Want to read those 22 million lost, but found Bush-Cheney emails?

Hold your breath until 2022. Thanks to the Obama White House for RECOVERING these missing emails. Let's be honest and clear here, of course the Bush White House wanted these emails removed. That administration will end up being one of the worst and corrupt regimes that ever sat at the White House.



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Lawrence O'Donnell destroys Liz Cheney on criticizing President Obama for paying tribute to fallen soilders (Video)

President Bush or Vice-President Cheney NEVER went to Dover AFB to honor the fallen soldiers. O'Donnell tore Liz Cheney UP and it was due, since most of her statement was a LIE. From Countdown with Keith Olbermann.



and Rachel Maddow weighs in.....




President Obama stands outside an Air Force C-17 transport plane as he takes part in the "dignified transfer ceremony" of U.S. Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, October 29, 2009. Griffin is one of 18 U.S. personnel who died Monday in Afghanistan.

h/t Daily Kos

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Dick Cheney criticizes Obama "dirthering" on Afghanistan (Video)

This coming from a man who never thought about how winning ANY MIDDLE EAST WAR? Cheney has ZERO credibility. And why the media gives this war nut a podium for his bullshit is beyond me. From Hardball.

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Dick Cheney on the hot spot

A federal judge orders the FBI interview of Dick Cheney, former Vice President of the United States, be released to the public. This is the first of many "releases" that will eventually come out.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the FBI must publicly reveal much of its notes from an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

Cheney agreed to be interviewed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in June 2004 during the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's identity after her husband publicly criticized the Bush administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations said they wanted to keep the interview confidential because future presidents, vice presidents and their senior staff may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could became public.

But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled there was no justification to withhold the entire 67 pages of FBI records documenting Fitzgerald's interview since the Plame leak investigation has concluded. He said that limited parts could be withheld to protect national security and private communications between the president and vice president.

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Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), i.e., Hypocrite

Ben Nelson states he is a Democrat, but he sure tows or follows the Republican line. He is not for real health care reform, definitely not for the public option. His history is one riddled with closeness to the insurance industry, hell he was a former insurance regulator in his State of Nebraska. So, how he will vote is nothing new, but he did not have any problems with reconciliation for the Bush's Tax Cuts for the rich, in fact he was lock step with the Republicans on that vote. But expecting him to vote or do the right thing for the American Public? Don't hold your breath on that one.

Now that Sen. Ben Nelson, (D-Neb.) has definitively stated that he opposes the use of reconciliation to pass health care reform, it's worth noting that on at least two previous occasions the Nebraska Democrat had no qualms supporting the budgetary procedure as a means of passing legislation.

On May 26, 2001, Nelson was one of a dozen Democrats to support president George W. Bush's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001: the massive tax cut package that defined the administration's plans for job growth. The bill was passed using reconciliation -- meaning it wasn't subject to a Democratic filibuster -- and received the support of 58 Senators.

Two years later, Bush had introduced a second tax-cut package, this one entitled The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. That too was passed through reconciliation with Nelson's vote proving even more critical. The Nebraskan was one of only two Democrats to back the measure, giving it exactly the 50 votes needed to become law (Vice President Dick Cheney voted yea to break the impasse).

Hypocrite? That word is too nice in describing Nelson.

Source

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Rachel Maddow's interview with Tom Ridge, former Bush Administration's Homeland Security Secretary (Video)

Very good interview, especially with the book coming out by Ridge and his criticism of the Bush Administration.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

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When its hot in the kitchen for Dick Cheney, he unleashes Lizzy

The announcement of the pending CIA torture investigations by AG Eric Holder, SHOULD WORRY DICK CHENEY. Why? Because as Former President George W. Bush was leaving office, all his dirty shit was unraveling. In fact, Bush could not wait for the "klieg lights" to be dim on him for good, his words.

As we thought in our gut that Karl Rove had a heavy hand in the firings of U.S. Attorneys, and we were RIGHT. We will soon find out, who gave what orders, to do what, to these prisoners.

Just as we found out about the lies of the Bush Administration to take this country to Iraq for a War that was of choice, not necessity, it is important that we know everything and clean it up. Why? Because this country, the United States of America is bigger and better than what we, its citizens saw and let transpire. By the time George W. Bush was to leave office, there was barely a country he could go to. The disdain of the Bush Administration and its policy of the Iraq War were so negative, he would have been booed to high heaven. As he was the last time in Europe and as we witnessed an Iraqi journalist throwing shoes at President Bush, which is to signify total disdain and disrespect.

