Goldman Sachs To Make Record Bonus Payouts

As we listen to the those "om-nom-nom" sounds draw closer, it's good to remember what the point of all the hubbub was: to have Goldman Sachs keep Wall Street on business-as-usual footing, and in return to allow it to take over the United States banking system. So glad Obama has placed the financial fate of the country in these people's hands. Via the Guardian:

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company’s prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses if, as predicted, it completed its most profitable year ever. Figures next month detailing the firm’s second-quarter earnings are expected to show a further jump in profits. Warren Buffett, who bought $5bn of the company’s shares in January, has already made a $1bn gain on his investment.

Goldman is expected to be the biggest winner in the race for revenues that, in 2006, reached £186bn across the entire industry. While this figure is expected to fall to £160bn in 2009, it will be split among a smaller number of firms.

"Give Me A Waterboard, Dick Cheney, And One Hour, And I'll Have Him Confess To The Sharon Tate Murders"

Jesse Ventura added this treasure to my trove of revenge fantasies during a Larry King interview, further stoked this week by the entire Cheney family, which collectively told us we should be down on our knees thanking them for keeping us safe from the Bad People.

Other punishment favorites include holding a "Birdshot Party," sending him out as a postal carrier in the slums of Damascus, a regimen of beatings with a baseball bat, and simple execution. Of course these are negative, violent things, and I'm an optimistic and constructive chap. So here's what should really be done:

1) force-feed him a diet of nothing but marijuana brownies, cheeseburgers and milkshakes
2) make him listen to music by black artists, with emphasis on rappers, for 6 months non-stop
3) if he's still alive after 6 months, start an intensive program of feminist consciousness-raising training

In short, he should be sent to a re-education camp which uses advanced psychological therapies designed to literally kill him with kindness. Should he somehow survive it, he'd at least come out a better, perhaps even more bearable person.

I could easily perform this service to the world in a finished basement, pre-equipped for these and similar purposes, and hereby offer my dungeon and time gratis. As for step #3, Lord Wife went to NYU so she can devise the curriculum. Hmm...I think the music would start off with a Martha and the Vandellas video like the one above, a truly frightening version of "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide."

Why The Charges Were Dropped Against Former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens

There is a core of about 12 senior Senators and Reps who control the portions of wealth and privilege to most actors in government and their clients. It's kind of like a consulting firm in which the most important things to keep straight are shifting motives and where the bodies are buried, and they can't be in the core without earning black belts in corruption. Ted Stevens was there for a long time, but he got pushed out of the Circle of Trust, out of the Tree House when he openly cried on the Senate floor, "You're all going to pay for this!" So it was no surprise when corruption charges were levied against him.

Still, I was puzzled and disgusted when the new Justice dropped the charges. With that and so many other things, however, the former Department was dealing Stevens a hand from the same marked deck as it did everybody else. In a highly competent and intellectually unsparing post, the Bee Keeper's Apprentice lays out why Eric Holder did the right thing in dropping the charges. The prosecutors had messed with the Rules of Evidence:

For the last eight years, we have all seen what can happen when the highest prosecutors in the land are ruled not by the rules of evidence and law, but by the rules of cronyism and politics. This is why I believe that President Obama hit it out of the park when he appointed Eric Holder as Attorney General. Holder seems to know, and respect, the rules of evidence and law. We don't have to be happy with his decision to drop the case against former Senator from Alaska Ted Stevens, but we do have to respect Holder's decision. Stevens, who was indicted and convicted of ethics violations for not disclosing "gifts" in excess of $250,000, will walk free on a technicality. And I agree that he should walk.

Notes were found in the former prosecutors files. Notes that would have helped Stevens defense attorneys to cross-examine the testimony of Bill Allen, whose testimony helped convict Stevens. Notes that were not provided to the defense team during discovery. Notes that might have cast doubt on Allen's testimony, which suddenly doesn't look quite as bullet-proof as it once did. Notes that were required by the rules of evidence to be turned over to the defense.

How typical. They stacked the deck, and didn't even need to against Stevens. Bee, a legal beagle by day, clarified not just this case but also its over-arching umbrella. The first and most important thing for our country to do is start playing by the rules again, by our good well-proven rules. Helluva post, read in full if you want here. In turn, Bee triggered a related insight.

There's a different angle on prosecuting Bush: his modes of behavior aren't going to change. He is a professional criminal. It's what he does. He has in no wise gone straight and he's going to do other illegal things going forward. If I were Holder's boss, I'd tell him to leave the past to Congress and assign a small team of smart kids to keep an eye on W and his transactions. He will transgress further because of what he is. Guaranteed. The opportunity to impeach or prosecute him for the past was already gone, but there is plenty of uncertain future ahead, and the game is about making the rules re-apply. Even to him.

Attack Of The MBA Zombies

The good news is I didn't write this. The bad news is I may as well have. Like its author the prophet of a new religion called Furtherism I ran away screaming from the inside refused to take my MBA and hang it on a wall like a death certificate. Sure it was hard but it's all about staying alive.

Warning: If you are ever attacked by a zombie, you will become one. That is what they say. If you or anyone you know has a mortgage, a credit card, or has attended one of three business schools, you had better move to Cuba. It is one of the few places outside of rural Alaska where you can avoid the dreaded MBA Zombie.

Crack researcher (and Zombie fighter) Deborah Barrow has just released her top-secret study of where the Generation Z (that is Generation Zombie) became that way. While not reminiscing about the good old days where kids could run free after school and climb trees with abandon, she does identify where the Zombies go through their initiation rituals and final transformation.

And the biggest Zombie Mill that spawned our current threat? Harvard, or as said by the Zombies themselves, Haaavaad. Don't say it out loud - there may be evidence that if chanted, zombies will appear.

The next on the list: NYU Stern School of Business. Stern is the German word for star, so this must be where they get their training in astrology, figuring out the exact moment to strike. I never knew how they could act in unison. I always thought it was a keen sense of smell, but this changes everything.

