The Outlaw Presidency

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/07/14/BL2008071401091.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 14, 2008; 12:47 PM

Another major book chronicling the descent into lawlessness of the Bush presidency is out this week. This one is by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, and it's called "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals."

Reviewing the book for The Washington Post, Andrew J. Bacevich writes that Mayer's "achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces. Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers.

"Under the guise of 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' it has succeeded, in Mayer's words, in 'making torture the official law of the land in all but name.' Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.


"To dismiss these as wild, anti-American ravings will not do. They are facts, which Mayer substantiates in persuasive detail, citing the testimony... of military officers, intelligence professionals, 'hard-line law-and-order stalwarts in the criminal justice system' and impeccably conservative Bush appointees who resisted the conspiracy from within the administration.

"Above all, the story Mayer tells is one of fear and its exploitation.....

[Octafish]

1. No place will be safe for the Bush Gang.

From Froomkin:

Scott Shane writes in the New York Times: "Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001.

"The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were 'categorically' torture, which is illegal under both American and international law.

"The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box 'so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position' and was one of several prisoners to be 'slammed against the walls,' according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured on the nose and mouth to create the sensation of suffocation and drowning....

"The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day....

SNIP...

"'The Dark Side' also describes a frightening false alarm at the White House on Oct. 18, 2001, when, it says, an alarm went off on a machine designed to detect biological, chemical or radiological attacks. According to the book, among those who believed they might have been exposed to a pathogen was Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Ms. Mayer quotes an unnamed 'former administration official' as saying, 'They thought that Cheney was already lethally infected.'"

The wheels of Justice.

[hootinholler]

2. Hmm, what will lthe Bush Hunters be called?

I mean everyone knows what a Nazi Hunter is, but Bush Hunter is kinda taken for one who goes on safari.

-Hoot