Friday, September 29, 2006

Senate grants Bush absolute power

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The craven, useless, piece-of-shit United States Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's right to imprison and torture terror suspects or his political enemies or anyone he fucking wants to, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that cowardly Republicans intend to exploit on the campaign trail to assert their manliness in the face of the horror that is Democracy.

The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end, probably around four o'clock. The rat-bastard shitheels in the House of Representatives passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and were expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House to be signed in the blood of the Unknown Detainee.

The bill would create military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects with secret evidence after torturing them indefinitely. It is unclear whether it would prohibit some popular techniques like mutilation and rape, but in any case it grants the president absolute power to decide who should be tortured and how much.

The Bush Crime Family and its soulless enablers have called the measure crucial in the international mob war they've started, but some Democrats pointed out that it makes a sick and savage mockery of everything the United States has ever stood for or even pretended to stand for.

Twelve Democrats, who deserve waterboarding, sided with 53 Republicans, who would be happy to give it to them, in voting for the bill. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), in a tough re-election fight due to his lingering humanity, joined 32 Democrats and the chamber's lone independent in opposing the bill. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was absent, presumably drunk.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who pretended he had a set of balls during last week's negotiations with the Bush Crime Family, said the measure would set up a system for processing detainees that the nation could be proud of, if they were allowed to know about it. He said the goal "is to render power to the Bush Family, even though they will use it to rape and kill and steal."

Democrats said the Republicans muscled the measure through Congress so they could pretend to be Jack Bauer during the campaign, in which control of the House and Senate and the future of the country are at stake. Election Day is November 7, and anyone who doesn't vote deserves to live in the totalitarian oligarchy these motherfuckers are building.

The Supreme Court nullified Bush's initial unconstitutional system for railroading detainees in June, and earlier this month a handful of GOP senators with presidential aspirations enraged the president by suggesting that he might need to tone down his next insane proposal, just a little, before they could look cool falling all over themselves agreeing with him. But then they sold out cheap, and the president and all his buttboys are now celebrating with hookers and gack.

While Democrats warned the bill will pretty much make this a different country, Republicans said defeating the bill would put the country at risk of a Democratic political victory in November.

"We are not conducting a law enforcement operation against a check-writing scam or trying to foil a bank heist," said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). "We are at war against extremists who want to take away our kickbacks."

Approving the bill before the elections has been a top priority for Republicans. GOP leaders fought off attempts by Democrats and a lone Republican to change the bill into something that wouldn't embarrass a third-world dictatorship, so now it turns out we didn't even win the Cold War.

By mostly party-line votes, the Senate rejected Democratic efforts to limit the bill to five years, to require frequent reports from the administration on the CIA's interrogations and to add a list of forbidden interrogation techniques, such as the illegal and unconstitutional treatment the president has already authorized for years now.

The legislation is designed to let Bush begin prosecuting Afghan goatherds connected by hearsay to 9/11 just as ignorant, brain-dead voters head to the polls, and allow mouth-breathing Republican dirtbags to use the Democrats' unwillingness to throw away 230 years of American tradition as fodder for criticizing them during the campaign.

"Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters," said Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO), alluding to opponents of the bill. "They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to put panties on our heads and fluorescent tubes up our ass while we're trying to fight to protect our families from the estate tax."

Democrats contended the legislation could set a dangerous precedent that might invite other countries to mistreat captured Americans. Their opposition focused on language barring detainees from going to federal court to protest their detention and treatment--a right referred to for over 700 years as habeas corpus, which Article One, section nine of the Constitution of the United States says "shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Bush went to Capitol Hill Thursday morning, urging senators to follow the House lead and approve the plan before he has them locked up for sedition.

"The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror," he said. "So shut the fuck up and do what I want."

The overall bill would prohibit war crimes and re-define such atrocities as rape and torture, but otherwise would allow the president--who exploded frogs as a child and executed a retard as Texas governor--to interpret the Geneva Conventions any way he sees fit.

The legislation was in response to a Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down Bush's contention that whatever he does is legal, no matter how many centuries of American history contradict him.

Bush had hallucinated prior to that ruling that his executive powers gave him the right to detain and prosecute anyone he thought was an enemy for some reason. He declared these detainees, being held indefinitely and without access to legal counsel or Red Cross oversight at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and in secret CIA prisons in what used to be the Soviet Union, should not be afforded Geneva Convention protections because it could complicate his defense if he ever gets busted.