And the third? Cornell? That school that wants to be in the Ivy League, but can't decide if it is a state school for the unwashed masses or an elite up-yours-I'm-privileged private school. Somehow that makes sense. Only Zombies would want to have a dairy and farm lab nearby for their ghoulish experiments. Frankenstein is making way too much sense right now.

Now we know what happened to the banks. Be very careful out there. And destroy your credit cards and mortgages, if you have any. It is very important to stay alive. Plant a garden.

Diane Feinstein Speaks Under The Cone Of Dumbness

Do you remember the "Cone of Silence" that never seemed to work the in the old TV comedy "Get Smart?" Well in Washington, DC, we have the Cone of Dumbness. It extends around the Beltway which surrounds the city, and every time an event is officially predicted or analyzed it usually occurs under that dome. Even so, if you're head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you might want to consider not saying things like this:

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan's northwestern border.

"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said.

You can be vicious. You can be stupid. And you can be viciously stupid. Feinstein just moved the Fall of Pakistan up to this calendar year. Predator drone strikes that kill people's families at dawn are perceived as being worse than the Taliban pulling men out of a marketplace and executing them. I can see why military folk might not "get" that. But if we can't get better out of our leadership, there really is going to be a Global War On Terror, for real, and my side will lose. Get Smart, Obama.

Oh, and all those nice things I just said about women? Do not apply to Diane Feinstein. Now if you excuse me, I have people to go kill.

From The Comments Section "Of Coal Mines & Canaries"

Still Life Living, who wrote the original post, observed:

It is interesting how we Americans recently poured $140 billion into Citibank ($50 billion cash and the rest thru off-balance sheet Fed incentives, loans, and cash infusions), and the market cap today is only $19.35 billion!

God bless America. Where else could such a ruse be pulled off? Why didn't the US just buy all of the outstanding shares at market prices and go forward with a truth commission like investigation? Once we own the company, we own the history. Then we can prosecute and maybe seize assets and get our money back.

Halliburton has a market cap of $16.4 billion. I think the USA should buy it so we can own the history and start prosecutions.

Where did that 150 billion go? At this point, no one knows, but that's a shit-load of money, 7 or 8 times the total worth. Far cheaper to buy their ass, buy all their assets. And what are they building in there, between 10-K reporting deadlines? I don't know, but Tom Waits and I will tell you one thing: they're not building swing-sets for the children. It would be much cheaper to buy the truth than to keep paying off our captors.

Obama To Sign Order Shutting Guantanamo, Halting Military Tribunals

Now that title felt good to write! A sanctioned White House leak states:

The Associated Press has learned that President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order Thursday to close the detention center within a year and halt military trials of terror suspects held there. The executive order was one of three expected imminently on how to interrogate and prosecute al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters believed to threaten the United States.

A senior Obama aide said the president would sign the order on Thursday, fulfilling his campaign promise to shut down a facility that critics around the world say violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the event has not yet been announced.

(Update) Some in the blogsphere are displeased Gitmo didn't get closed right away, but at least the war crimes trials were suspended today. The real problem is figuring out what to do with the inmates, with legal complexities ranging from merely bewildering to impossible. For example, one Canadian is accused of killing a US sergeant with a grenade in Afghanistan 7 years ago. The accused was 15 at the time. Can he really be tried in a US civilian court? As an adult? What justice could a "jury of peers" dispense? Would love to hear any case precedents for that one. Probably best to send him back to Toronto and let them figure it out.

Regardless of guilt, the US would be wise to offer each of the inmates $250,000 or more in exchange for agreement not to sue for damages arising from torture and wrongful imprisonment. Then give them a plane ride home. Many Americans would argue that doing so would let a lot of guilty people go, including Kaleid Sheik Mohammed (who would like nothing better than execution) and five other alleged 9/11 plotters. Too bad, game over.

America lost when it tortured these men, and torture invalidated both their confessions and their guilt. To put that in perspective, most anyone who comes through here, including myself, would confess to being a Sylvania light bulb, 60 watts, after about 20 seconds of waterboarding a.k.a. drowning. I've drowned a.k.a. died, it's not pretty, and these people went through far, far more than that.

For over 7 years, they were in a place scientifically designed to elicit human misery, their keepers inclined to extract revenge. Not surprisingly, the few sane ones left recently tried to starve themselves to death, as a final protest, and feeding tubes denied the privilege. If we let these people go without agreement or closure, guilty or innocent, imagine the flight paths their grievances will take. There are crimes to be punished here, oh yes. And the orders to torture may well prove to be the instruments of it coming to that.

Palestine, Gaza, And Long Shadows

In modern times it's hard to unpack all the info-maelstroms, it's easy to get snagged by electronic histrionics. They strobe-blind and strand us from seeing our natural backgrounds of time, connection and depth. The Media excel at casting, destroying, discovering, and re-casting Molochs of irrationality, erecting false yet powerful narrative arcs which demand our mental fealties. The falsities control us on the cheap, leaving collateral damages of knowledge, context, and common sense.

Israel's invasion of Gaza, for example, is utterly devoid of a context which should be completely obvious, even to Westerners, and some will soon be provided below. First, it's wise to admit my approach to thinking about politics and conflict was already unorthodox by inclination, and was kicked even further towards a "long shadows" framework by once being horribly, frighteningly wrong.

In Yugoslavia in the 1980s, I failed to see a devolution into chaos and genocide as it was happening right in front of my eyes. I cheerfully walked and stayed in places where little old women and pre-schoolers would die by sniper fire for hurrying groceries across a street, where pits would be dug to dispose of massacres, where a war against civilians (focused on Islamic Bosniaks) would soon ensue. The war consisted of ethnic cleansing, siege, mass rape, execution and torture, where it was lucky to starve in concentration camps. Rather than predict reality, however, I reported future prospects in line with official perceptions, and pronounced the area ripe for Western expansion.

