Cheney's Big Speech
Next Thursday, former Vice President Cheney will give a speech at the American Enterprise Institute making a global case for the Bush administration's use of torture and indefinite detainment of suspected terrorists as core parts of its War on Terror.
Here's AEI's description of the event ...
In April 2009, almost eight years after the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, the Obama administration released four memos from the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel. These memos, which justified the use of harsh interrogation techniques against high-level al Qaeda detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, have reignited a fierce debate about the United States' counterterrorism strategy.Amid claims that the interrogation methods amount to torture and that those who approved them should be prosecuted or censured, it is clear that we know surprisingly little about the scope and efficacy of the Bush administration's national security policy. Many questions linger: What type of information did enhanced interrogation methods yield? Were lives saved as a result? Could that intelligence have been effectively collected by other means? How effective was the terrorist surveillance program in detecting the threat of al Qaeda and its operatives in the post-9/11 period? Will inhibiting these procedures cost more American lives?
On May 21, former vice president Dick Cheney will speak at AEI to address these critical issues and provide a blueprint for keeping America safe in the future.
--Josh Marshall
World's Largest Democracy
The Congress party has pulled off a dramatic election victory, giving Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a second term in office.
--Josh Marshall
TPMDC Saturday Roundup
President Obama officially announces the nomination of Utah's Republican Governor (and previously a potential presidential candidate) Jon Huntsman to be Ambassador to China. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
Off You Go
Many have suggested that Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) of Utah, whose sanity and 21st century views have set him apart from many in today's GOP, as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. But that probably just became much less likely as tomorrow he'll resign the governorship and accept President Obama's nomination to serve as Ambassador to China.
--Josh Marshall
Netanyahu's Visit
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will visit the White House for what is likely be a pivotal first visit with President Obama. Given both parties' interest in avoiding public disagreement we probably will not get any immediate sense of the substance of their conversations. But the two men, all protestations to the contrary, are on a collision course.
President Obama wants a peace settlement based on a two state solution and he's signaled through top advisors that he wants a settlement during his first term of office. And Obama, unlike President Bush, actually appears to mean it. Netanyahu wants continued settlement expansion and no Palestinian state. Publicly this is muddled over by claims that he wants to focus on building up the Palestinian economy on the West Bank, as preparation for some possible, maybe autonomy or independence to happen in the never specified and never-to-happen future.
Then there's the question of Iran. The Netanyahu government has spent its brief time in office aggressively pushing the line that any work on the Palestinian front can't happen until the threat of the Iranian nuclear program is definitively ended. That has the dual benefit -- if the premise is accepted -- of forcing the US to shelve its entire approach to Iran, follow the Netanyahu government's lead and close the door on any work toward a final settlement with the Palestinians.
What it all comes down to is that Obama wants a peace deal and Netanyahu doesn't. And Netanyahu is making a big push to tie Obama's hands or get him to back off his policy.
Add to this that Netanyahu has been Prime Minister before. And a very big reason he stopped being Prime Minister the first time is that he got crosswise with the US President -- something that amounts to the third rail of Israeli politics. An Israeli PM who can't successively manage the US-Israel relationship usually can't last long.
So both men have strong domestic imperatives to limit any appearance of disagreement. But each also wants to follow a policy that is completely in conflict with the one the other wants to pursue. My hunch (and my hope -- and hopefully I'm not confusing the two) here is that Obama has many more cards than Netanyahu but that Netanyahu doesn't fully grasp that and that over time he'll overplay his hand and find himself out of office like he did a decade ago. But at some point, and probably soon (remember, he's got the speech in Cairo early next month) Obama will start having to put his own cards on the table and putting clear limits on what he'll accept.
--Josh Marshall
The Dr. Evil Years
I'm going to start this weekend by meditating on this photo of Dick Cheney zipping around on a segway.
--Josh Marshall
Undislcosed No More
TPM debuts the official Dick Cheney Torture Media Tour slide show.
--Josh Marshall
Did Matthews Even Read the Memo?
I'm a little unclear on this. I'm listening to Chris Matthews saying that CIA Director Leon Panetta just dished out some smackdown to Nancy Pelosi, claiming that the CIA records are accurate and that Pelosi is wrong. Only his memo doesn't say that at all. It's really not any different -- in terms of who's right and who's wrong -- than what he said when he released the original memos. Look what it says. It's highly hedged.
