Bob Herbert: Madness and Shame

[babylonsister]

Madness and Shame

By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 22, 2008


You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney but without the vice president’s sense of humor.

In her important new book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney’s main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration’s legal strategy for the so-called war on terror.

She quotes a colleague as saying of Mr. Addington: “No one stood to his right.” Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Mr. Cheney, was reported to have summed up Mr. Addington as follows: “He doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington’s existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration’s Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror — regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say — was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.

This is the mind-set that gave us Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the C.I.A.’s secret prisons, known as “black sites.”

Ms. Mayer wrote: “The legal doctrine that Addington espoused — that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries if national security demanded it — rested on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars shared.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/opinion/22herbert.html?ref=opinion

[bluerum]

1. Dark government - they take our tax money and spend it on whatever

they want. They make decisions behind closed doors and no-one, not even congress has the ability to hold them accountable or even realize the full extent to which they have betrayed our trust.

[ixion]

2. "Americans still have not come to grips with this disastrous stain on the nation’s soul."

Very, very true. And the longer we continue to collectively deny and/or ignore that stain, the worse it will become.

[tanyev]

3. Cheney has a sense of humor?

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

4. I'm pretty sure he was kidding. Had to be. nt

[tanyev]

5. Maybe he had a big ol' guffaw after he shot Harry Whittington in the face.

"Psych, Harry!"

[Submariner]

6. I hope Cheney and Bush know how to get on the internets

I want them to read how we are hounding them and hunting them down over the next few years. I want them to feel that they can NEVER travel in peace EVER again. They can vacation nowhere. They can't take a casual drive or visit Yosemite, Alaska, the Grand Canyon, Fenway Park, EVER EVER again.

They are excrement that will go down in history among the most evil and corrupt cock roach turds that ever inhabited the planet.

Just go home and ROT you pair of draft dodging chickenhawk cowards.

Any bets on these 2 assholes ever trying to fly overseas on vacation? What a welcome either one of them would get in any country. :mad:

[babylonsister]

7. * 'knows' the youtubes...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3654343&mesg_id=3654343

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic for war crimes gives me hope...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3403905

[bluestateboomer]

8. K & R n/t

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Someone I wish the TV character "Dexter" would take an interest in.

Addington is pure evil.

[DCKit]

10. All this time I thought he was a character on "24".

"Dick Cheney without a sense of humor."

Terrifying.