All the calling cards of chaos were there for me to see: the empty shelves, rationing, black markets, Soviet-style surveillance, sharp ethnic and religious divisions, the eroding commons, growing inequities and casual police corruption. Rather than think for myself, I chose to believe what an optimistic media told me. Here's the kicker: even if my ignorance of the area's history had been corrected, I would still have denied, and vehemently, that an imminent war of atrocity would be caused by conflicts which took place more than 400 years earlier.

There's nothing like knowing that even if you'd done the homework, you still would've failed the exam. The lesson of not being equal to that test has never left me. It has urged me to be more clinical in appraisal, more mindful of past echoes, to scrutinize first-hand observations over distant theories. It forever shook my faith in the blithe premises of unchaperoned diversity, and taught me that context, however complex, is reality's keystone.

Now, then: let's go back to Israel, Palestine, and Gaza. All the way back to Zephaniah chapter 2, verse 5:

For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.

Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.

The scripture above was written circa 630 B.C. by one of the most obscure prophets of the Old Testament. "Philistines" is a Hebrew term derived from the root p-l-sh, or פלש‎, which means to invade, divide, or overwhelm. Referring to that same people, the Romans used the word to rename Israel as "Palestina," a final insult to the Jews after their million-corpse rebellion was put down late in Hadrian's reign, 135 A.D. As for the Philistines, no one knows where they came from originally. The available evidence indicates they were ethnically distinct Caucasian refugees or prisoners, (likely from one of the Aegean islands, maybe Mycenae) sent by an Egyptian pharaoh to the southwest coast of Palestine some 14 centuries ago. They were a sea people, remarkably skilled mariners, iron-smiths, and merchants.

At that time, and until its name was changed to Judeah post-Exodus, "Canaan" was the name for all the lands east of the River Jordan to the sea, which had been a province of Egypt dating to 2000 B.C. Beautiful purple fabrics, prized above all others, were made in Canaan with dyes coaxed from an indigenous murex snail. The dye was called Knaa, and the Phoenicians (Greek for "purple people") became famous for shipping the fabric all over the known world from Jaffa (Haifa). It signified royalty.

Many peoples existed in the land other than Philistines and Judeans, most of which are even more lost to history than the Hittites. The Old Testament remains the only document to list the tribes and clans apparently displaced following the Exodus (see Genesis 10: 15-19). Today's Palestinians and Israelis are the survivors of those ancient disputes, in which one can imagine a violent churning of migrations, innovations, and assimilations. The southwest coast of Canaan which the Philistines first seized is now known as the Gaza Strip.

Gaza ("strong point") was named for the most formidable of its five city-states, and the Philistines gained their pejorative stature after gaining them by Egyptian mandate. They became wealthy, built up and pushed further out into Hebrew-held lands. And so it came to pass that the Hebrews developed a special hatred for the Philistines--and they must by no means have been alone in reviling the strange and powerful usurpers of choice coast-line. In the Bible, conflict between them seems to be a constant, and several hundred Old Testament scriptures are devoted to heaping scorn on Philistines over and above the other unwanted occupants of Canaan. The stories of Samson and Delilah, Saul, Samuel, and David all feature Philistines as villains, and when David slew Goliath to become King of Judah, he slew one of their champions.

To a contemporary Israeli with even a cursory knowledge of tradition, Palestinians are synonymous with Philistines, the Gazans most of all, and ancient Canaan is geographically synonymous with the outer borders of modern Israel. As a policy, revenge and cleansing of them and the other cattle-people ("goyim") are deeply embedded in Israeli tradition, and more. It's repeatedly spelled out in sacred text as the will and commandment of god. as it is in Deuteronomy 7, verse 1:

When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

Fast forward to last November, stop, and note: it's handy to keep deep background in mind while you debate whether to fire up your Bullshit Detector. Our media now tells us that Gaza's Hamas Party broke a cease-fire with Israel, easy enough to believe. But rewind two years, stop. Hamas won a democratic election held in 2006 at the behest of the Bush Administration. The US, Canada, and the EU froze Palestinian government accounts and withheld all payments. Israel then blockaded the Gaza Strip, where 2.5 million people are crammed into a hundred square kilometers, and the industrial output and trade promptly shrank by 95%. The only food Gazans get is from humanitarian aid, and Israel supplies the electricity (not!). All manner of subterfuge, spy-craft, and force have been applied to throw Hamas out, and have failed.

Israel broke the cease-fire on November 4th, 2008 when its forces killed a Palestinian in Gaza. Some people there responded with a single mortar barrage towards Israeli positions, no casualties. Israel then killed six Gazans, to which Hamas responded with its "advanced" Qassam rockets. This fits the pattern. 79% of Israel-Palestine conflict pauses were interrupted when a Palestinian was killed. 8% of pauses were interrupted by Palestinian attacks, with the remainder unclear because 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same date. Of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel broke 24, or 96%. Israel attacked and killed Palestinians every time after 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days (data source: Israeli Consulate, New York).

The picture above is of a Qassam rocket impact on a road. It didn't even leave a pot-hole. Rewind 2638 years, Deuteronomy 7, verses 2-3, stop:

And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them:

Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

The shadows are long and often ugly, but the sun also rises on the naked and the dead. On Jew and on Muslim. Israel has finally lost a PR battle for narrative arc in the West, as we have seen the pictures and video unravel on the InterNews. When the next Gazan school is bombed, the next family lies in a house entombed, Hamas will gain strength. It's not enough for Israel to stop now, the ship embarked and is cruising for a distant boycott. To survive another 20 or 30 years, Israelis have to pull their heads out from where they are so deeply stuck: from the dream of a Zion that never was, and from the Bible's ass.

Blagojevich Might Skate, Pt. II

Soon after the Blago complaint was announced by Patrick Fitzgerald, I described it as a unique case, with profound implications for future lobbyists and politicians in the event of a conviction. In reading the complaint, there was no clear evidence of actual crime, contrary to what was being said in the media. Crime was intended, yes, but not consummated, and intended malfeasance is conjoined with US politics like a...you actually don't want to know my mental imagery right now. Really. Point being, Nixon wasn't impeached and jailed and other pols weren't nailed for wanting to be criminals, but for being criminals, past-tense.