Alas, Politico, CNN, AP and almost everyone else seems along for the spin.
--Josh Marshall
Begala Cheers Cheney
Paul Begala cheers on Dick Cheney's efforts to dismantle the GOP.
--Josh Marshall
Michael Steele at the NRA
Michael Steele: Obama will take away our guns so we won't be able to defend ourselves from Khalid Sheik Mohammed once he brings him here from Gitmo.
--Josh Marshall
Declining Standards
As TPM Reader BR notes, they don't make Wall Street sharks like they used to ...
I saw your post on Charles Millard, by chance, just as I was reading about a fascinating historical parallel. The book I'm reading is After Wilson, The Struggle for the Democratic Party 1920-1934, by Douglas B. Craig, University of North Carolina Press, 1992.The very conservative DNC Chair John J. Raskob, who had been the treasurer of DuPont and General Motors and later was a leader of the anti-New Deal Liberty League, in 1929 wrote what Craig calls a famous article called "Everybody Ought to be Rich" in the Ladies Home Journal. Here's Craig on p. 151:
He suggested the creation of a "Working Man's Investment Trust" which would invest workers' savings in gilt-edged securities. By agglomerating individual workers' small savings, the trust would be able to buy large quantities of stocks and reinvest the dividends. If workers deposited $15 per month in such a scheme, he predicted, they could expect to have accumulated a retirement fund of $80,000 at the end of twenty years.
But wait a minute! Craig reports on the next page that:
Raskob himself recognized that stock prices in 1929 were unrealistically high, and he refused to countenance the creation of the trust until they stabilized.
Obviously, the standards of our robber barons have declined since 1929...
--Josh Marshall
Friday Afternoon Book Club Reading
Over at Cafe, we've been discussing Kim Bobo's impressive new book, Wage Theft in America.
Today, Steven Greenhouse weighs in with a basic Q: what don't corporate executives understand about "Thou Shalt Not Steal?"
You can find the week's discussion here. Join us.
--Lila Shapiro
Best Practices Bamboozlement
Former Sen. Graham explains how the press is getting bamboozled into focusing on Nancy Pelosi's briefing at the expense of figuring out what US torture policy was.
--Josh Marshall
The Heckuva Job You Never Heard Of
Maybe we're lucky that President Bush didn't get his hands on all the Social Security money just in time to blow it all an extremely over-heated stock market. But not all is lost. Not long after his Social Security privatization scheme went down in flames, President Bush appointed Charles Millard the head of the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation. And the former Lehman executive decided to invest a good bit of it into the stock market and real estate. This was back in 2007 and 2008. It's not clear how much of the funds had been subjected to the new "strategy" before the markets crashed.
That was where things stood before investigators looked at it and saw a suspicion pattern of communications with big investment houses just before Millard piled tons of money into their funds. And now senators are asking for a criminal investigation. Moe Tkacik reports on the latest. And here's our run-down of the key facts from the draft report of the Inspector General's audit.
--Josh Marshall
Good Question
If we need torture to keep the country safe, why did Bush and Cheney stop doing it in early 2004?
--Josh Marshall
Latest Republican Poll
Contrary to media spin, GOPers think their party does have a clear leader. Just none of them agree on who it is.
--Josh Marshall
Back to Basics
Xe, the rebranded military contractor formerly known as Blackwater, has just rolled out a new dirigible-themed branding campaign to emphasize their move away from earlier high-tech mercenary product line.
--Josh Marshall
Secret Agent Man
The undisclosed location is so yesterday: We review recent sightings on the Dick Cheney Magical Media Tour.
--Josh Marshall
Duelfer Talks
One of the big developments yesterday was Robert Windrem's report about Dick Cheney's attempt to get Charlie Duelfer (the guy in charge of searching for WMD in post-invasion Iraq) to waterboard a senior Iraqi intelligence official to get him to admit to links between Iraq and al Qaida. Remember, at this point it's about getting a retrospective rationale for the invasion. Rachel Maddow had Windrem and Duelfer on her show last night discussing what happened. Check it out here. Maddow has a really good run-down of the key events and then the key interview begins a bit after six minutes in.
--Josh Marshall
Reporters Gettin' Played
Everybody's talking about Nancy Pelosi's press conference yesterday. I'm listening to Republicans on cable yapping about this contradiction or that contradiction. But what I've seen very little attention to is the fact that Pelosi had an answer that really answers all the questions, a plenary answer you might say: she supports a Truth Commission.
