fearful Americans who put their personal safety ahead of everything else, but Cheney's viewpoint understandably alarms many others who believe that terrorism can be combated without throwing away more than two centuries of U.S. legal traditions.

Those Americans include many traditional conservatives, like former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein, who said recently: "Part of being a Republic is to accept some risk. . When we try to eliminate all risk then we end up losing the Republic."

Yet, instead of taking pride in the fact that even a brutal enemy like KSM expected legal and humane treatment from his American captors, Cheney spit out the words about KSM wanting a lawyer like a punch line from one of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies.

Cheney's word games, elastic principles and extremism also don't stand alone.

Those attitudes have become central to the modern Republican Party, where you can find dozens of leaders over the past few decades who have demonstrated a similar contempt for the underpinnings of a democratic Republic, one that is founded on the rule of law and respect for human rights.

There is a lot for the GOP to apologize for - and contrary to Michael Steele's comment, the era of Republican apologizing is not over. Indeed it has not begun.

Progressives over Centrists

Jeff Cohen has an interesting article about the need for Barack Obama to pick a new Progressive Supreme Court Justice.

The article is titled, Forget "Centrists," We Need Progressives in the Supreme Court -- Right-Wingers Will Fight Whomever Obama Picks.

The point is that "unless Obama gives up his centrist approach and appoints real progressives, our right-wing court may get even more conservative."

Read the article here.

Protest Against Leonard Cohen

Via The Jewish Daily Forward

Buddhist monk, Jewish poet, famed philanderer and now the subject of political protest, Leonard Cohen performed at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on May 17. The elusive Canadian folk-rock legend, on his first major tour in 15 years, worked the capacity crowd of 6,000 fans who shouted out and sang along through three hours of his trademark songs of despair, doom and failed love. Now 74, Cohen bounced around the stage with more energy than he ever displayed as a young singer in the 1960s.

The excitable scene has been repeated in scores of cities, during a yearlong tour that has taken him as far afield as Moscow; Berlin; London, and Melbourne, Australia.

The New York event, however, featured one new element that reportedly had Cohen’s handlers on edge: a group of about three dozen pro-Palestinian protesters standing across the street from the theater entrance, calling on the singer to cancel a concert in Israel that is expected to take place in September.

The demonstrators, organized by local pro-Palestinian organizations and at least one left-wing Jewish group, spent an hour and a half chanting and singing improvised songs addressed to Cohen. A typical song, “Don’t Play Israel, Leonard Cohen,” was sung to the tune of “Hava Nagila.”

It is interesting that "Hava Nagila" means "Let's Rejoice!" It is a song of celebration. Any group, whether pro-Palestinian or Left-wing Jewish, using this song as a foundation for their protest seems to negate the very meaning of the song.

Here are the words:

Let's rejoice

Let's rejoice and be happy

Let's sing

Let's sing

Let's sing and be happy

Awake, awake, brothers!

Awake brothers with a happy heart

Awake, brothers, awake, brothers!

With a happy heart

Maybe these groups should go inside and listen to a Leonard Cohen concert. His response to all this might be found in his closing song.

The concert’s closing song, “Whither Thou Goest,” is lifted word for word from the Book of Ruth. It ends with evocative words that easily could have been his response to the protesters outside: “Thy people shall be my people.”

The Idea of Fear

Republicans have vowed to fight to save our prisons from terrorists. This has been a favorite talking point of the GOP since Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay.

When refering to the issue of terrorists in prison, Glenn Greenwald wants to know "is there anything the Right doesn't fear?

The "debate" over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it's hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the steps that typically lead to America's National Security policies:

(1) Right-wing super-tough-guy warriors project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world -- either because they are really petrified by it or because they want others to be ("Putting Muslim Terrorists in our prisons will make us Unsafe! -- Keep them away from me, please!!!");

(2) Rather than scoff at the inane fear-mongering or point out simple facts to reveal its idiocy, Democratic "leaders" such as Harry Reid echo the right-wing fears"Harry Reid isn't as scared of this as I am, which shows that he's weak"); in order to prove how Serious and Tough they are -- in our political debates, the more frightened one is, the more Serious and Tough one is -- and/or because they are genuinely frightened of being called mean names by Sean Hannity (

(3) "Journalists" who are capable of nothing other than mindlessly reciting what they hear then write articles depicting the Right's frightened neurosis as a Serious argument, and then overnight, a consensus emerges: Democrats are in big trouble politically unless they show that they, too, are as deeply frightened as the Right is.

