Hat-tip to Senate Guru of DailyKos for this find -- an incredibly unfortunate shot of "Deadeye" Dick Cheney against a backdrop of the American Enterprise Institute:

"Ter-O-ise"

What an amazingly karmic image -- one for the history books, and horror memorabilia collections worldwide.

Originally posted 2009-04-29 22:38:30 -0500. Promoted by carol.

Those extra 2 docs that "justify the policies of the past", that Cheney is so interested in, looks like one of them was already released.

I didn't believe the "A to Z" Confessions of the the "9/11 Mastermind" then. I'm not inclined to believe them now.

But you be the judge.

Obtained: Cheney’s Request Form Detailing The Two CIA Torture Docs He Wants
The Plum LineGreg Sargent's blog

Looks like Cheney may be after a doc that supposedly details what top Al Qaeda official Khalid Muhammad revealed under torture.

 http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/obtained-cheneys-request-detailing-the-two-cia-docs-he-wants/

Klalid M. wasn't he the dude, with the frumpy sleepware, and the wild hairdo?

Remember when the Bush/Cheney Administration was still in office?

Ah...good times. Good times...

Philippe Sands:

About a year ago, a book came out in England that made a fascinating prediction: at some point in the future, the author wrote, six top officials in the Bush Administration would get a tap on the shoulder announcing that they were being arrested on international charges of torture.

If the prediction seemed improbable, the background of the book’s author was even more so. Philippe Sands is neither a journalist nor an American but a law professor and a certified Queen’s Counsel (the kind of barrister who on occasion wears a powdered horsehair wig) who works at the same law practice as Cherie Blair. Sands’s book, “Torture Team,” offers a scathing critique of officials in the Bush Administration, accusing them of complicity in acts of torture. When the book appeared, some scoffed. Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon official, dismissed Sands as “a British lawyer” who “wrote an extremely dishonest book.”

Last week, Sands’s accusations suddenly did not seem so outlandish. A Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of the same six former Bush Administration officials he had named, weighing charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Sands, previously, was involved in prosecuting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, as was the Spanish judge presiding over the Bush torture case.

Just some added info for your research purposes taken from a bunch of previous posts on this topic in my archives:

There are no principles left on the right, only tactics and bluster, as if John Bolton himself has taken over the GOP diplomacy wing. At this point, looking back on all the facts I collected at the Bush Treason Blog, which proves conclusively that the entire Bush administration committed treason, repeatedly: I don't really care what they say. When you say as much shit as the right wing has said in the last few decades, it renders your speech meaningless. We are for x except when we're not. We're against y except when we're not. Now we're going to do that which we told you not to. Then we're going to tell you not to again.

I often tell myself I could be a better conservative than them. It wouldn't be hard. I have libertarian bones, like most Americans. We want the government to protect us and leave us alone, that delicate balancing act that, in a world of nanotechnology, is going to get harder and harder to perform. But it's really not that tricky. Conservatives should be reality based, do what would actually make us safer (which is more like Ron Paul's position than John Bolton's).

With permission and by jmadlc55
Other toons by jmadlc55 here.

Good Morning Open Thread too!

Promoted. -- GH

"The only good union is a dead union!" Osama bin Laden stated in prepared remarks today.

DATELINE MUSCAT, OMAN: Another shocking revelation of anti-Union plotting and scheming today, but this time it was not CEO's of TARP Bailout recipient banks. 
The attendees?  Senior Al Qaeda management, including Osama bin Laden,
Ayman al-Zawahiri and over two dozen more senior managers.  It marked a
historic first time for so many senior managers from Al Qaeda to be in
one place at the same time. Under normal circumstances and for security
reasons, Al Qaeda leaders are not allowed within 50 miles of each other
but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Set in the sleepy seaside town of Old Muscat, a city that has seen
better days.  Over the centuries, Muscat has served as a seat of
government and a door way to trade between Asia, Africa and Eastern
Europe.  The walls of the old city look out over the bay like bleached
bones, preserved in the salt and dry air.  The people that remain here,
do so stubbornly, like the wild trees and bushes that eke out their
existence along the rocky shoreline, sandwiched between ocean and
desert, buffeted by wind and heat.  The old market is still here, but
only locals trade there.  Dubai, with its glimmering towers and huge,
modern port facilities has rendered Muscat into merely a side trip for
the curious.  The Al Qaeda leadership meeting here, would very much
like to avoid becoming another Muscat.

event horizon: the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing can escape from within it

-- Merriam-Webster Online

After five years and change of turned corners and dead enders and last throes, is it possible that we're approaching an event horizon in our Middle East miasma? Stuff seems to happen faster than anyone can deny it occurred these days, and from the sound of things, it won't be too long before we're committed to getting out of Iraq in smart fashion or sucked into staying there until kingdom come.

In direct opposition to this 1994 statement, Dick Cheney was a primary catalyst for the 2003 Iraq debacle. Pundits and people living in perpetual denial, far outside the realms of reality -- like Karl Rove -- will attempt to claim that what was true about invading Iraq before September 11, 2001 was no longer true after September 11.

Anyone watching the video of Dick Cheney's 1994 statements can see the truth of what he said then as it materializes in the quagmire we have now. The pundits and the enablers, the collaborators and complicit Congressional representatives, are instantly discredited.

Eight years of the Republican control of the three branches of government -- an out of control Executive protected by Republican Congressfolk and investigations derailed, denied and thwarted by a complicit Department of Justice -- have brought our nation to economic, social, moral and intellectual disaster.

That's not something that the GOP can lay at the feet of anyone else. The facts really are clear -- and they have a decidedly "liberal" bias.

This is an Open Thread.

originally posted 2008-04-28 10:19:13 -- as DEFuning says in the comments, this one is scarily prescient. -- Cho

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Strategic Influence shortly after the 9/11 attacks to bolster support for the Bush administration’s war on terror. Air Force Brigadier General Simon P. Worden, OSI’s director, envisioned the organization as having "a broad mission ranging from 'black' campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to 'white' public affairs that rely on truthful news releases."

The furor over his establishment of what amounted to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth caused Rumsfeld to disband the OSI in February 2002, but he later promised that when it came to manipulating public perceptions to suit his agenda, “I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.”

There’s one nice thing you can say about Rumsfeld: he keeps his word.

originally posted 2008-07-09 00:03:03 -- bumped, cho

I was heartened last February when the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Pubic Affairs announced the formation of the National War Powers Commission, and I was ecstatic to hear the commission would be headed by foreign policy heavyweights James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher. The results of the Commission's intensive studies have just hit the street, and I couldn't be more disenchanted.

The Commission proposes a new and improved War Powers Consultation Act of 2009 to replace the old broken down War Powers Resolution of 1973. Lamentably, when you read the old and new titles, you've seen all the substantial difference there is between the proposed Act and the standing Resolution.