George W. Bush may have ended up signing off on a lot of things he did not totally know about or just cared not to, but in the end, he will be on the hot seat, too. But, Dick Cheney has already been implicated on knowing and dealing the thing called "torture". Now, out of office and writing a book, anytime you bring up the word "investigation" he puts his ass on television in a flash to denounce the Obama Administration and call it "partisan or political", when in fact Barack Obama does not want to go down this road, this call is purely from the Justice Department. See, when you follow the LAW and don't politicize every department, let each department act independently of the White House, as Justice is supposed to, you end up with an investigation.



So, today Dick Cheney released his bogus daughter, Lynn Cheney to This Week with George Stephanopoulos, but there was a seasoned journalist on the panel by the name of Sam Donaldson and he was having none of her bullshit nonsense of tap dancing around questions and straight up not answering them. View the whole exchange, here. And the shorter version is below:



And of course, in the end Dick Cheney is PROUD that he had the guts to torture.

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Concern Troll, Joe Scarborough of morning joe in the tank for protecting terror tactics (Video)

Joe Scarborough has been outspoken about the terror tactics used, in fact he for the illegal terror tactics this country has used during the Bush regime and he really don't give a shit because he approves all that has been done. Now much more is coming out and morning joke is on the GOP talking points. All this happened under the Bush Administration's watch and Republicans are scared, that the investigation will expand and you know what, it should. The Justice Department should not just single out lower level personnel who did what they were told to do, we all know this will go straight back to the BUSH WHITE HOUSE and this is where the Republicans get worried.



Read more from Ministry of Truth over @ Daily Kos.
MSNBC

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Attorney General Eric Holder appointing a special prosecutor to investigate CIA/torture

Now this is Change I Can Believe In...

Attorney General Eric Holder has directed a federal prosecutor to look into possible violations of U.S. law in the CIA's treatment of terrorism detainees overseas, NBC News reported Monday.

Administration officials say he'll give the assignment to a career federal prosecutor in Connecticut, John Durham.

For more than a year, since January 2008, Durham has been investigating whether any laws were broken when CIA officials destroyed audio and video tapes of the interrogations of several terrorism detainees. His work on the tapes issue is not yet completed, though there are indictions that Durham is nearly done with that part of his work.

Source
Washington Post

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When it rains, it pours. Karl Rove. BUSTED. (Read the transcripts)

The man has LIED about practically everything and now life comes turning FULL CIRCLE on him. Emails and everything indicates that he was deeply involved in the firings of former U.S. Attorneys, especially former U.S. Attorney, David Igelsias, out of New Mexico. It is all here.

Former White House political adviser Karl Rove was deeply involved in the firing of a U.S. attorney in New Mexico, according to White House e-mails and transcripts of closed-door testimony released Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee released more than 5,400 pages of White House and Republican National Committee e-mails, along with transcripts of closed-door testimony by Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

The documents show that staffers in Rove's office were actively seeking to have U.S. Attorney David Iglesias removed. In one e-mail in 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent an e-mail to another Rove aide, saying, "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY."

No wonder the Republicans, especially the Bush White House desperately needed a Republican back in the White House. These emails are bomb shells.

The ensuing uproar led to a series of damaging revelations about the Bush administration's political meddling with the Justice Department and the eventual resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Iglesias said in an interview Tuesday he was nauseated by the whole affair.

"It's exactly what I feared. Over two years ago, I said that all roads lead to Rove," Iglesias said. "I've said consistently that he was highly involved, and now the evidence is there."

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Miers was interviewed by House Judiciary Committee lawyers on June 15. Rove was interviewed July 7 and 30.

A jail cell is waiting for Mr. Rove.

More here and here.
Transcripts, here

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Calls mounting for investigation of secret CIA program (Video)

Led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, the cat is now out of the bag about how Cheney told the CIA not to let congress know about this particular secret CIA program.

I think no one should be in shock or in awe. We are talking about Dick Cheney one of the biggest liars walking around here, coupled with the CIA, a recipe for disaster.