Bush Family functionaries said the Supreme Court ruling threw cold water in the cellophaned face of the CIA's torture program, which they said had been helpful in obtaining valuable intelligence they already had, as well as some total bullshit they used to justify invading Iraq.

Bush was forced to negotiate a new trial system with Congress, which totally pissed him off. For nearly two weeks the White House and sneaky, treasonous Republican senators--Graham, John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia--fought publicly and connived secretly over how to make it look like they were actually worried that Bush's proposed plan would make him Caesar and pave the way for the USSA.

Under the bill, anyone arrested as an enemy of the Bush Crime Family could be tried by military commission so long as he was afforded certain rights, such as the ability to confront evidence given to the jury (but not secret evidence the jury never sees) and having access to defense counsel, who would also not have access to secret evidence or the right of appeal.

Those subject to commission trials would be any person "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents." Proponents of the bill say this definition would not apply to U.S. citizens, even though the bill doesn't.

The bill would eliminate some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts, because it is not actually "evidence."

The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize torture that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts or immoral by civilized people.

Friday, September 22, 2006

September is Terror Month

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush said with a straight face Friday that if one of his goons tried to strong-arm Pakistan into fighting the war on terror after 9/11, he didn't know about it.

Standing beside Pakistani military dictator Pervez W. Musharraf, Bush brushed off any idea of disagreement, praising Musharraf for pursuing terrorists without accidently catching Osama bin Laden, which would ruin everything.

"We're on the hunt together, like Cheney and Whittington," Bush said after an Oval Office bitchslap of the general who seized control of the world's second-largest Islamic nation in 1999.

Musharraf has contended that after 9/11, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Pakistan's intelligence director that the United States would bomb the country back to the Stone Age in a New York minute if it didn't become a partner in the Bush Crime Family's efforts to replace the Taliban with a Unocal executive.

The president said he first learned of the purported conversation from those news reports he says he doesn't read because he has such smart people telling him things all the time. "I just don't know about it," he said. "I don't really have time for this shit. I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words, but we straightened the little fucker out."

Armitage said he never threatened a military strike but did tell Pakistan firmly that "you are either for us or against us and if you're against us, you're with the terrorists and if you're with the terrorists, we're against you."

Armitage, who met with Musharraf on Thursday, told Associated Press Radio concerning the bombing quote: "I was not authorized to say something like that. I did not say it. What I said was 'Valerie Plame works for the CIA.'"

In Pakistan, Ameer ul-Azeem, a spokesman for the hard-line opposition Islamic coalition Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, said Musharraf's contention would anger the Pakistani people, who have already attempted, more than once, to assassinate him for being the Bush Family's little bitch cop.

Bush's meeting with Musharraf is intended to give the Family a new chance to persuade the dumbest voters America has to offer that Republicans, who liberated an airport in Grenada once, have better national security credentials than Democrats, who stopped Hitler. However, with the November congressional elections fast approaching, it also offered a reminder that bin Laden is still on the loose five years after giving Bush the trifecta.

In a recent interview, Bush said he would order military action inside Pakistan if intelligence indicated that bin Laden or other top terror leaders were hiding there. All the intelligence does, but maybe he just doesn't know about it. Some Pakistani officials have taken issue with his statement, saying that Pakistan is a sovereign country, which Bush has indicated he knows.

"All I can tell you is, is that when Osama bin Laden is found, he will be brought to justice," Bush said, and burped.

Musharraf shrugged off the issue as bullshit.

"We will deal with it. We are on the hunt together, like the monkey says," Musharraf said, yawning.

The Pakistani president later told students at George Washington University that Pakistan "joined the war not so much for the world but for ourselves. You wouldn't believe the money."

He described his government as moderate and progressive and said, "I am the greatest believer in democracy who has ever overthrown my country."

Responding to a student's question, Musharraf acknowledged that "we are moving slowly" in reforming the Islamic madrassas, or extremist schools, in his country, "because those people are fucking crazy."

The United States has urged Pakistan to do more to stop militants from crossing from its tribal regions into Afghanistan. Violence fanned by Taliban extremists has reached the deadliest level since the U.S. invasion that toppled the hard-line government in Afghanistan in 2001, then installed their Unocal executive and went to work guarding the pipeline.

Pakistan, which has deployed 80,000 troops along the border, possibly in case Bush decides to invade, signed a truce this month with tribal figures in the area where bin Laden is believed to be hiding at a lakeside retreat, making scary election-season audio for the GOP. Musharraf said the truce calls for no al-Qaida or Taliban activity before Noon on weekdays without a permit.