Here's where we are. There are various documents and recollections from around through the news ether. Pelosi's accusers are saying she knew more than she admits. She says that many of these claims are false and the documents perhaps erroneous, and that she's been consistent and true to her opposition to torture. And then she says, and I think there should be a broad-ranging Truth Commission to investigate what happened, who's telling the truth and who isn't. You can see it here at about 3:45 in.
That says it all. She wants it all investigated. The whole point of this storm about Pelosi is that her critics want her to be embarrassed and stop supporting a Truth Commission or any sort of examination of what happened. But she's not. She still says there should be an investigation. Her critics still want the book closed. That says it all. She'll have to stand or fall with the results of an actual investigation. Her opponents on this are simply risible hypocrites.
--Josh Marshall
TPMDC Morning Roundup
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), one of the 51 House Democrats to vote against $96.7 billion in war funding for Afghanistan and Iraq: "As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague." The measure passed 368-60. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Neocons Gone Wild
As we're getting a clearer picture of how much of the torture push was aimed at finding someone to 'confess' to knowledge of an alliance between Iraq and al Qaida, I wanted to flag people's attention back to an article Jonathan Landay wrote back on April 21st which went into some detail on the subject -- both from his own sources and from the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse.
As one "former senior intelligence official" told Landay, there were two main reasons behind the use of harsh interrogation methods and torture ...
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly -- Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 -- according to a newly released Justice Department document.
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.
"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."
Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.
We also know from Robert Windrem's report at The Daily Beast that Cheney apparently pressed Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer to use water torture on what was apparently a bona fide Iraqi POW -- a senior intelligence official -- in order to get him to confess to connections with al Qaida. Duelfer refused.
Looking at these revelations together put my mind back to those days in Washington in 2002 and 2003 when there was a feverish cottage industry of neocon journalists and think tankers endlessly vying with each other to match each other's increasingly outlandish tales of Saddam-bin Laden conspiracies. What this emigre or exile had claimed, what the CIA knew but wouldn't reveal. It went on and on. And, of course, these folks collectively had a metaphorical IV directly into Vice President Cheney's brain -- and, well, vice versa.
In any case, for all the puffed up chests these folks always had a certain air of needing confirmation or perhaps better to say validation about them. The desire was intense. And now, seeing it all together, you can just see Cheney -- who was really one of these guys -- having a few of these 'high value' guys in his grasp and just not stopping the waterboarding until they admitted it was true.
AEI and Lord of the Flies all playing out in some dungeon somewhere. And every time the waterboarders came back to say it was a dry hole, they've got Cheney -- or I guess maybe Addington -- ordering them to go back for more.
--Josh Marshall
Thank God
Have you gotten one of those phoney-baloney robocalls trying to trick you into believing your car manufacturer is giving you a last chance to extend your warrantee? Apparently they made the mistake of calling Sen. Schumer's cell phone and he sicced the FTC on them.
I don't know if they had demographics suggesting I was the biggest rube in New York state. But between my home, work and cell numbers I must have gotten these calls hundreds of times. No, needless to say, I wasn't fooled. But it did waste me some time because after a while I got so annoyed that I would stay on the phone for the live person to come on so I could yell at them and tell them to stop calling me.
Yeah, I know, I have issues.
--Josh Marshall
Publishing and Advertising Interns
TPM is taking applications for two new internship slots for the summer -- one publishing intern and one advertising intern. We're evaluating applications on a rolling basis. Click here for details.
--Josh Marshall
Pelosi
In case you missed it earlier, here's Speaker Pelosi's statement today claiming that the CIA was lying about torture.
--Josh Marshall
Bubbling
Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) was just interviewed on MSNBC and he talked about the new reports that Vice President Cheney tried to get the Iraq WMD investigators -- after the invasion -- to waterboard an Iraqi intelligence official to try to pump him for information about Saddam's alleged alliance with al Qaida. Whitehouse noted that this would dramatically change the legal terms of the question since even the notorious OLC memos allow practices like waterboarding to avoid imminent threats to the US. But waterboarding this Iraqi guy about Saddam's relationship with al Qaida -- after the invasion -- would have been to get political information, proof of the purported but then largely discredited rationale for the war. (Also worth noting is that an Iraqi intelligence official captured during the invasion would, I think, very clearly be an old fashioned POW.)