I'm trying not to admire Blagojevich, uncouth as he is, corrupt as he may be. Yet he took cool appraisal of a foregone situation, stood up and told his accusors to go *$(* themselves, and professed to go about his job while circling the pay-to-play wagons. The circling must have been pretty effective, and the guy knows how to make the best of a coming impeachment (Update: since starting to post this, Illinois reps voted 114-1 to impeach).

Next, he lawfully selected Roland Burris, his (African-American) former fund raiser to fill Obama's seat, then sat back to watch Majority Leader Harry Reid light his own ass on fire, along with 50 of his Senateers. (Everyone has a talent. It doesn't mean they have to use it. And as Reid's Empty Threat Syndrome progresses, I reflect on the rising stock of Biden as Veep, he being President of the Senate and all.) They disgraced themselves by ignoring various laws, case precedents, and Constitutions to vow to not seat Burris--Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel has the nitty legal gritties on it, as usual. Obama himself narrowly avoided broiling his own ass, belatedly endorsing Burris. The disapproval and hokum is understandable, to a degree. A likely felon gets to name a Senator by decree. But haven't we seen enough of Congress and the White House trying to wriggle out of the law, sometimes merely on the basis of some compliant professor's opinion?

At the end of their 30-day time limit on January 6th, Patrick Fitzgerald's team failed to file an indictment, and instead asked the judge for a 90-day extension. 90 days! Doesn't sound like they've got their act together, or maybe much of a case. And that's coming from me, one of Fitzgerald's big admirers. He put Blago's predecessor in Illinois, George Ryan, behind bars for 6-1/2 years, and somehow managed to get Dick Cheney's long-time assistant convicted.

One would think that Fitz's best chance of making the conspiracy charges stick is to go back to the Chicago Style Politics crowd he's already put behind bars, and start playing carrots and baseball bats. He also will squeeze or indict somebody else in the Blago ring during the 90-day extension period (assuming it's granted). Even so, how easy can it be to get a conspiracy case to stick, when the conspiracy demonstrably failed? The positives here, and they're big positives, are that an effort to sell a Senator's seat failed because the takers were too cautious, Team Obama didn't play ball, and Blago's already been convicted in the biggest court of all: Public Opinion. Jail time would be gravy.

Israel: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

So, the peace on earth thing is a problem. Israel's attacks in Gaza are now targeting buildings that are "symbols" of Hamas. (BBC outlines some of the "symbols.") Hamas is learning from the awesome IDF prop machine, and is getting pretty good at PR themselves, which accounts for the picture above getting into the Western press--no reporters are allowed in Gaza. Whether the five dead siblings are staged or no, a thousand innocent Palestinian natives have been killed and maimed by indiscriminate bombings because, according to the IDF, some recent mortars and rockets were allegedly launched into Israel which caused no casualties.

The Guardian reports that the Israelis have been planning the assault for six months, and relates a few other confirmations of previous suspicions: 1) It's about the election in February, so Likudniks can hamstring the moderates; 2) The operation is punishment for the Lebanon/Hezbollah disaster; 3) The Israelis moronically believe it will weaken Hamas, rather than serve as a powerful recruitment tool, and 4):

The three weeks before Barack Obama's inauguration were Israel's last chance to assume automatic diplomatic support from Washington, as it got from George Bush over both West Bank settlements and the Lebanon war.

It is hard to imagine an Israeli government testing Obama, whom it views with foreboding because of a sense he has more sympathy for the Palestinians, with a crisis of these dimensions during his first days or weeks in office.

And, in the NYTimes: "Obama Defers to Bush, for Now, on Gaza Crisis." Obama's reaction will be cool and measured, disapproving of the loss of life and implying Israel's action was too strong, and then salving it with recognition of being an important ally with a right to defend itself, yada-yada. This probably screws chances for any West Bank/Golan Heights/Iran progress for some time.

When analyzing Palestine one should bear in mind that to avoid an unfavorable settlement hard-liners in Israel would quite literally shoot rockets at themselves. As that as a political solution, Israel makes about as much sense as would sending my descendants back to rule Ireland 1,900 years from now because they have a special stubborn gene.

For the record, Hitler and his planners engaged with Zionism as a way to get rid of the Jews in Germania, but sending them back to Palestine struck them as unrealistic in both short and long terms. (See, amongst others, Hannah Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' and Paul Johnson's 'A History of the Jews.' Influential rabbis collaborated with the Nazis in the belief it would speed their return to a lost ancient homeland. Through a round-about of horrors, it did.) Britain and the US chose not to predict mayhem because Palestine was an Arab territory, not a state, and because aggrieved Jews had become their problem.

While Obama will strive to keep his personal feelings out of diplomacy in America's best interests, he has studied apartheid and genocide, and disapproves mightily. There is reason to think his patience with Israel as presently composed ran out as long ago as mine, and he may even realize that country has outlived any meaningful utility as a US ally. Further, that it's tied to our interests like an anchor to an ankle. Am I projecting? Sure, but Obama's smarter than me, and if I can put it together, he can. A dispassionate Realpolitik analysis will yield a similar conclusion, and that these Gaza attacks are intended to push Obama into a dunce-cap wearing corner. Such that if he's nice, his advisors can hand him a piece of chalk, so he can proceed to the blackboard and write "I love Israel" 500 times.

Update: Another interesting "News Analysis" in the NYT suggests the Israelis' primary goal is to show they're no paper rabbi and to reestablish fear across the Arab world after the Lebanon disaster.

Update 2: the WaPo has an editorial pointing out that any gains against Hamas are likely to be small or none, while these attacks undermine the efforts against Iran's nuclear program. Also, Turkey and Syria have canceled their negotiations with Israel.

Update 3: For another US propaganda defeat, a significant bomb being used by the Israelis is the US-made and supplied GBU-39 guided bunker buster. It was Hezbollah's skillful concealment of bunkers which defeated their incursion into Lebanon, and my guess is their plan is to identify those bunker sites and lawn-dart them with GBU-39s.