Congressional demands for an investigation grew on Monday over new disclosures that a secret CIA program to capture or kill al-Qaida leaders was concealed from Congress for eight years, perhaps at the behest of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The program, which never got off the ground and remains shrouded in mystery, was designed to target leaders of the terrorism network at close range, rather than with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The program was canceled last month by CIA Director Leon Panetta shortly after he himself first learned of it. ,read more here....

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Bush going after Obama? PUHLEAZE.

Former President George W. Bush has no credibility, whatsoever, after he left this country in a terrible quagmire. Really, his adminstration was better? This coming from the man who ignored Katrina, ran up a massive deficit, put us in Iraq, lied to this country, let his cronies make billions on Iraq contracts, did not find Osama bin Laden, clueless on the economy, and he now talks?

PUHLEAZE on that noise.

Former President George W. Bush fired a salvo at President Obama on Wednesday, asserting his administration's interrogation policies were within the law, declaring the private sector -- not government -- will fix the economy and rejecting the nationalization of health care.

"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," the former president said to applause from members of a local business group. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."

Repeatedly in his hourlong speech and question-and-answer session, Mr. Bush said he would not directly criticize the new president, who has moved to take over financial institutions and several large corporations. Several times, however, he took direct aim at Obama policies as he defended his own during eight years in office.

"Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States," he said to huge cheers. read more here....

He along with Cheney were REJECTED by the public on November 4, 2008. He along with Cheney has soiled the Republican Party name so badly, that though Obama took a hit in the NBC/WSJ poll, the public still blames George W. Bush for where we are at.

Bush has NO CREDIBILITY, at all.

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Again, Bush policies linked to the the majority of the government defecit

Again, remember how we got here.

President Obama did not walk into the Oval Office with a balance sheet, with money in the coffers and without headaches.

The fake outrage of Republicans is just that fake outrage. Republicans did not stand in the way of George W. Bush and all the money he spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and as everything is unraveling we see more contractors who have made billions off the Americans back without nothing to show for it, especially in Iraq.

So, while the Republicans are ginnin' up to stand in the way of the public option plan, they need to remember how we got here. They had a lot to do with it, in fact they are mostly responsible for it.

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.

Now this is what happened when Bush came into office, the one who destroyed the proposed surplus.

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years. read more here....

For President Obama to implement his plans, the window of opportunity is NOW, not later. Why now? He has the political capital, that is why. Which is why we see the Obama Administration rolling everything out now, versus later.

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Don't get it twisted in regards to Dick Cheney

I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.

Dick Cheney's performance today was all about what is coming down the road and it does not look good for him. Liz Cheney's performance is all about helping her father's legacy, at any cost.

Right now we are at a crossroads in this country. A serious one. We are either going to be a country that stand by our rules and laws, which means we will follow the rules and laws. Or a country that will ignore our laws, justify breaking our laws and bear the consequences. We must decide what we want to do.

There's a lot of moving parts going on here and let me tackle them.

First, Dick and Liz Cheney.

Dick Cheney broke the law, period. He stood on that stage today and justified torture. He did not waiver, he was clear, he was concise. He stands behind the program that has put this country in more harms way than ever. It was a strong argument that Cheney gave and he needed, too. Why? As all of this is unraveling he needs to justify what happened during the Bush/Cheney years as deserved and rational. During his speech, Cheney continues to associated 9/11, WMDs and Iraq as the reason for the invasion, when he knows that it is a blatant lie.

Transcript

Right now there is considerable debate in this city about the measures our administration took to defend the American people.

Today I want to set forth the strategic thinking behind our policies.

Nine-eleven caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated.

We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in.

Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and it was our job to stop it. We didn’t know what was coming next, but everything we did know in that autumn of 2001 looked bad. This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology.

We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

Foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass - a 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction.

We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists.

In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists.

I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program.

They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.

To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims.

You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States; you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States.

For all the partisan anger that still lingers, our administration will stand up well in history - not despite our actions after 9/11, but because of them.

Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz are continuing to beat the drum of justification for the Torture Program under the Bush Administration.

Lastly, never in over 40 years has a previous administration, President or Vice President complained, criticized and voiced strong opinions about a new administration. Viewing Cheney's speech, his demeanor, body language is one of do it my way or the high way. Obviously, Cheney is finding it difficult to rationalize that Barack Obama won the election and not by a slither but by 8 percentage points. That is mandate numbers and Cheney and the Republicans are having a difficult time dealing with it.