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Here are Sen. Whitehouse's (D-RI) appearances on the topic this afternoon on CNN and MSNBC.
--Josh Marshall
They Control Everything
Arkansas GOP senate candidate apologizes for referring to Schumer as "that Jew."
--Josh Marshall
Bigger Than the Both of Us
We now have two big developments on the torture front that may allow the whole torture issue to take on a life of its own and frustrate President Obama's attempts to close the door on the issue. First, as you've seen, is Nancy Pelosi's claim this morning that the CIA is lying about what it told members of the Democratic opposition in the early part of this decade. It's still not completely clear to me if she's just talking about the narrow point of what she was told in mid-late 2002 versus what she was told in 2003. (ed.note: Just talked to Zack Roth, our reporter on this story. And he confirms that Pelosi does seem to be talking about what she knew from the late 2002 briefing. There doesn't appear to be any dispute about the 2003 one. However, while it's a relatively narrow point if your issue is Pelosi, I'm starting to wonder whether the unseen mover behind these changed briefings may not be uses of torture as part of the effort to find intel to justify the Iraq invasion. We'll keep you posted.)
But this is the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency, accusing the country's chief intelligence agency of lying to the country and to members of Congress. And the political pressure to get to the bottom of that -- whether they're lying, whether she's lying etc. -- will likely be irresistible.
Next you have a flurry of claims that a key motive behind the push to torture was to elicit 'confessions' about an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, which was of course the key predicate for the invasion of Iraq. That again has to create much more pressure to clarify what happened. The basis of most of the anti-torture push has been the assumption that torture was used for the purpose of eliciting information about future terrorist attacks. Whether it was illegal, wrong-headed, misguided, immoral -- whatever -- most have been willing to at least give the benefit of the doubt that that was the goal. If the driving force was to gin up new bogus intel about the fabled Iraq-al Qaida link, politically it will put the whole story in a very different light. And rightly so.
--Josh Marshall
More Evidence
Yet more evidence that a big part of the drive to use torture was to 'get evidence' for Saddam's phony alliance with al Qaida. This time from Powell's former Chief of Staff.
--Josh Marshall
TPMDC Morning Roundup
Republicans unhappy with Dick Cheney as the party's top spokesperson -- but too afraid to say so on the record. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Following the Logic
If we need to keep evidence of torture, like photographs, secret, to protect our troops, doesn't that suggest that torture isn't a great way to keep them or us safe?
--Josh Marshall
Reader Musings
From TPM Reader RW ...
This torture thing looks like it has real legs. And it may ironically turn on the reverse of the famous Watergate question of "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Because if it turns out the President didn't get the full story from Cheney and the torture memos were after-the fact justifications, not explorations of policy options, we are looking at something far, far greater than we realized a week ago.
I'm not sure this is really going to turn on the president's being out of the loop. Since, after all, being in the loop is usually a relative thing. And if the unlooped person won't say they were out of the loop, there's not much to go on. But I do think that the mix of drip, drip, drip declassifications and Cheney's inability to stop talking are opening up a number of new dimensions to this story.
--Josh Marshall
Just What You'd Think
I've been talking to a few people today who have some professional insight into the whole torture saga, just what happened, what this or that secret memo might say. And I'm getting the sense that waterboarding to force people to tell us the 'truth' about Saddam's alliance with al Qaida might turn out to be a pretty big part of this. Especially when we look closely at Cheney's role.
Late Update: Hmmm ... Seems like a lot of people are talking. Just out from the Robert Windrem, reporting for the Daily Beast ...
Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney's office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.
--Josh Marshall
Got Paranoia?
Cheney on the world being against us.
Cheney: "We fail to recognize the fact that we're alone out there in terms of trying to achieve the objective of forcing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons. Everybody's in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve."
--Josh Marshall
Drip, Drip, Drip ...
Andrew Cuomo gets another fraudster to plead guilty (and apparently cooperate) in the ever-expanding state pension fraud probe.
--Josh Marshall
Nothing to See Here, Folks
We won't have those photos of detainee abuse, but we got plenty of video of the decision not to release the pics. We start with Robert Gibbs' defense of the decision at today's White House press briefing (pretty lame, as I said below). Then Gibbs throwing the press corp off his scent with some well-timed humor that worked dismayingly well (I have a harder time distracting my dog with liver treats). Finally, the President himself addressed the issue (slightly more convincingly) in a late afternoon appearance.