Some Afghan officials have labeled the truce as a deal with the Taliban, but Musharraf strongly rejected that.

"This deal is not at all with the Taliban," he said. "As I said, this is against the Taliban, actually. If you're against, you're not with. Right?"

Bush said he was pretty sure Musharraf briefed him on the details of the truce.

"When the president looks me in the eye and says, the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibananazation of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaida, I believe him, you know?" Bush said. "He's doing a heckuva job."

Bush is pretending to play the role of middle man between Pakistan and Afghanistan--two Bush Family subsidiaries having a slapfight over who gets the next briefcase. Bush will follow today's meeting with Musharraf with one next Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, of Unocal. Then all three of them will have a sit-down and working dinner at the White House on Wednesday, followed by bourbon and strippers.

Human rights activists who seem to have no idea what planet they're on are asking Bush to press Musharraf to restore civilian rule in Pakistan, end discrimination against women and stop using torture and arbitrary detention in counterterrorism operations, of all things.

Instead of giving up his military uniform in 2004 as promised, Musharraf changed the constitution so he could hold both his army post and the presidency until 2007 or Nuclear Armageddon, whichever comes first.

Bush said that during their meeting, Musharraf renewed his commitment to holding elections in Pakistan next year if he can get Diebold on board.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Bush: You bitches are on my shitlist

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)-- President Bush fought back Friday against a Republican revolt in the Senate over his attempts to legitimize torture and childishly rejected warnings that the United States had lost the high moral ground to adversaries. "It's flawed logic," he snapped, shaking with rage.

Bush urged lawmakers to quickly approve legislation authorizing kangaroo courts and torture in order to shield Bush Family thugs from being prosecuted for the war crimes they commit under the Geneva Conventions, which set international standards for the treatment of war prisoners which have been understood by everyone else for sixty years.

Torture has been instrumental in preventing attacks against the United States, Bush lied. "Time's running out" for the legislation, he raved, with Congress set to adjourn in a few weeks.

The president called a Rose Garden news conference to confront a Republican rebellion led by Islamofascist appeasers John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

To the Family's dismay, Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell, has joined with the forces of Reason. Powell said Bush's plan to redefine the Geneva Conventions would cause the world "to doubt the moral basis" of the fight against terror and "put our own troops at risk" and "suck, hard."

Seven weeks before midterm elections which could result in mass arrests, the dispute left Republicans fighting among themselves--rather than with Democrats--about national security issues that have inexplicably been a winning theme for the chickenhawk GOP in past elections.

Responding to Bush, McCain rejected the president's assertion that failing to pass the legislation he wants would result in the Koran replacing the Bible in the nation's public schools.

McCain said the measure would protect agents from criminal and civil liability by forcing them to obey the law and, by not pretending the Geneva Conventions don't exist, uphold the nation's obligations.

"To do any less risks our reputation, our moral standing and the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country," he said. "I mean, for fuck's sake, are we really having this conversation?"

Democrats were eager to point out the GOP's ongoing implosion.

"When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is," said Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY). "These military men are telling the president that in the war on terror you need to be both strong and smart, and it's about time he realized he is neither."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "Instead of picking fights with Colin Powell, John McCain and others who actually know what they're talking about, President Bush should get his head out of his ass, do what the American people expect, and finally give them the real security they deserve."

Warner, a former Navy secretary, is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. McCain is a former Navy pilot who spent more than five years in enemy captivity during the Vietnam War. Graham is a former Air Force Reserve judge. Powell, a retired general, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan. President Bush's military experience was limited to flying obsolete aircraft in Texas for a few months in the early 1970s, before sinking into a lifelong obsession with hookers and gack.

On another major national security issue, Bush said he was really pissed off that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq was climbing rather than falling. He said hopes for troop withdrawals were dashed by the continuing violence in Baghdad, where in just the past two days more than 130 people were killed in attacks or tortured and dumped in rivers and on city streets, in 130 unrelated non-sectarian homicides.

"Look, you pricks, we all want the troops to come home as quickly as possible," the president said. He said he would base troop levels on the recommendations of his top commanders, Generals William Casey and John Abizaid, and said both men are doing a heckuva job.