Talking Points for the GOP

Various television shows in the past week or so have hammered home the closing of Guantanamo Bay, coupled with the Nancy Pelosi comments on the lack of truth from the CIA. While this banter is going on, the Democrats removal of the closing of Guantanamo Bay monies and falling for the "terror scare" of the Republicans had many scratching their heads with WTF? The following crafted by Senator John Thune (R-SD):

The American jail system is designed for American systems, for criminals. It's not designed to handle the types of threats and risks and dangers that having terrorists housed in some of these prisons would pose to communities and neighborhoods in this country, Andrea.

And I think what you saw in the Senate today was a vote. It was 90 to six, Democrats and Republicans coming together. And actually it was an about-face for the Democrats in the Senate because earlier they had put funding into the bill that would have gone toward closing Guantanamo, but they recognized that that was a losing proposition, particularly given the fact that the president has not put forward any kind of a plan or detailed what he would do with these detainees.

Let's be clear here. The United States of America has more prisons and people incarcerated than any other country, period. The notion that we can not harbor and incarcerate 200+ detainees/terrorists in maximum security prisons is just preposterous.

But remember, this is going to be the argument for 2010 mid-term election. Get ready for the boogey man ads to the public. Be prepared for the "terrorist is moving into your neighborhood". That is the card the GOP will play as they try to regain the trust of the American public. Yes, they are going to try it.

In Barack Obama's speech he made it clear that he is closing Guantanamo Bay and that his number one priority is the safety of this nation. He also addressed the politicization of the national debate issue:

Obama accused the Bush administration officials of acting from "fear rather than foresight" in the days after the 9/11 attacks, with "hasty decisions" that undermined U.S. efforts in the war against Islamic terrorism.

He inherited "a mess," Obama said. Bush-era officials "trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions" with policies "neither effective nor sustainable."

And now, "we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues," Obama said. "We will be ill-served by ... the fear-mongering" that has "more to do with politics than protecting our country."

Ask General Petraeus. Wars on terror are inherently different. The brutal techniques of unbridled warfare can be counterproductive when employed against groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America," Obama said. "They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.

"In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts—they undermined them."

Today we heard two speeches, one from the President of the United States and one from the former Vice-President of the United States. This country must decide if we are going to be a country that stands by the rule of law and moral ground, or are we just going to by pass it and do what we want as we see fit, no matter what the consequences may be.

The latter has put us in the mess we are in now and has forced President Obama to reach out and broker destroyed relationships created by the Bush Administration. We voted for Barack Obama and change, but change does not come by pulling a lever, punching a card or filling in a circle. Change is what you fight for. We have every right to question and take Barack Obama to task when we disagree, but we must stand with him and give him time to fix the long laundry list left by the Bush Administration. It won't happen over night, but we owe him the chance to do it his way. This is what we voted for.

As for the mid-term elections in 2010? Get ready it is not going to be nice.

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Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General, Approved Torture Months Before Memos Written

When it rains, it pours.

When you lie, it eventually comes out.

Here it comes....from Daily Kos, via NPR....GOP explain this one...

NPR is reporting that Alberto Gonzales while the White House Atty, not the Atty Gen, was approving the Torture of Abu Zubaydah months before the Aug. Torture Memos were even written. It appears the ACLU has the proof from a ongoing court case.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top secret cable to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the Administration’s legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

Late May 19, the CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top secret cables that went from Zubaydah’s black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

I don't care what the Obama White House wants to do or say, this torture crap and what the Bush Administration did will not go away.

Read more from McJoan of Daily Kos, here.

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CIA and their lack of the truth or "truthiness"?

All the made up, fake outrage by the Republicans against Speaker Nancy Pelosi is just trumped up bullshit.

Really, it is.

I wrote that the GOP needs someone, something to make noise and it is Pelosi since she called the CIA out.

And all this utter bullshit about the honor of the CIA is just a "rolleye" moment. The CIA or "the company" is a product of secrecy. If anyone thinks that the CIA will look you in the eye and tell you the honest truth, stop smoking and drinking. This is an agency that LIES, period. And they have LIED to congress, many times.

Sure, I don't like stating this, but hell, wake up folks. How in the hell did we get into Iraq? It was based on lies trumped up by that Bush crew with George Tenet manufacturing trumped up evidence to substantiate going to war. Don't believe me, watch PBS' Frontline documentary "Bush's War". It is all there. So, please let's just stop it with the GOP talking points of "The CIA don't lie", YES THEY MOST CERTAINLY, DO.