Anti Claus: Cheney's Highest Moment In Office

By his own account, was 9/11:

WALLACE: Highest moment the last eight years?

CHENEY: Hmmm. Highest moment in the last eight years. Well, I think the most important, the most compelling, was 9/11 itself, and what that entailed, what we had to deal with. The way in which that changed the nation, and set the agenda for what we had to deal with as an administration.

WALLACE: And I assume that was also you're lowest moment.

CHENEY: Yeah...sure.

Bodies and their shadows often concur, but the wreckage of our skies confirm separations. Dick Cheney was in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) with his wife Lynne on that morning, before Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta arrived. Mineta gave the only sworn eyewitness testimony regarding Cheney's activities during the terrorist operations:

No, I was not [aware that shoot-down orders had been given]. I was made aware of it during the time of the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out...the plane is 30 miles out..." And when it got down to, uh, the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand," and the Vice President turned, whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand! Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

Orders? What orders? Presumably, they pertained to either shooting down the incoming planes or not. Subsequently, despite being integral to the timeline and tragedy, the implications of Mineta's testimony were strenuously avoided; there are no records of shoot-down orders or otherwise. They were suffocated in the bassinet of bureaucracy, yet Cheney regards 9/11 and what followed as his best time in office. And if I were in the White House bunker on that day, in command and responsible for the deaths of Americans no matter what I decided, it would not roll it off the top of my head as a "highest moment."

And what about the "young man?" How was he keeping Vice President Cheney minuted? He must have been scurrying back from the FAA-integrated Secret Service operations screens in the PEOC bunker. The Secret Service was monitoring the hijacked flights during Global Guardian, a yearly threat-response exercise, and its 2001 airborne subset Vigilant Guardian, a live-fly wargame focused on inter-agency response to hijacked commercial airliners (disputed by answers to the 9/11 Commission, but previously center-pieced in an Air Force powerpoint presentation, Amalgam Virgo 01). By FAA procedure, a passenger jet which turns off its transponder immediately appears on military radar as a potential threat. Any commercial flight which did so that morning would have looked like an additional bogey to the military.

The notion that 19 non-pilots evaded the defenses of the most sophisticated airspace in the world for two hours begs credulity, as does lack of forensic evidence and transparency. This is partially mitigated by the report that five of the hijackers received training at US military bases in the 1990s (source MSNBC/Newsweek article). At least some of them could fly. But they chose the day from caves in Afghanistan when the US Air Force was conducting an anti-hijack exercise which involved every major security entity in North America (read the powerpoint)? That strains credulity into a double-hernia.

I want my suspicions and all my body's senses (for I drove by the twin towers at 8:31 on 9/11, was there for its aftermath, and my former boss and co-workers died for having breakfast in Windows on the World) to be wrong, wrong, wrong. I and 70% of my fellow New Yorkers are biased. If you can downplay or disagree, please send us contravening facts to set our minds at ease. We are all passengers in this car, and like the EPA says, your reality may differ.

The media provoked this post by the offence of giving air-time to a non-convicted architect of horrors, which none likely to come here would dispute. Bush and Cheney ordered programs of torture based on nothing more Constitutional than a Berkeley lawyer's opinion (known as "Dr. Yes" in the White House). My point is about burdens of evidence, that they're not on you or me but on a government which failed to provide them. Then stonewalls. Then gives interviews, and gloats.

If you find footage of a plane flying into the Pentagon, one of the buildings with the highest monitoring of closed-circuit TV cameras in the world, you'll be my Santa Claus. Google away. Meanwhile, evidence was provided by a most credible witness in congressional testimony about a man's decision-making on that morning which killed Americans. We don't know what decision was made, but incinerations and all the sins which followed from it are broadcast as the highest moment. May he never have another.

Blagojevich Might Skate

I previously marveled that the Blago case broke with the tradition of political corruption cases because no money had actually changed hands. Turns out there's a reason. The Chicago Tribune blew it for federal prosecutors by ending its cooperation with Fitzgerald, who had requested they hold a story, by running it on Dec. 5th. The run-down is given in a dynamite inside-reporting WSJ online article:

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.

The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.

At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.

Blago read the story, called his brother, and told him to "Undo that thing." Slimeball? Yes. But it is not a crime to advance agendas, or to go over a list of preferred candidates and discuss one's future political career, and Blago can honestly say he didn't take a dime for the governor's prerogative regarding appointment of vacated Senate seat. That's why he's not resigning. The way he sees it, having a third party set up a charity which he and/or his wife could run is not illegal, and I don't know that he's technically wrong on that. He figures a local jury will see it his way. Expect taped evidence and testimony that makes him look like a pig, but America has elected worse.

As for the rumors that Rahm Emanuel or Obama are mixed up in influence peddling? Hopeful tempest, meet pretty teapot. They promised nothing but appreciation. It's right in the complaint.

(Update: The pic is of Ann Cavello of the Bay City Bombers, inspiration for Jim Croce's hit, Roller Derby Queen, "the meanest hunk o' woman anybody ever seen, wham-a-bam, whoa, wham-a-bam.")

About Time: A First Step In Banning Depleted Uranium Munitions

There are mounting suspicions in the medical community that prolonged exposure to stews of pollutants and toxins are driving up rates of maladies from autism to diabetes. It took 17 years for bureaucrats to finally admit Gulf War Syndrome is real, despite the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of people and their children. Their conclusion didn't link GWS explicitly to depleted uranium, only going so far as to say GWS isn't imaginary.

I suppose the admission is progress compared to the baselines of casual disregard for the effects of toxins and for veterans' rights, but the Pentagon has already turned the world hot with DU, firing an estimated 320 tons of it on Iraq in 1991 alone. They've used it on ranges all over the US, and in live-fire exercises conducted off the east and west coasts, including fishing grounds off Washington State. This is not just a veterans' problem. They're just getting hit with it first.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A report released Monday concluded that "Gulf War Syndrome" is a legitimate condition suffered by more than 175,000 U.S. war veterans who were exposed to chemical toxins in the 1991 Gulf War.