Headzup put together a funny spoofy video on this topic. WATCH:

Glenn Beck is more than Ridiculous

Is Glenn Beck a 'drooling cretin' or is he a "lying sack of dog mess?"

Just ask Whoopi Goldberg!

Much Ado About Nancy Pelosi

The Ridiculous Nancy Pelosi 'Scandal' Made Simple (and Hilarious)

Did Nancy Pelosi know about torture? Was she briefed about torture? When did she know about torture? Did she authorize torture?

"Who cares?" says Sam Seder of Air America's BreakRoom Live with Maron & Seder.

The important issue is authorization, "Was she in a position to turn this country into a torture nation?" WATCH:

[h/t Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet]

Master of the Unusual

GOP: Getting Back to Their Conservative Base

A new Gallup survey shows that moderates and liberals are leaving the Republican party at a higher rate than conservatives. As matter of fact, only 1% of Republicans who considered themselves conservatives have left the Republican Party over the last eight years. The most loyal Republicans were weekly church goers.

Comparatively, 9% of moderates and 8% of liberals have left the party.

Some Republicans might find these results reassuring. According to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Dick Cheney this exodus is not a problem. They have been saying that the GOP shouldn't moderate but rather the GOP should focus its rebuilding efforts on the party's conservative base.

Give Limbaugh, Hannity and Cheney medals for a 'mission accomplished.'

Is Permanent War Really a Disease

Republicans are now trying to rebrand Democrats as Socialists.

(W)hen the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

The RNC wants to reframe 'Democrats' or 'Liberals' as 'Socialists' to create an aura of fear. In other words, if you think like a liberal then you are really a socialist. If you are a socialist then you are opposed to a capitalist system of government.

But what happens when liberalism comes obsolete in a society?

Chris Hedges at Truthdig has a compelling article on that point. He suggests that there is a negative effect on a nation of being embattled in a 'Permanent War.' He states that when liberal democratic forces of a nation become powerless then the effect is "an age of moral nihilism....it can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades."

The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war.

It was a decline into permanent war, not Islam, which killed the liberal, democratic movements in the Arab world, ones that held great promise in the early part of the 20th century in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls—the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads—personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.

“War,” Randolph Bourne commented acidly, “is the health of the state.”

In “Pentagon Capitalism” Seymour Melman described the defense industry as viral. Defense and military industries in permanent war, he wrote, trash economies. They are able to upend priorities. They redirect government expenditures toward their huge military projects and starve domestic investment in the name of national security. We produce sophisticated fighter jets, while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule. Our automotive industry goes bankrupt. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies to fight global warming. Universities are flooded with defense-related cash and grants, and struggle to find money for environmental studies. This is the disease of permanent war. [...]

Citizens in a state of permanent war are bombarded with the insidious militarized language of power, fear and strength that mask an increasingly brittle reality. The corporations behind the doctrine of permanent war—who have corrupted Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution—must keep us afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear means that we will be willing to give up our rights and liberties for security. Fear keeps us penned in like domesticated animals.

Doing away with liberalism will not make us safer. It's the RNC that seems to be off track.

Activist Judges

President Barack Obama will soon choose a replacement for the Supreme Court Justice to succeed Justice David Souter.

The Republicans and right-wing pundits have already indicated that no matter who President Obama chooses, they believe he will choose an activist judge.

In the language of a conservative, that means that the judge is not a 'strict constructionist' and therefore will be pro-choice, pro-stem cell research and pro-same sex marriage. Critics object to justices who inject their own beliefs into their decisions.

As the conservatives are pontificating on this issue, Jeffrey Tobin's New Yorker article, No More Mr. Nice Guy, explores the decisions of Chief Justice John Roberts.

In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

It's looking more and more like Justice Roberts is an activist judge...Republican style!

Bee Collapse and Pesticides

In 2006/2007 bee hives were being compromised and bees were vanishing all across the country. Numerous theories from cellphone radiation, poor diet, mites, stress, climate change or low-level pesticide exposure were being considered as the reason for colony collapse.

