Every week I read out of the way, oddly related stories that remind me what an abject barbecue republic America has become under young Mr. Bush's stewardship. Here are a few of the latest ones.

First up is an item that apparently only James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann cared enough about to report. On August 2 Meek wrote "In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out."

After New York Sun photo editor Robert Stevens died from anthrax exposure in October 2001, Mueller was "beaten up" during Bush's morning intelligence briefs for not manufacturing proof that bin Laden was behind the attack of the killer spores. Meek's source, a retired senior FBI official, said, "They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East."

By the time Bush was bullying Mueller to cook the evidence on the Anthrax scare, according to the ex-FBI man, the Bureau already knew that the anthrax concealed in mail to media figures and a U.S. Senator was a military strain of the bio-weapon. The ex-official said, "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."

No, and they couldn't go from box cutters to city buster nuclear weapons very quickly either, but that didn't stop the administration from planting visions of mushroom clouds in our heads to justify their Iraq invasion.

promoted - cho

Dan Froomkin, on WashingtonPost.com, noted today that Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington is going to appear before the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday.

"Vlad" Gingrich is molesting the Constitution in the name of national security again. This time he's on a tirade about the recent Supreme Court decision that grants prisoners held at young Mr. Bush's pleasure in Guantanamo the right to a habeas corpus hearing.

"This court decision is a disaster and it could cost us a city," Newt said on Face the Nation. Land o' Goshen. The only way this court decision could cost us a city is if it makes Newt's head explode. Driving Newt's noodle to critical mass would be the kind of disaster we need, but it would force us to make some difficult decisions. Losing New York City or Washington D.C. might be too high a price to pay to be permanently rid of Newt, but if we're talking, say, Minot, North Dakota, well…

I take that back. Minot's a lovely city and we have a strategically significant military base there. We'll blow Newt's noggin to smithereens in that chancre sore on the Potomac. Let's just make sure all the politicians are in town when we push the plunger.

McClatchy has started a series today on our 'War on Terror'.

McClatchy tracked down 66 men released from Guantanamo in the most systematic survey to date of prisoners held there. Many had no connection to terrorism, but their experience turned them against America.

originally posted 2008-06-12 06:58:30 -- bumped. Check out the McClatchy video of the detainees in the link Standingup provides below... chilling. If you think Guantanamo can be justified on the basis that it makes America safer, this video is definitely worth watching - cho

This might be one of the most encouraging news items in years. The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. McClatchy Washington Bureau reports:

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court, and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system set up by Congress.

Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration’s war-on-terror policy, the court’s 5-4 majority concluded the foreigners held in Guantanamo Bay retain the same habeas corpus rights as U.S. residents.

From TruthOut, some disturbing news:

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Guantanamo Interrogators Told to Trash Notes

Michael Melia, of The Associated Press: "The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday. The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the US deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial."

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Bush-style justice in a world where the Republicans have lowered the bar beyond the level of slime.

One wonders just exactly what Bush Administration officials (and Republican congress-critters, Republican DoJ appointees and reich-wingers) are smoking when they claim they're on the side of truth, justice and the American way -- and whether that brain damage is permanent.

This is an Open Thread.

Lets see Saddam, even though we installed and supported him, Had To Go. Because he Arrested the Innocent and his 'Henchmen' Tortured and Killed many of those arrested, as well as Killing and Maiming Tens of Thousands of Iraqi's. Those are only a Couple of the many 'Nobel Cause' Reasons for the Righteousness of Invading, Destroying, and Occupying Iraq for our National Security!

But the true subject of the movie is the mentality and the atmosphere that produced sadistic conduct, both at Bagram and at Guantánamo

Right! You can't call them prisoners of war, they were enemy combatants or better yet detainees. The news is that the military is seeking the execution of six prisoners at "G'itmo" (that's another cozy sounding word.) There is a slight problem for the military in that the prisoners would have access to the civilian appeals court process.