And now others are coming forward challenging the CIA and their so-called NOTES.

New questions surfaced Wednesday about the accuracy of a CIA document meant to settle who in Congress knew about severe interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.

Three new errors appeared to emerge in the CIA's matrix of 40 congressional briefings on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Those techniques include waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, which President Barack Obama has called torture.

The CIA acknowledged one of the errors but continued to stand by its version of events in the other two cases. read more here....

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Karen Hughes, former counselor to Bush, acknowledged torture

From Think Progress:

Last month, Phillip Zelikow disclosed that while serving as a top-aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005, he had written and circulated a memo expressing grave concerns about the Bush administration’s torture regime. Another memo Zelikow co-authored at around the same time even offered a legal alternative to the program. Now, it turns out that strong opposition to President Bush’s interrogation policies came from within his tight-knit inner circle. Karen Hughes, counselor to the president, told the Houston Chronicle this week that she was “very vocal in the internal debate”:

She acknowledged the current uproar over interrogation tactics and allegations of prisoner torture during the Bush years.

“I was very vocal in the internal debate,” she said. “I worried about how that would make us look in the eyes of the world. But I had left the White House when a lot of that was taking place.”
Then she paused, worried for the first time in 90 minutes that she’d made a gaffe. Whatever Sen. John McCain says about interrogation techniques, she added quickly, she has similar views.

It does not get any plainer than that.

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Pentagon no longer quotes bible versus' on briefings (Video)

That GQ article was a bombshell. I posted it yesterday. It was a huge eyeopener on Rumsfeld and on Bush. Now we have the Pentagon clearing it all up.

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.

For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the Gospel of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.

The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of CQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms — "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him. ... To deliver their soul from death." — and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad. read more here.....

Obviously, it happened and all I can type is "what next to come from under the rug during the Bush years." Again, separation of church and state was WRITTEN explicitly for a reason with metric to govern. The Bush Administration just ignored it, as they did many things during their tenure.

From the Ed Show

And Pat Buchanan had a cow on Hardball over this.....

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Donald Rumsfeld's peers are talking and it is not nice

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's former peers are speaking out to GQ and it is not flattering. Excellent article, a must read.

ON THE MORNING OF Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.

But one government official was disturbed enough by these biblically seasoned sheets to hold on to copies, which I obtained recently while debriefing the past eight years with those who lived them inside the West Wing and the Pentagon. Over the past several months, the battle to define the Bush years has begun taking shape: As President Obama has rolled back his predecessor’s foreign and economic policies, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer, and former speechwriters Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen have all taken to the airwaves or op-ed pages to cast the Bush years in a softer light. My conversations with more than a dozen Bush loyalists, including several former cabinet-level officials and senior military commanders, have revealed another element of this legacy-building moment: intense feelings of ill will toward Donald Rumsfeld. Though few of these individuals would speak for the record (knowing that their former boss, George W. Bush, would not approve of it), they believe that Rumsfeld’s actions epitomized the very traits—arrogance, stubbornness, obliviousness, ineptitude—that critics say drove the Bush presidency off the rails. read more here.....

I have been waiting for the hammer to come down on Rumsfeld from his own crew and it is coming down.

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Despite Obama blocking torture pictures, the photos are emerging

In the age of 24/7 cable channels, instant news, twitter, the internet, eventually these photos were going to be leaked and the pictures are now emerging. I won't put any torture pics up, but start looking at one here.

The shocking images of inmates in Iraq and Afghanistan were published just a day after the US president announced plans for a legal battle stop them ever being seen.

They risked provoking renewed hostility in the Middle East as Mr Obama attempts to build bridges with the Islamic world.

He is scheduled to make a major speech in Cairo on June 4 when he will launch his version of a plan to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.

Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.

The images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They were not distributed around the world at the time but are now believed to be among those the president is trying to block.

I wrote that though Obama is trying to block these images, they are going to come out. This is the day and age we live in. Yes, these images are despicable and we should be ashamed of our government under the Bush Administration, for putting our international image on the line, as well as breaking the law. In the end, there must be accountability for what happened and the sooner we deal with this, the better it is taken off the table.

Source

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