--David Kurtz
Train Leaving the Station
It's a very good question for those who believe in health care reform and action on global warming whether to be heartened or worried that key industry groups now want to work with President Obama on these reforms. But it does signal something very significant in itself -- that the key industry stakeholders who oppose reform have decided that outright opposition simply isn't a viable strategy. Ron Brownstein made the point very clearly in an interview a couple hours ago on MSNBC.
--Josh Marshall
Bad Sign
It's hard not to view today's reversal by the White House, announcing that photos of detainee abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq will not be released to the public, as a sign of how long and hard they think the slog is ahead in Afghanistan -- and how crucial the outcome there will be for the future success of this Administration.
Obama has installed a new commander in Afghanistan who is steeped in counterinsurgency doctrine and devoted considerable resources and political capital to a new strategy there. I'm speculating, but the White House and Pentagon must not have cherished the idea of having their new start in Afghanistan undermined by the release of pictures that would further inflame the Muslim world.
That's not a defense of the decision. I think it's a bad one. But it's an ominous decision for reasons that go beyond upholding the spirit of FOIA.
--David Kurtz
Very Lame
The White House has decided to reverse course and now refuse to release photographs of abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan -- even though the Pentagon had previously announced that it would release them (in response to a court order in a FOIA case brought by the ACLU).
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is on TV now defending the move with what I have to say is an extremely lame rationale. He doesn't look like he's convinced even himself.
Late Update: White House press corps like crows to shiny objects: Gibbs breaks the awkwardness of the moment by confiscating ringing cell phone of Human Events reporter. Hearty laughter all around. Grilling on photos non-release quickly comes to end.
Later Update: CBS Radio's Mark Knoller tries valiantly to get presser back on track with tough question on the non-release, but Gibbs volleys with ribbing of CBS TV's Bill Plante, whom Gibbs had booted from room for his ringing cell phone. Good times.
Low Moments in Journalism Update: As we anticipated, the highlight of the White House briefing for CNN was the cell phone confiscation. Hardy har-har.
--David Kurtz
Focus, People
Let's not get distracted by what happened and lose sight of who was briefed about it.
--Josh Marshall
Deep Thought
It was the right thing to do. But by all means let's keep it secret.
--Josh Marshall
Question of the Day
Proper punishment for people who harass you as you're walking down the sidewalk trying to get you to sign up and give money to their organization? Fines and imprisonment? Or summary execution?
--Josh Marshall
Not a Good Moment
Sen. Graham cites debunked and retracted ABC News story while browbeating witness about the effectiveness of waterboarding.
--Josh Marshall
Tried and True
Fun new argument from Lindsey Graham: these torture methods have lasted from the middle ages because they work.
--Josh Marshall
A Very Small Man
Many people are clearly and understandably incensed by Vice President Cheney's on-going media campaign advocating state-sponsored torture and his making what appear to be all sorts of false claims about how effective his torture policies were. But though it's maddening and offensive, I'm more on the side of being heartened or at least glad to see the exposure he's getting -- not so much because it's politically damaging to the Republicans, which is probably true, but because he's (as is his puppet daughter) showing and can't help but show more and more about who he is.
That's also one of the things that would be so healthy -- and if I can be allowed some guilty pleasure, entertaining -- about a full and detailed airing of all of Cheney's role.
Cheney's conceit is that he's tough enough, perhaps best to say, icy enough to make the trip to what he calls 'the dark side' to protect America. But the picture emerging even from his own comments is very different. It's of a small and paranoid man, a half-comic character off the pages of mid-20th century anti-totalitarian fiction, with a seemingly inordinate protectiveness for torture practices that seem to have been only marginally effective at best. And yet here he is with the classified memo he keeps in a special folder in his desk making the case for his torture policies. Here he is at another moment metaphorically tightening the screws on this or that detainee trying to get confessions about the fairytale al Qaida-Iraq link, though it's worth wondering whether he's really sure it's there or is open to getting false confessions that can then be leaked to this or that journo at the Washington Times or, sad to say, The New York Times.
You start to get the sense that just as Cheney committed his historic goof of launching off into Iraq while forgetting about dealing with al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan he was doing something similar getting all wrapped up in the tough guy porn of torture that he remained ignorant of or just plain ignored the actual nuts and bolts of taking down or disabling terrorist organizations.