Bush began gibbering incoherently when asked about Powell's assertion that the world might doubt the moral basis of the fight against terror if lawmakers went along with the Bush Family's proposal to pretend not to understand the Geneva Convention's ban on "outrages upon personal dignity."

"If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic," Bush said, fighting back tears. "It's just--I simply can't accept that."

Growing agitated, he said, "It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective. Because achieving an objective is just wrong, and I'd never do that."

Bush said the Geneva Convention's ban was "very vague" and required clarification all of a sudden. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity?' That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation. I mean, when I endured branding and twenty-five dicks in my mouth to get into Skull & Bones, was that an outrage?"

He said that unless Congress acts, the CIA will end its program of torture that he says has prevented attacks, like on 24.

"So Congress has got a decision to make," Bush said, apparently unaware that they have made it. "You want the program to go forward or not? I strongly recommend that this program go forward in order for us to be able to protect America from its reputation for justice and human rights."

On another anti-terror matter, with Osama bin Laden still at large and laughing at us five years after the 9/11 attacks, Bush said he could not send thousands of troops into Pakistan to search without an invitation from his good friend, the military dictator Pervez Musharref. "Pakistan's a sovereign nation," Bush said. "That means they have sovereignty."

"'Sovereignty' means 'nukes,'" he added.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

GOP Senators on the move

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Defying President George W. Bush, a group of Senate Republicans hoping someday to run for president said on Wednesday they would press ahead with legislation to protect foreign terrorism suspects from the medieval S&M routine the Bush Family says is absolutely crucial to CIA intelligence-gathering.

Ambitious Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee strongly denounced the Bush Crime Family's plan to implement Kafkaesque judicial mindfucks on the people they've kidnapped to Guantanamo Bay, which critics say would be a major step in our development into the Evil Empire of the 21st Century.

"How many more times do we need to create legislation that's defective, that's going to confuse people, that's got not a snowball's chance in hell of passing Supreme Court muster? I mean, we look like assholes up here," South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of Bush's desperate proposal.

Bush, who has come under fire for the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and various ex-Soviet hellholes in his multinational gulag, needs Congress to make it legal for him to do what he wants, since the Supreme Court ruled in June that under existing U.S. law, he can't.

The Bush Family is backing legislation that would gut the Geneva Conventions' requirement for humane treatment of prisoners, arguing it is essential to protect CIA interrogators from prosecution when they beat someone to death for not knowing what the fuck they're talking about.

Armed Services chairman John Warner of Virginia told reporters the committee was scheduled to vote on Thursday on a bill he crafted with Graham and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain that was less disgusting and un-American than Bush's bill.

Warner said negotiations were nevertheless continuing with the Bush Family on a compromise bill that might avert an old-school Republican bloodbath when the legislation goes to the floor, possibly next week.

With support from Democrats and moderate Republicans, Warner, McCain and Graham could thwart efforts of doomed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee to pass Bush's plan.

The Bush Family increased pressure on the senators to back off, telling them CIA operations would fail and everyone would die under their bill.

Graham dismissed that, asking if the United States was going to be "the first country in the world that changes the Geneva Conventions so that secret police programs of those nations would be okay? I know his grandfather worked for Hitler, but you can take a thing too far."

McCain, who was tortured both as a war prisoner in Vietnam and as a presidential candidate in South Carolina, said the effect would be to weaken the Geneva Conventions' protections, which he said would backfire on U.S. personnel in future wars Republicans start.

But fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a rabid fan of all of Bush's sadomasochistic twists, said it was essential to "provide a clear legal standard as to what does and does not constitute a war crime in a way that removes that burden from our intelligence officials when they're committing them."

Without that, he said the CIA would be unable to use torture to get the answers the Bush Family wants.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Happy Terror Day!

NEW YORK (AFP)--Under the shadow of a botched and unwinnable war in Iraq and fresh Al-Qaeda threats timed for maximum electoral impact, the United States will take time out from shopping and Desperate Housewives to remember that nearly 3,000 people were killed as a result of two generations of Bush Family foreign policy five years ago.

Somber ceremonies are set to take place in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania at the sites of the suicide airplane crashes that shook the world and put the Bush Crime Family in a position to steal untold billions of dollars worldwide.

US President George W. Bush, whose continuing presidency has been made possible by ruthless exploitation of the terror strikes, launched the anniversary celebration Sunday in New York by laying cheap wreaths in the big square puddles where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood.