Some beekeepers have now singled out two pesticides to be the culprit . The chemicals produced by Bayer CropScience, imidacloprid and its chemical cousin clothianidin, are thought to be the cause of bee die-offs around the world for over a decade. [...]

Imidacloprid and clothianidin are chloronicotinoids, a synthetic compound that combines nicotine, a powerful toxin, with chlorine to attack an insect's nervous system. The chemical is applied to the seed of a plant, added to soil, or sprayed on a crop and spreads to every corner of the plant's tissue, killing the pests that feed on it.

Pennsylvania beekeeper John Macdonald has been keeping bees for over 30 years and recently became convinced that imidacloprid is linked to colony collapse disorder. It's the only explanation he can find for why his bees, whose hives border farmland that uses the pesticide, started dropping dead a few years ago.

Bayer CropScience spokesman Jack Boyne says his company's pesticides are not to blame. "We do a lot of research on our products and we feel like we have a very good body of evidence to suggest that pesticides, including insecticides, are not the cause of colony collapse disorder," he says. "Pesticides have been around for a lot of years now and honeybee collapse has only been a factor for the last few years." (Imidacloprid has been approved for use in the U.S. since 1994 and clothianidin has been used since 2003.)

Scientists continue to investigate the causes of colony collapse disorder. Leading theories suggest a combination of factors that include parasitic mites, disease, malnutrition and environmental contaminants like pesticides, insecticides and fungicides. The current EPA review will provide further insight into the role of pesticides, as it will uncover whether honeybees sickened by exposure to imidacloprid spread it around by bringing contaminated nectar and pollen back to the hive. [...]

In a statement, the EPA says that before banning a pesticide, it "must find that an 'imminent hazard' exists. The federal courts have ruled that to make this finding, EPA must conclude, among other things, that there is a substantial likelihood that imminent, serious harm will be experienced from use of the pesticide." The EPA did not clarify what is meant by "imminent hazard" and why the death of honeybees does not qualify.

There seems to be too many theories and not enough testing or regulation.

God and War

Think Progress comments on the Robert Draper article and exposé on Donald Rumsfeld in GQ magazine.

In a lengthy article on Donald Rumsfeld’s rocky tenure as Defense Secretary, GQ published never-before-seen cover sheets from top-secret intelligence briefings produced by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. Starting in the days surrounding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the cover sheets featured inspirational Bible verses printed over military images, “and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House” to the president, “who referred to America’s war on terror as a ‘crusade,’” GQ writes. Below are some examples of the Bible quotes:

“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” [The quote appears over an image of a tank at sunrise]

“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” [The quote appears over an image of a soldier in Baghdad]

“It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.” [The quote appears over an image of Saddam Hussein]

“Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, The nation that keeps faith.” [The quote appears over an image of tanks entering an Iraqi city]

Visit GQ.com’s exclusive slideshow

GQ’s Robert Draper writes that when colleagues complained to the Pentagon official who came up with the cover sheets, he replied, “‘my seniors’ — JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself – appreciated the cover pages.”

Hullabaloo helps us remember The Bush Crusades with a remark from September '01 which was "no idle slip of the tongue."

On Sunday, Bush warned Americans that "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile."

And also:In the programmeElusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, which starts on Monday, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."

Frank Rich finds Rumsfeld's cover sheets "seriously creepy" and believes that Obama Can't Turn the page on Bush.

TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Robert Draper acknowledged that Rumsfeld didn't flaunt any religiosity and disclosed what his motivation was in adorning the cover sheets with scripture.

The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests. In the case of the sheets, publicly flaunting his own religious views was not at all the SecDef’s style—“Rumsfeld was old-fashioned that way,” Shaffer acknowledged when I contacted him about the briefings—but it was decidedly Bush’s style, and Rumsfeld likely saw the Scriptures as a way of making a personal connection with a president who frequently quoted the Bible.

Nancy Pelosi: A Diversionary Distraction

The Republicans are in a huff over Nancy Pelosi and what she did and didn't know or what she did and didn't do. The GOP is talking about torture. But missing from this conversation and finger pointing is the fact that no matter what Pelosi's actions were or weren't, it was the Bush/Cheney administration who actually ordered torture, knew of torture and promoted torture.