The congressionally mandated report could help veterans who have battled the government for treatment of a wide range of unexplained neurological illnesses, from brain cancer to multiple sclerosis.

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses concluded that Gulf War Syndrome is a physical condition distinct from the mental "shell shock" suffered by veterans in other wars. Some earlier studies had concluded it was not a distinct illness.

"Scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans," said the committee, which has been looking into the problem since 2002.

The committee, composed of independent scientists and veterans, said Congress should boost funding for research on Gulf War veterans' health to at least $60 million per year.

"This is a national obligation, made especially urgent by the many years that Gulf War veterans have waited for answers and assistance," the committee said.

Congress set up the committee in 1998, but the U.S. Veterans Administration did not appoint anyone to serve on it until 2002.

Gulf War Syndrome affects at least one-fourth of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, or between 175,000 and 210,000 veterans in all, the report found. Few have seen their symptoms improve over the past 17 years, the report said.

Symptoms include persistent headaches, widespread pain, cognitive difficulties, unexplained fatigue, skin rashes, chronic diarrhea and digestive and respiratory problems.

Many Gulf War veterans suffering these symptoms say they met with skepticism when seeking treatment.

The panel found two possible causes: a drug given to troops to protect against nerve gas, known as pyridostigmine bromide, and pesticides that were used heavily during the war.

The panel said other possible causes could not be ruled out, including extensive exposure to smoke from oil-well fires and low-level exposure to sarin gas when captured Iraqi stocks were destroyed.

The U.S. government has spent roughly $440 million on Gulf War health research since 1994, but spending has declined in recent years and often is not focused on improving veterans' health, the committee said.

The report further highlighted inadequacies in the medical care veterans have received from their government.

A 2007 investigation by the Washington Post found combat veterans in the current Iraq war faced rodent-infested housing and bureaucratic hurdles as they sought treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the flagship military hospital in Washington D.C..

(I know the picture is disturbing; some genetic effects of GWS are similar to thalidomide deformities. Others are worse, and there are many tiny victims of Desert Storm. Depleted uranium weapons are already banned by every international treaty, law, or convention. Only the United States has used it, and it stays hot for 4.5 billion years.)

Naomi Klein Is Hot

As a firecracker on the Fourth of July. So, here's the deal...if you entered "Naomi Klein is hot" into a search engine and dropped into here, you owe me a comment. Right after you read her Rolling Stone article, "The New Trough," excerpted below. Funny how the Wall St. bailout looks a lot like Iraq--a "fraud-free zone:"

See if any of this sounds familiar: As soon as the bailout was announced, it became clear that Treasury officials would hire outsiders to perform their jobs for them — at a profit. Private companies wanting to help manage the bailout were given just two days to apply for massive, multiyear contracts. Since it was such a mad rush — after all, the entire economy was about to implode — there was no time for an open bidding process. Nor was there time to draft rigorous rules to make sure that those applying don't have serious conflicts of interest. Instead, applicants were asked to disclose their conflicts and to explain — and this is not a joke — their "philosophy in fulfilling your duty to the Treasury and the U.S. taxpayer in light of your proprietary interests and those of other clients." In other words, an open invitation to bullshit about how much they love their country and how they can be trusted to regulate themselves.

The first major contract to be awarded in the bailout was for legal advice — and the choice Treasury made was Halliburton-esque in its audacity. Six law firms were invited to bid, but four declined, either because they didn't want the contract or because they had too many conflicts of interest. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the fact that so many law firms chose not to bid "shows that the guidelines are sufficiently rigorous."

Or it may just show that the bidder who won the contract — Simpson Thacher & Bartlett — takes a more relaxed approach to conflicts than its colleagues. The law firm is a Wall Street heavy hitter, having brokered some of the biggest bank mergers in recent years. It also provided legal support to companies trading mortgage-backed securities — the "financial weapons of mass destruction," as Warren Buffett called them, that detonated the banking industry. More to the point, it was hired to provide legal services to the Treasury in its negotiations to spend $250 billion of the bailout money purchasing equity in America's banks. The first stage of the plan involves buying stakes in nine of the country's top banks. Incredibly, Simpson Thacher has represented seven of the nine: JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

According to its contract, Simpson Thacher has agreed not to represent any of the banks "against the U.S." when they negotiate with Treasury for the equity money.

There were two kinds of people who wrote, passed, and signed that bailout contract: bumbletwits and goniffs. Naomi Klein, on the other hand, was sagacious enough to decode the shpiel. Her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism describes the long prelude to this series of unfortunate events, and it won't put you to sleep. (At least not if you Googled the title.) Her work will endure, she's the Upton Sinclair of international finance, and richly deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Here's the rest of the article and here is her blog. Now tell me why you think she's hot--me, I've always been a sucker for smarts.

Temper Mental

John McCain runs on hate, you can't read much about him before coming to the simple conclusion. Bottom line, it's miraculous he has not publicly exploded of late. With almost a full month to go until the election and his campaign doing a credible imitation of the stock market, however, there's still hope. Brave New Films, the folks who brought you the acclaimed documentary "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price," has assembled some people willing to go on the record about witnessing his rage episodes. They're worse than suspected. In the video, a credible witness claims he back-handed a female POW-MIA advocate named Jeanette Jenkins so hard she spun around and hit the wall. They show a copy of her subsequent complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.

Not Just $700 Billion--It's $2.7 Trillion & Counting

In the haze left by financial chicanery, no one bothered to total up the damage and report it. Until a blogger did so. Here's his take:

WaMu goes down!! Wall Street vs. Your Street.