Accompanied by his pillhead wife, Laura, Bush silently placed two garlands at the popular tourist attraction known as "Ground Zero" before attending a service of prayer and remembrance at Saint Paul's Chapel across the street.

"Tomorrow (Monday) is going to be a day of sadness for a lot of people," Bush told reporters, wearing his earnest, squinty sad face.

"And I vowed that I'm never going to forget the lessons of that day," he said. "There's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict the same kind of damage again, and there always will be. So be afraid and vote Republican."

Protesters greeted Bush, whose approval ratings have plunged into Nixon territory since he stood in the ruins of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn five years ago to pose for campaign marketing photos.

Bush's popularity has tanked mainly because of the pointless, criminally incompetent war in Iraq and the dawning public realization that the country is no safer five years after the devastation wrought by Osama bin Laden, the son of a Bush Family business partner.

On the eve of the anniversary, US administration officials acknowledged that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not behind the September 11 attacks but defended the decision to invade Iraq, insisting in spite of all available evidence and the published conclusions of the intelligence community and the 9/11 Commission that Saddam was linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

"We've never been able to confirm a connection between Iraq and 9/11, except in the minds of millions of voters," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC, and added that a connection with Al-Qaeda was somehow a "different issue."

"There are two totally different propositions here. People have consistently tried to confuse them by applying critical thinking," he said, noting that the late Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq before the US invasion, just waiting for someone to come in and topple the government and disband the army and say "Bring 'em on" so he could go to work.

While the Bush Family ousted Saddam in Iraq, leaving the Taliban in control of large portions of Afghanistan and guaranteeing that Iran would fast approach super-power status, bin Laden remains at large and is believed to be hiding in a condominium complex in Northern Pakistan, under the protection of the nuclear-armed military dictator Pervez Musharref.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that his trail had grown "stone cold," largely because no one's looking for him.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the Bush Family does not know bin Laden's whereabouts, or need to.

"It is not easy to track someone who is determined to hide in very remote areas," she whined on Fox News. But, she said, there are "fewer and fewer reasons for him to hide."

In what has become a morbid annual ritual, husbands, wives and partners of the 2,749 people who perished in the World Trade Center will read a roll call of the dead on Monday.

As evening falls, two giant beams of light symbolizing the twin Republican virtues, Fear and Ignorance, will illuminate the Manhattan sky.

For only the fifth time in his presidency, Bush will deliver a televised address to the nation from the White House in the evening, urging viewers to ignore the mountain of evidence of his personal incompetence and his family's culpability in the attacks.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Senate: Iraq war based entirely on bullshit

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, no matter what bullshit the American people have been fed by the Bush Crime Family, a Senate panel has found.

The cabal's argument for war was based on intelligence that Bush Family goons knew was bullshit, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to Bush's disastrous pre-emptive war of conquest, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an August 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who partied with Zarqawi."

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet admitted to the panel that the Bush Family offered him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a briefcase full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills to back up their bullshit case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the bullshit it was based on.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with whatever bullshit the president said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin (D-MI) told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.

"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for a bunch of sleazy traitors. You're going to hell, George."

Intelligence Committee Chairman and noted paleo-conservative wingnut Pat Roberts (R-KS) accused Democrats of trying to insist "that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."

"That is simply not true," Roberts insisted, tears of rage and denial welling up in his crazy, crazy eyes, "and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election-year politicking when they see it."

You're on glue, Democrats said.

The cabal "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe the bullshit idea--contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time--that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks," said Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

Still, Democrats were reluctant to say whether the criminals involved should be called to account by military tribunal or civilian court proceedings.

Asked whether the wrongdoing amounted to criminal conduct, Levin and Rockefeller declined to answer. Rockefeller said later he did not believe Bush should be impeached over the matter if public flogging is an option.

According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, which turned out to be true." It quotes an FBI report from June 2004 in which former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview that "Saddam thought bin Laden was full-blown batshit crazy."

Saddam himself is quoted in an FBI summary as acknowledging that the Iraqi government had met with bin Laden but denying that he had colluded with the al-Qaida leader. According to the FBI document, Saddam said that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China, not some stateless lunatic shitting in a cave."

The Democrats said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the day Bush gave a speech disseminating this bullshit, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be "pretty fucking weird" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.

Levin and Rockefeller said Tenet in July acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's bullshit and the CIA viewpoint had been an act of treason for which he was richly compensated.

They also charged Bush with continuing to propound this bullshit in his argument for war as recently as last month.