So by all means let him keep talking. As TPM Reader BH notes, he seems unable to maintain his famed self-discipline and indifference to public opinion as his own sorry record dribbles into the public record. The more that comes out about him, the more pathetic he seems. Paranoia, serial poor judgment, inability to distinguish desires from facts and an almost adolescent inability not to get drawn into the thrill of the 'dark side'.
--Josh Marshall
Well Deserved
Marcy Wheeler, aka Emptywheel at Firedoglake.com, has won a Sidney Hillman Award in the blog category. You can check out the citation here -- scroll down toward the bottom of the page.
--Josh Marshall
Come Hither
GOP (Club for Growth) senate candidate Pat Toomey says his 'freedom tent' was plenty big enough for a party. Arlen Specter just didn't believe in freedom.
--Josh Marshall
Paying Price For Being Anti-Torture
Harry Reid says he doesn't have the votes (yet) to get Dawn Johnsen confirmed as head of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel.
--David Kurtz
Very Much So
TPM Reader BH chimes in on Dick ...
There's been a lot of talk lately about Dick Cheney's refusal to go quietly into the night, but what I am finding most interesting is his complete emergence from the shadows. This is a guy who made an entire career as the ultimate evil puppet-master, always behind the scenes and always in control. What strikes me as so out of character is his apparent inability to keep his mouth shut when he no longer has his hands on the strings. While I despise him for what he did to our country's image and his shredding of The Constitution, I have always had a begrudging respect for what I thought was his phenomenal discipline and long term ability to keep the goal (however evil) in front of his public ego. Now I am finding him to be an ever more paranoid, disturbed, and pathetic man and I am truly shocked that those on the inside let him run the show for so long. I would ask how we let this megalomaniac do so much damage, but he wasn't actually a megalomaniac - that requires a delusion of power. We really did allow him to have this much power. Is there any wonder that this country has so many problems right now or that an entire political party is in disarray?
--Josh Marshall
More Poetry Readings Under New Regime
Scenes from last night's White House poetry reading.
--Josh Marshall
Live Coverage
Follow our running coverage of today's Zelikow torture hearing at TPMmuckraker.com.
--Josh Marshall
TPMDC Morning Roundup
Torture hearing today in the Senate featuring testimony from former FBI agent Ali Soufan and former State Department counselor Phillip Zelikow. That and the day's other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
They Play to Win
Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney asked if she could stay on longer on MSNBC this morning to ambush Eugene Robinson about torture.
One thing I can't help mentioning. I know others have ridiculed this nonsense. But I truly cannot believe that Liz Cheney keeps going on the air to say that waterboarding cannot, by definition, be torture since we do it to our own people to prepare them for the experience of being tortured. Setting aside the elementary point that we're doing it to prepare for them for the experience of being tortured (which suggests it is torture) is it not the most obvious thing in the world that being waterboarded by your fellow soldiers, knowing that you won't be injured and that the whole experience will be very short, is nothing at all like being waterboarded by captors dozens of times with no reason to believe it will ever end?
How does this fool even get put on television?
--Josh Marshall
Deep Thought
Woulda been a great idea to make John Murtha Majority Leader.
--Josh Marshall
Impressive
Yoo hired as Philly Inquirer columnist to "counter some of the criticism of The Inquirer as being a knee-jerk liberal publication."
--Josh Marshall
Plastic
Consumerist, which used to be a Gawker Media site but is now run by Consumer Reports, is going to DC to interview Austan Goolsbee about credit card reforms and consumer protection rules. So they're looking for questions (and horror stories) you'd like asked when they sit down with Goolsbee.
Maybe they can also ask Goolsbee what he's doing with a name from Edwardian England.
--Josh Marshall
Just Thinking
If, as Dick Cheney's daughter says, Cheney's torture crusade is like Al Gore global warming activism, can't he hurry up and form his pro-torture organization and shoot his movie?
--Josh Marshall
Shocking
AP and Dow Jones totally blew a story on the White House. Difficult to believe, I know, but ...
--Josh Marshall
Chutzpah
You'll love this one. Norm Coleman has told the FEC he ought to be able to use campaign funds to pay his lawyers for answering questions from TPMmuckraker about corruption allegations involving Coleman and his wife. That's all fine and dandy, but we never got a response to our multiple inquiries, not even once.