By Reconstitution 2.0

[excerpts]

"$1.964 TRILLION of liquidity that has already been pumped into the system, so why would anyone think another $700 billion will make any difference in making lenders lend again?? The short answer is: It won’t!!

the problem is not liquidity, the problem is trust. If the problem were liquidity, all of the money the FED and Treasury have pumped into the markets over the past six months would have been sufficient to cure any problems. Let’s look at the list [for the past 6 months]:

Bear Stearns takeover and fold into JP Morgan. Cost to FED = $29 billion.

28 Day Term Auction Facility. Cost to FED = $100 billion.

28 Day Term Repurchase Agreements. Cost to FED = $150 billion.

28 Day Term Securities Lending Facility. Cost to FED = $200 billion.

Overnight Primary Dealer Credit Facility. Cost to FED = $262 billion.

28 Day TSLF Option Auctions. Cost to FED = $50 billion.

84 Day Term Auction Facility. Cost to FED = $25 billion.

Federal Housing Finance Agency (Fannie/Freddie nationalization). Cost to Treasury = $500 billion.

AIG nationalization. Cost to FED = $85 billion.

MBS purchases. Cost to Treasury = $200 billion.

Swap line with European Central Bank. Cost to FED = $120 billion.

Swap line with Swiss Central Bank. Cost to FED = $30 billion.

Swap line with Bank of Japan. Cost to FED = $60 billion.

Swap line with Bank of England. Cost to FED = $40 billion.

Swap line with Bank of Canada. Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Asset Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Liquidity Facility. Cost to FED = $73 billion.

Conversion of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to banks. Cost to FED = unknown.

Swap line with Reserve Bank of Australia. Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Swap line with Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweeden). Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Swap line with Danmarks Nationalbank (Central Bank of Denmark). Cost to FED = $5 billion.

Swap line with Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway). Cost to FED = $5 billion.

—————————-

...the Paulson outline is doomed to failure because it does nothing to add transparency or clarify the true value of any “product”. What needs to happen is every MBS and CDO must be pulled apart, each individual mortgage evaluated to determine if the account is current or in default, then regrouped and re-rated properly. But that is a lot of work and Paulson’s bunch of Wall Street “consultants” will never do it."

(passed on by Bruce at the River Blog.)

The Real McCain: Communist Collaborator

I did not know this. Brother Tim over at the Blog of Revelation found a damning video of Republicans and fellow captives attacking McCain's Vietnam fabrications. They tell the truth about his successful, "heroic" effort on a 1992 Senate Select Sub-Committee to keep all Vietnam POW records classified. The measure to investigate POW-MIA status, and in the process open the records, was introduced by Republican Senator Bob Dole. It had previously passed the House of Representatives 401-0, was set to pass the Senate, but McCain dug in his heels. He was personally able to put language in the bill permanently classifying POW-MIA records. Just why would he have done so?

It has long been rumored that McCain, son of his Admiral father who commanded the US fleet off Vietnam, was offered special privileges and early release in exchange for 32 propaganda tapings he made for his captors. In itself, cracking under the mere threat of torture is excusable. But 32 interviews, containing confessions that could be played to people like Jane Fonda? Many American servicemen who cooperated far less with their Vietnamese interrogators than John McCain were not hailed as heroes, but were instead punished harshly under the "aid to enemies" provisions of the Code of Military Justice, losing rank, pay, and benefits.

There's a good reason John McCain is so obsessed with perceptions of his honor: he's a phony, and a coward. His political ambitions couldn't suffer transcripts of his interviews to come out, he made thousands of people whose boys went missing in Vietnam keep suffering. Now some of his fellow prisoners and lawmakers are speaking out against him. They're can't be dismissed as biased liberals, and they're pissed. View the video and pass it on to any fence-sitters as you see fit.

Does Life Begin At Rape For The Republican Base?

What with the recent excitements and claims on time, I've sat too long on a news article Lord Wife passed on from The Frontiersman, Alaska's newspaper. It's just the story those Special Republicans in your life need to know about: Sarah Palin isn't pro-woman. She's more like a Moosellini, and she was for rape before she was against it. Once upon a time, back in 2000, then-governor Tony Knowles signed a law expressly intended to stop the Wassila police department from charging rape victims for their post-assault exams:

The new law makes it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims insurance companies for the costs of examinations that take place to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault did occur.

When the law was passed, Police Chief Charlie Fannon's reaction was to bitch that it might cost his department an extra $5,000 to 14,000 per year. Who was responsible for such blatancy? Sarah Palin. Yep. Charisma-saurus fired Fannon's predecessor in 1997, a man who had not thought it appropriate to bill rape victims $1,200 for their "rape exam kits." And don't tell me she wasn't aware of what was going on: the governor of Alaska publicly slapped her policy down.

The story of how Sarah Palin privatized rape in Wasilla is spreading through the blogsphere. Hopefully it will reach mainstream coverage, as it should on oppugnant Base States like North Carolina which jackboot their rape victims in similar fashion. It's not benign neglect. This is the lowest, most niggardly, mean-spirited, screwed-up pie-eyed pile of puritan crap in the whole vile bumper crop of government-as-business bullshit. It's preying on victims at their most violated and vulnerable, as in, "Oh, you were raped? How unfortunate. Here's our $2,000 bill for your police exam, doctor's exam, lab tests, and nurse assistance."

I made a $10 donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, and the thank-you recipient is the McCain campaign, as suggested by Firedoglake affiliate TBogg:

In discussions with various people in my real life (not the Demonic Conservative Ridicule Machine I play at night) I find that people are willing to brush off or justify Sarah Palin's lack of experience, qualifications or, well. smarts because of her novelty factor. But the one thing that stops them dead in their tracks is the story of Sarah Palin and the Pay As You Go Rape Kits:

I sat with a rape victim during the “harvesting of evidence”. Mascara smeared eyes stared blankly out from a cave of shame. “We’ve got swimmers,” announced the forensic tech in the lab next door. My friend didn’t look surprised. In her 60’s, she was still asked if she felt the need for emergency contraception. Surviving the process would have only been compounded and made worse with an itemized bill; victimized twice courtesy of Sarah Palin and the city of Wasilla.