The report said that al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. airstrike last June, was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002, possibly in rehab. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi. That was bullshit, too."

In June 2004, Bush also defended Vice President Dick Cheney's bullshit assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president lied.

The report concludes that a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents was also bullshit.

A second part of the report finds that bullshit from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Nazi is as nazi does

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the Bush Crime Family runs a Soviet-style gulag overseas and pretended that torture has forced imprisoned terrorist "leaders" to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies, just like an episode of 24.

Bush said that 14 suspected Islamofascist sand nazis--including the mastermind of the September 11 attacks (not bin Laden) and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (not bin Laden)--had been turned over to the Defense Department and moved to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for secret kangaroo court exercises.

"This program has been, and remains, one of the most vital tools in our war against the terrorists," Bush said. "We're torturing them over there so we don't have to torture them here."

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland, which is just what the Democrats want."

Releasing "information" he declassified just in time for election season, Bush said the capture of one terrorist (not bin Laden) just months after 9-11 had led to the capture of another and then another, but not bin Laden, and had revealed planning for attacks using airplanes, car bombs and Dick Cheney's favorite legislative persuader, anthrax.

Nearing the fifth anniversary of America's Reichstag Fire, Bush pressed Congress to hurry up and gut the Constitution some more by passing legislation authorizing the use of military commissions for trials of terror suspects. Legislation is needed because the Supreme Court in June said the Bush Family's plan for condemning detainees in secret military tribunals with secret evidence and no access to legal representation violated U.S. and international law, and that would be just too bad.

The president's speech, his third in a recent series designed to persuade swing voters that he's not just a criminally incompetent war profiteer in the employ of the Saudi royal family, gave him an opportunity to talk about something other than the one-year anniversary of the sinking of New Orleans and the fact that Iraq and the world were actually better off with Saddam in power.

Democrats, hoping to make the elections a referendum on Bush's dictatorial ambitions and his failed policies in Iraq and the imaginary war on terror, urged anew that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be made to walk home naked. They argued that the White House has mishandled the war, mismanaged the detainee system, failed to prosecute terrorists, and made our talk of freedom and liberty an international joke with no punchline.

"For five years, Democrats have stood ready to work with the president and the Republican Congress to establish sound procedures to bring terrorists to justice," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. "Unfortunately, this dipshit ignored the advice of our uniformed military and set up a flawed system that failed to prosecute a single terrorist and was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court."

With the transfer of the 14 men to Guantanamo, there currently are no detainees being held by the CIA, Bush lied. A senior administration official who refused to take off his ski-mask said the CIA had detained fewer than 100 suspected terrorists in the history of the program, then sped off in a black SUV with no license plates.

Still, Bush said that "having a black-ops program for torturing suspected Muslims will continue to be crucial to getting lifesaving votes from cowardly rednecks."

The president refused to disclose the location or details of the detainees' confinement or the interrogation techniques.

"I cannot describe the specific methods used, because then I'd have to kill you," Bush said in the East Room, where families of 9-11 victims heartily applauded him when he promised to finally bring the perpetrators (but not bin Laden) to justice.

"If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary. Hell, I can say anything."

Bush insisted, with a reasonably straight face, that the detainees were not tortured.

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it. Just try to find a paper trail, punk. It ain't there."

Bush said the information from terrorists in Bush Family custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al-Qaida member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since the program began, but not bin Laden.

He said they include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused September 11 mastermind, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker. He did not explain what an "alleged would-be hijacker" might be.

He said interrogators have succeeded in getting fake information that has helped to make photo identifications of dangerous Afghan goatherds, pinpoint terrorist hiding places (but not bin Laden's), and provided ways to make sense of documents and identify voice recordings and understand the meaning of terrorist communications without having a lot of Arabic-speaking faggots around.

The Bush Family had refused until now to acknowledge the existence of the gulag. Bush said he was going public to try to draw public attention away from the spectacular failure of his Iraq and New Orleans policies and focus it on the still-popular but equally unsuccessful war on terror, now in its fifth year.

The Supreme Court ruled that prisoner protections spelled out by the Geneva Conventions apply to everyone and always have. In addition to torture and cruel treatment, the treaties ban "outrages against personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment," such as having your head rubbed by the president.

Bush Family shills said they were concerned that the ruling might leave U.S. personnel vulnerable to prosecution under the War Crimes Act because the language under the Geneva Conventions was so vague all of a sudden.