Late Update: TPM Reader PK figures what happened: "His lawyers probably advised him not to answer the questions and charged him a whopping amount for that bit of advice."
--David Kurtz
59 Not Equal to 60
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) lets slip why Republicans are not just content but thrilled to have Norm Coleman drag out the legal process in Minnesota and beyond.
--David Kurtz
Was The 83rd Time The Charm?
Liz Cheney still out flogging the Jack Bauer timebomb scenario -- and claiming waterboarding was a last resort. (Why didn't Eugene Robinson mention the 83 separate waterboardings of Abu Zubaydah to refute both points?)
--David Kurtz
TPMDC Morning Roundup
Sens. Boxer and Snowe: Hey, how about a female SCOTUS nominee? That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Get Me the Information!
More than a touch intrigued by the Iraq 'evidence'/torture nexus. From TPM Reader RW ...
Several interesting things just connected in my mind. Saw Jon Stewart show a clip of Cheney saying that Bush "basically approved" of the interrogation program. His answer was as woozy as it gets. Then on the replay of Hardball, watched Lawrence O'Donnell answer Chris Matthew's musings on a Cheney prosection by suggesting it would be for "usurping" Bush on the issue.Really, where the torture scandal could break open is the exact nexus of who actually authorized the program and Cheney's frantic efforts to get information linking Saddam Hussein to the Iraq war. Wherever Iraq touches the torture question is going to be the flashpoint--it undercuts the "ticking time bomb" rationale for the program. Its also where politicals are going to have their deepest interactions with the program. That's where people need to look. Somebody needs to superimpose the timeline of the Iraq run-up over what we know about the timeline of the torture program. Anywhere Cheney, Iraq and torture meet is going to be radioactive.
--Josh Marshall
Final Numbers in NY-20
TPM Reader JB flags the news that the final margin of victory in the NY-20 special election will be 726 votes. Razor thin, yes, but many more than the total was through much of the recount. And it suggests that almost all the challenged ballots turned out to be Murphy votes.
--Josh Marshall
Specter on Becoming a Dem
Specter: "There are a few bumps in the road. But I've got good shock absorption."
--Josh Marshall
McKiernan Surged Out of Command?
From the WSJ ...
Mr. Gates's decision to ask for Gen. McKiernan's resignation came after a behind-the-scenes campaign by an influential group of current and former military officers, many of whom played key roles developing and backing the Bush administration's troop "surge" in Iraq."It's been a long, slow boil," said a senior Pentagon official familiar with internal debates over Gen. McKiernan's future.
Mr. Gates said he had made the decision with Adm. Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus, who runs the Central Command and was Gen. McKiernan's boss.
--Josh Marshall
Frivolity Porn
Scenes from Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner (special Wanda Sykes/Terrorist First Bump edition.)
--Josh Marshall
Sigh
McCain blogger/spokesman Michael Goldfarb on ex-colleague who just signed on to work for Al Gore: He's "dead to me."
--Josh Marshall
Just Oy
Shorter US News: Obama must accept the fact that his economic policies caused the economic crisis and soaring deficits.
--Josh Marshall
Not Sure What to Think
New top general in Afghanistan was at the center of the Pat Tillman 'friendly fire' scandal.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm
I said last week that Democrats shouldn't harbor any illusions that congressional Dems were really kept in the dark about the Bush administration's use of torture. But Greg Sargent talked to former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) -- who was Pelosi's then-counterpart on the senate side when the early briefings took place -- and he says he was told nothing about 'enhanced interrogation' techniques during the key 2002 briefings.
--Josh Marshall
Deep Thought
Liking Wanda Sykes more and more.
From Extra, explaining how she was asked to keep her routine clean ...
"They told me not so say the F word or the N word... I'm offended they even told me that," Sykes told "Extra" moments before taking the stage. "What do they think? I'm some ignorant a**. Like I'm going to go in there, 'What's up n*****. Like what the f*** they think I'm going to do?"
--Josh Marshall
Dr. Evil
Robert Gibbs gives Dick Cheney big thumbs up as new GOP chief political strategist.
--Josh Marshall
Very Big Deal
I'm not sure what's known yet about the firing (technically: requested resignation) of Gen. David McKiernan, the top US general in Afghanistan. But top generals in charge of entire wars are not canned lightly. The Times reports that "the decision reflects a belief that the war in Afghanistan has grown so complex that it needs a commander drawn from the military's unconventional warfare branch." And he's being replaced by a general from the Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
At a very high level of generality that may be true. But there's got to be much more to the story, a much more detailed chain of events and decision-making that led to this. And the story may be different entirely.