Much can be learned about the Palin Administration’s family values from reviewing their spending priorities. Former Chief of Police Irl Stambaugh included forensic rape kits (up to $1,200 per kit) in his budget requests. He was fired by Palin in 1997. In her termination letter, Palin wrote, “…I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment. . . ” Staumbaugh headed the police department since it was created in 1993. Before that, he served 22 years with the Anchorage Police Department rising to the rank of captain. Sarah Palin hired Charlie Fannon as the new Wasilla Chief of Police and said it was one of her best decisions as mayor. Fannon eliminated the forensic rape kits from the budget. Though the number of rapes weren’t reported, Fannon claimed it would save Wasilla taxpayers $5,000 to $14,000 a year.

When Eric Croft, a Democrat Legislator from Anchorage, learned of Wasilla’s policy, he drafted HB 270, which Governor Tony Knowles signed into law. The new law made it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims’ insurance companies for the costs of examinations to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault actually occurred. Upon signing the law, Governor Knowles said, “We would never bill the victim of a burglary for the cost of gathering evidence, nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies.”

Wasilla Police Chief Fannon protested the new law stating it would require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. Really? Are the true costs of sexual assault and forcible rape in a community only measured and reflected in the dollars spent on the forensic rape kit?

God only knows how Sarah Palin would answer that question and, as we well know, she ain't talkin'.

Fortunately the state of Alaska saw fit to remedy the benign neglect that characterized Pailn's attitude towards rape victims. But there is still something that you can do for all women in all fifty states since they can hardly count on Vice President Palin to look out for anything other than her own blind ambition.

Per an email I received last night (and also noted here):

Instead of us all sending around more emails about how horrible Sarah Palin is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood.

In Sarah Palin's name.

And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website

You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online"

The minimum donation is $5 ...and did I mention that it's tax deductible?

Being a slow blogger has its rewards: ABC News is reporting online that Sarah Palin actively impeded and de-funded an anti-rape initiative in Alaska, a state which has the highest rate of sexual assault in the country. The initiative was formulated by Public Safety Commissioner Dan Moneghan, whom she fired.

High Crimes, Misdemeanors, And Venn Diagrams

Slate has an interactive chart up which maps a few of the current administration's scandals. Bruce pointed me to it in the comments section of "Evil Is As Evil Does," and although Jon noted it doesn't include the treason of outing Valerie Plame, it's still pretty useful. You can scroll over it, click on the names and get nifty little summaries along with cases for and against prosecution.

I'm linking to it because it may prove fairly handy about a year from now, when most Congress-critters should start to feel pretty secure that the dossiers on their call girls, corruption, catamites, and kinks won't be leaked to the press by the departed Bush Administration. (I'll bet the most enthusiastic piling-on will come from the Pug side of the aisle.) Note the chart position occupied by former Bush chief counsel, loyal friend, and Justice Department goat-herd Albert "Abu" Gonzales. As Slate notes, "all roads lead to Gonzales," and any future reincarnation of the congressional post-Watergate Church Committee, an event highly likely to occur, will assuredly focus on him. As Cheney explained his reasons for invading Iraq: "It's doable."

Speaking of Cheney, unfortunately he and other officials in the Bush Administration aren't particularly vulnerable to domestic prosecution for their actual crimes. I believe that pursuing them on that basis would be a very bad idea. It's very difficult to prove intent, and their predictable defense would be, "We were motivated by our unequaled patriotism." They would however seem very vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges, which in part would explain their motivation, one might say obsession, for destroying millions of their own emails and documents, and marking everything from old laundry receipts on up as Classified.

Congress just voted Karl Rove into contempt for not bothering to show up to a required hearing. Karl's response: "What are you pansies gonna do, piss yourselves?" Congress doesn't have much if any authority right now, and won't until after January 9th, 2009. It seems likely that at least a few scapegoats will suffer for their Eichmannesque conformities, and some testimony will be collected in exchange for (perhaps) getting jail time for Mr. Gonzales, who after all is a minor, not very well-liked outsider. Then I would expect blanket immunity a la post-apartheid South Africa and pronouncements that "our long national nightmare is over." And everyone will know the big fish are still swimming free. How to extract justice from them?

Civil suits, both domestic and international, will be filed. Cheney, Libby, Rove, and Armitage face at least one remaining civil suit from Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, who have re-filed after their first was thrown out on national security grounds. They'll find the judicial environment much more favorable under a different President. Then, displaced Iraqis, friends of the environment, soldiers' families, innocent people tortured and imprisoned for years, class actions, and dissatisfied contributors can seek damages on everything from depleted uranium to wrongful death.

Probably the best, most enduring way of getting at BushCo officials is by convincing other countries to indict them for war crimes, since in international courts under those charges, outcome rather than intent is the issue. The burden of proof would be on the defendants, "crimes against humanity" covers a lot of ground, and it should not be difficult to find widespread enthusiasm for such a project. What happened in Iraq meets the UN's technical definitions of genocide, with more than 25% of a nation or ethnic group within it killed or displaced. With the right organization and marketing, it could become the international equivalent of a Yellow Ribbon campaign, only in reverse.

Donald Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and former CIA Director George Tenet have already had charges filed against them in Germany, which allows universal jurisdiction; why not include the other malefactors? No need to stop at Germany, although not all the countries of the world need to participate. Just the ones you'd want to travel to. Hmmm. Maybe some enterprising bloggers will get together and coordinate a web-based effort to make this happen. What would be a good name for it?

(Graphic credit to Mike Votes at Born at the Crest of Empire, link on right margin.)

Got Treason?

Senate intelligence committee's Phase II report on pre-war Iraq is finally out. No news for the cognoscenti, but at least the little Dutch boys are running like hell from the dike. The cowardly little twerps. TPM has the specifics:

Phase II
You can find the reports here:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf
http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2b.pdf

"Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information"

"Report on Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq Conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans Within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy"

Here are the key points from the reports, according to a press release from Sen. Jay Rockefeller's office:

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities [b]did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties[/b] as to whether such production was ongoing.

--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.