…with his left hand, while using his right to manipulate the mouse.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , “President George W. Bush says Iraq has become the point of convergence for two of the greatest threats the United States is facing — Al-Qaeda and Iran.”

So Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until Bush created the perfect conditions for them there. And Iran was the country that Ahmed Chalabi was working with to encourage the US to invade Iraq. Iran was the country that Chalabi gave secret US code to, and the country where Chalabi met with the mad President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The US not only reportedly paid Chalabi more than $50 Million for all his great work but had also planned to turn Iraq over to him within six months of the invasion. Now he’s under investigation by several U.S. government sources.

So the two greatest threats to the United States were created and embraced by . . . George W. Bush.

Anyway…

As a result of these threats “The U.S. president said he would order an indefinite halt to troop withdrawals…” which means it’s time to revisit Iraq.

Iraq Me Dave Petraeus

How do you get to 100 years in the war with Iraq?

Six Months at a time.

Jon Stewart interviews Aram Roston
…on convicted embezzler ($300 Million), Ahmad Chalabi, whose “Iraqi National Congress” provided most of the false and manufactured intelligence – used by the the Office of Special Plans which was set up by Dick Cheney and run by the corrupt Paul Wolfowitz and the “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth” according to General Tommy Franks, Douglas Feith – which led the US into the Iraq War.

Which brings us to…

The terrible legacy of John Yoo

[John Yoo is the Korean-born legal mind, dedicated to legitimising the unitary executive, executive privilege and the legality of torture, who provided the legal advices to various Attorneys General, justifying all of these anti-democratic concepts.]

Chris Floyd‘s Empire Burlesque blog is worth putting on your regular list [htt Pete Gollins]. Here’s part of his latest post:

From ABC:
Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation’

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council‘s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

This is not just a smoking gun — it’s a MOAB dropped right on the White House, confirming, yet again, what any sentient being should already know: the illegal torture tactics (yes, they are torture; and yes, they are illegal, no matter what “the Attorney General says”) used on George W. Bush’s Terror War captives were approved by the highest officials of the government, all of whom knew — in exacting, sickening detail — just what they were inflicting.
…

All of the atrocities and murders that have thus far come to light from the hellish pit of the Bush gulag are the direct responsibility of the “Principals,” the inner circle, the Privy Council, the Star Chamber of the real American government: the “National Security State” that operates outside all law, all oversight, all constitutional legitimacy.

Yet even as the media digs out the workings of this junta, they feel compelled to offer what they believe is a fig leaf that will allow all good and decent folk to retain their sacred faith in American exceptionalism: “Hey, we’re not evil; we only torture the really bad guys, the worst of the worst, the high value al Qaeda scum. Torture’s too good for the likes of them!”

The post has gathered some good comments, like this one:

This “with us or against us” theme is the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, Hitler‘s favorite legal philosopher. Back in the Weimar Republic days, Schmitt postulated that the ability to declare an exception to government as usual is the true power in government.

The ability to declare an emergency status or situation, an emergency category outside the legal norms, is precisely what the Nazis — and now the neocons — relentlessly grasp for.

The Unitary Executive is their Holy Grail, their prime goal, In every arena of governance they seek to establish a father figure who can rule you either in with us, or out in the land of the sub-humans, subject to arrest, detention, torture, disappearance.

This produces a government of exceptions, of little fiefdoms like the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the SEC, the EPA, each ruled by lesser unitary executives carrying out what the ultimate Unitary Executive expects — all by means of declaring exceptional categories, situations, decisions, policies.

The fig leaf of representative democracy is never lowered nor set down, just set aside constantly, endlessly in practice.

The government becomes utterly hollow, as do the goals and accomplishments of every person in it, or supporting it.

That little phrase leaps out: “American exceptionalism”. A sacred faith.

Is that what this is all about? Is that why America and Israel are so close and uncritical of each other? They both understand what it is to be exceptional among all the nations, that they may not be bound by the laws of common people and common nations, laws by which they insist, at the threat of shock and awe, other nations are bound? And does this exceptionalism extend logically to presidential exceptionalism? Is that what the unitary executive is all about?

 

 

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