--Josh Marshall
Everyone's Looking for Redemption
Email advertisement we just received for a new book from conservative publishing house Regnery: "General Curtis LeMay: Villain or Hero?
--David Kurtz
Yeah, Those Were the Days
From TPM Reader PJ ...
Interesting to note how some people are getting worked up over Wanda Sykes and Obama's behavior at that dinner. Remember GW Bush joking about the "missing WMD's" when he appeared at the same event a few years back? IMHO, that was a truly low point for our nation-- a President laughing about the fact that nobody could find the nuclear weapons that provided the central rationale for his assault on Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
--Josh Marshall
That Dinner Over the Weekend
Like us, you probably didn't get an invite to the White House Correspondents Dinner. But, did Wanda Sykes hurt Rush's feelings? Were there too many terrorist fist-bumps? And why did Bill O'Reilly seem so sad and forlorn about the festivities. All that and more in our special TPM White House Correspondents Dinner Slide Show.
--Josh Marshall
Just a Couple of Brothas?
At the White House correspondents dinner over the weekend, Obama gave RNC Chair Michael Steele a gentle jab -- or, as Steele described it, "It was good love between two brothers."
--David Kurtz
The Long Twilight Struggle
Mitt Romney: Keeping the world safe for democracy one golf shirt and water bottle at a time.
--David Kurtz
Promises, Promises, Promises
Ezra is feeling curmudgeonly about today's announcement by the health care industry that it's going to "commit" to cutting $2 trillion in costs over the next 10 years. And for good reason.
--David Kurtz
Cheney the Top Commission Supporter?
By definition, Dick Cheney is about government secrecy before pretty much any particular work of specific evil. But with his on-going round of aggressive public appearances he not only seems to be inviting a public inquiry into Bush administration anti-constitutional practices -- as in tempting fate -- but actually inviting it -- in the sense that he really seems to be pushing for it to happen. In his interview this weekend he seemed to say that he'd be happy to testify under oath about his torture policies. And intentionally or not, he's the one moving the ball forward on the release of various classified documents detailing torture practices.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Sunday Show Roundup: Still Talking
Former Vice President Dick Cheney just can't stop talking about how much less safe Barack Obama is making America. And while he's at it he floats the prediction that in 20 or 30 years, Bush administration policies will be seen as "one of the great success stories of American intelligence." And finally Cheney weighs in on the big question of who's the better Republican: Colin Powell or Rush Limbaugh?
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
--Ben Craw
TPMDC Morning Roundup
The issue of the day at the White House is health care reform. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Citibank's Latest
Getting you signed up for their astroturf campaign to keep making billions skimming off government guaranteed student loans.
--Josh Marshall
Don't Say They Lack a Sense of Humor
The Washington Times goes in for a little unintended self-parody, taking President Obama to task for his corrosive, unilateralist approach to ... cracking down on tax havens and money laundering.
President Obama has attempted to distinguish himself from his predecessor by stressing a more cooperative approach in foreign affairs. Mr. Obama declared at a press conference upon his arrival in London for the recent summit of the group of the world's 20 richest countries: "We can start with the notion that we're prepared to - to listen and to work cooperatively with countries around the world."Yet in one area of foreign policy, Mr. Obama has taken an approach as - if not more - unilateral than that of the Bush administration. On other nations' tax and financial privacy policies, the Obama administration has taken an aggressive, almost bullying, stance in denouncing some countries as "tax havens" or lax regulators.
The administration recently stunned the nation of Switzerland when, after obtaining, with the Swiss government's full cooperation, the names of 250 UBS AG bank customers suspected of violating U.S. tax laws, it then demanded the names of an additional 52,000 American UBS clients.
Thanks to TPMer Moe Tkacik for the catch.
Global War against Tax Cheats.
--Josh Marshall
TPMDC Sunday Roundup
Dick Cheney speaks up again, says his political opponents are "prepared to sacrifice American lives." That and other political news in today's TPMDC Sunday Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
Still the Flu
A third person has died in the US from the Swine Flu; and there's now been a fatality in Canada as well. Both were in their 30s; but both also apparently had underlying medical conditions.
--Josh Marshall