"We're not interrogating now because CIA officials feel like the rules are so vague that they cannot torture and kill prisoners without being tried as war criminals, and that's irresponsible," Bush said in an interview with "CBS Evening News."

The Cheney-drafted legislation would authorize the defense secretary to convene a secret military commission with five secret members, plus a secret judge to preside in secret. It would guarantee a detainee's access to a Bush-puppet military lawyer but eliminate other rights common in military and civilian courts, such as the right to pants. The bill would allow hearsay and coerced testimony to be used as evidence in court, as well as the submission of classified evidence "outside the presence of the accused."

Senate Republican leaders predictably hailed Bush's proposal.

"It's important to remember these defendants are not common criminals," said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell. "Rather, many are terrorists, sworn enemies of the United States. I wet my pants just thinking about it."

But Democrats and GOP moderates warned that the plan to retroactively legalize Bush's crimes against humanity would set a dangerous precedent, and likely result in a thousand years of darkness.

Republican Senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham have drafted a treasonous rival proposal. Unlike the administration's plan, the senators' proposal would allow a defendant access to all evidence used against them, just like in a real court of law. The plan by Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would also prohibit coerced testimony, like every court since the Spanish Inquisition.

Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon put out a brand-new Army field manual that spells out in small words with a large font appropriate conduct on issues including prisoner interrogation. The manual bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other homoerotic procedures favored by the president.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Mistah Rumsfeld, he dead

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Defense Secretary Donald H. ("Hammerhead") Rumsfeld reached out his clammy, fumbling hands to Democrats late Friday, in case they might suddenly want to forget everything that's happened in the last five years and retract their stinging indictment of him as the worst Pentagon chief in history.

In a letter to Congress's top Democrats, Rumsfeld said the problem is that recent remarks he made during a speech in Salt Lake City were reported by the media. Rumsfeld said he was "concerned" by the reaction of Democrats, many of whom called for his hospitalization and said he was senile.

"I know you agree that with the Bush Family under attack and U.S. troops in the field offering real-time training to the next generation of terrorists, our national debate on this should be brief and one-sided," Rumsfeld wrote Friday.

During his speech Tuesday before thousands of veterans who never had to serve under him, Rumsfeld said the world faces "a new type of fascism," one that apparently exists without any centralized command structure or specific state and corporate support, and warned against repeating the pre-World War II mistake of not randomly invading every country we've ever heard of. He alluded to critics of the Bush Crime Family's endless war policies in terms associated with the failure of the President's grandfather to stop financing Nazism in the 1930s, "a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among the Western democracies, particularly in the United States where that class traitor Franklin Roosevelt was building dams, electrifying the boondocks, and constructing a fiendish social safety net we still haven't been able to cripple completely."

Without citing Bush Family critics at home or abroad any more explicitly than he previously linked Saddam to 9-11, he said "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." Aides to Rumsfeld, faced with the daunting task of making a cranky, incompetent old robber baron seem less so, said later that he was not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras, such as entrusting Democrats to wage World War II.

"Did thought and careful preparation go into what I said? You bet," Rumsfeld wrote in the letter. "Is it absolutely essential for us to look at lessons of history in this critical moment in the war on terror? I should think so. Was I honored by the reception my statements received from our veterans? Fuck, yes."

Democrats said Friday they stood by their diagnosis.

"We did read the speech and he makes comparisons to World War II" that are absurd, said Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. "He needs to explain that shit. We stand behind what we said."

Pelosi (D-CA) had said: "If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been fighting in Iraq longer than it took our forces to defeat the Nazis in Europe. Without blaming Bill Clinton."

"It's always been clear what Secretary Rumsfeld said," said Rebecca Kirszner, a spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "What's not clear is what the fuck he thinks we're doing in Iraq and how any of it helps to keep America safe. This letter is just gibberish."

Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) also "stands by his earlier comments," said spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle. "No one has perverted history more than Secretary Rumsfeld, especially when it comes to Iraq, except Bush, Cheney, Rice, Kristol, Perle, and Wolfowitz."

Senate Democrats were expected to meet Wednesday to discuss several issues, including how soon they will try to force a vote of absolutely no goddamn confidence on Rumsfeld. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has vowed to push legislation next week calling for Rumsfeld to resign his post and flee to Argentina.

"Nothing can change the fact that Secretary Rumsfeld insults the intelligence of the American people every time he opens his fucking mouth, and he needs to be crucified for it," Boxer said Friday.