Pelosi has requested a Truth Commission to actually investigate the actions of the Bush administration including what information was given to Pelosi and when.

Mark Karlin at BuzzFlash believes all of the angst over Nancy Pelosi is just a diversionary distraction.

The Republicans are chronically good at throwing a glass against the wall, and as eyes shift toward the crashing sound stealing the money off the table. Deception is second nature to them.

So let's not hear all this hand-wringing over Nancy Pelosi. Yes, she was probably told something rather euphemestic about the CIA's actions to "prevent another terrorist attack." But she's just a bystander to the war crimes. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush were driving the bus of war, torture and murder.

Think Progress also weighs in on this issue.

For weeks, conservatives have been launching hypocritical and disingenuous attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) regarding her level of knowledge of the Bush administration’s torture program.

Pelosi has been clear that recent questions about her level of knowledge about Bush’s torture program only add more — not less — need for an investigation to take place. “Until a truth commission comes into being, I encourage the appropriate committees of the House to conduct vigorous oversight of these issues,” Pelosi said.

If conservatives were being honest about their criticisms, they’d be taking up Pelosi’s desire for a full investigation, an inquiry that would not only examine what members of Congress knew but also the prominent role Cheney played in authorizing illegal acts.

Does anyone see a problem that we need a Truth Commission? Or that some politicians oppose a Truth Commission. It seems that TRUTH has taken a backseat to political antics.

Cheney Doth Protest Too Much!

Dick Cheney is out of his cage and journalists are wondering why. William Rivers Pitt offers interesting and yet disturbing information on Cheney's motives for being so visible.

In his article, "Why the Caged Bird Sang" Pitt suggests that Cheney 'is scared of going to prison."

But why? The American public has been aware of our use of torture for some time now. The Obama administration has made it all too clear that they have strong reservations about prosecuting the architects of the Bush administration's torture policy, and that any meaningful actions along those lines are highly unlikely to be taken.

Why, then?

It is because Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known. If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to reverse itself and seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.

This is not about waterboarding, as gruesome as that practice is. It is not about putting prisoners in confined spaces, or about pushing them, or slapping them, or putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.

It is about this, from July of 2004:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, The Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.

Hersh: "Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Dick Cheney wanted everyone talking about waterboarding, close confinement, and all the rest of the torture techniques outlined in the recently-released "Torture Memos." Talking about waterboarding is still safe territory for him and everyone else who served his cruel intentions in the Bush administration. They're taking some heat, sure, but the story has been out there for a while and he's not wearing prison stripes yet.

I know why this caged bird sang. He was terrified of the very real cage that could be waiting to swing open and swallow him up if the true nature of his torture directives became widely known. If the entire country comprehends the awful fact that women and boys were forcibly raped upon his specific orders, Dick Cheney's bets would all be off.

That was then, however, and this is now. Dick Cheney is breathing a little easier today, and why shouldn't he? President Obama appears to have pretty much let Cheney, along with all the other enables of torture, off the hook.

"President Obama is seeking to block the release of photographs depicting American military personnel abusing captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, an administration official said Wednesday," reports The New York Times. "The president's decision marks a sharp reversal from a decision made last month by the Pentagon, which reached a deal with the American Civil Liberties Union to release photographs showing incidents at Abu Ghraib and a half-dozen other prisons. 'Last week, the president met with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the D.O.D. photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops,' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'And because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.'"

To me, this means two things.

The pictures are really, really, really bad, just as Sy Hersh said they would be.

There will be no punishment, no justice, for acts of barbarous torture undertaken at the specific behest of men like Dick Cheney. The Obama administration has chosen the easier path, chosen to ignore the manifest harm done to this nation and the world by refusing to seek that necessary justice.

The caged bird sang to stay out of a cage. Now he's free as a bird, and ours is a badly damaged and disgraced country because of it.

If Sy Hersh and William Rivers Pitt are right then this country cannot go forward unless the Obama administration reverses course and holds the Bush/Cheney administration accountable for their barbarous decisions, actions and lies.

How Do He Do It?

Just think if we could change our color...