Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld Allowed To Proceed

Good call.

A federal judge in Illinois has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by two Americans (pdf) who claimed they were detained and interrogated in Iraq.

David Vance and Nathan Ertel, who traveled to Iraq in 2005 to work for a security firm, filed suit against Rumsfeld and the U.S. government alleging that they were taken into custody and interrogated by the military because of suspicion that their company was providing arms to insurgents. They claim they were placed in cages, strip-searched and questioned using "physically and mentally coercive tactics," before they were finally released weeks later.

Rumsfeld filed a motion to dismiss. However, Judge Wayne Anderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Friday allowed one claim against him to go forward, finding the two contractors pleaded enough details to implicate the former secretary.

I Can't Believe It''s Not Torture!

This graphic is funny. Great work. H/T to Crooks and Liars who linked to Phawker.

Obama Flip Flops Again

He talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. That is Obama, our president.

Gives out taxpayer money to big banks with no oversight, and takes advice from the banking industry that messed things up.

Gives out taxpayer money to Wall Street with no oversight, and heads up his "oversight" committee with the very people that worked with Wall Street to create the financial boondoggle.

He says he will repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law, and yet, he continually refrains from doing so, making excuses one after the other. What, writing a letter to someone that's been fired for admitting being gay is supposed to assuage the problem? I think not.

I could go on, and on, and on, about the campaign promises that Obama just seems unable to actually come through on. And now we have the photo issue.

The ACLU lawsuit is at a point that the government was ordered to release certain photographs concerning the torturing of prisoners of war by our American troops. The Second Circuit Court ruled in December of 2008 that the photos had to be released. In April 2009, the Department of Justice agreed to release these photographs -- which, by the way, caused the vapors for all those on the right spectrum of politics in government and on television (I can't say that Americans, as a whole, had a problem with the release of the pictures). Obama supported the release of the photos. But now, today, Obama reverses himself and is reneging on his agreement to release the photos.

And they called Kerry the flip flopper!

Bush Lite, Our New American President. Same old story, same old game, same people doing the same fuck you to Americans -- except, sadly, it's got a Democratic stamp on it. Kind of makes me sick to my stomach.

The Pictures Made Me Do It

In fact, Huckabee defended the utility of waterboarding within 30 seconds of agreeing with Hannity that Obama’s release of interrogation photos was “hurting our nation’s defenses.” Fox reporter Catherine Herridge said that “these pictures of humiliation” can be “a primary factor of suicide bombers.”

It’s not the pictures that recruits suicide bombers; it’s what the
pictures depict. Torture — ordered by Bush and Cheney — damaged America and increased the risk of another terrorist attack, and revealing the truth of what happened doesn’t change that fact.

I have so many things to say about politics over the past four months, but, quite frankly, the things that are of interest to me are already beaten to death between AMERICAblog, DailyKos, FireDogLake and Huffington Post, so why the fuck bother, eh?

In fact, most of those blogs now pay their posters, which I am not in any fashion in disagreement with, it's just that I cannot quit my day job, hence there is no possible way for me to post some political commentary that hasn't already been espoused by the left side of the room.

But, still, the above quote from Think Progress made me feel like at least reminding my readers of the legitimacy of the opinion piece: pictures of our country torturing people is not what has fanned the hate for Americans and their supporters among the Middle East -- it's been the fact that for the past eight years our entire governmental administration supported this option. It was the ideology of the government that was the recruiting tool, and not simply "the pictures."

UPDATE: I found this additional piece funny, from Think Progress:

VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Is Obama Taking Us To Armageddon?

Glenn Greenwald, on Gitmo and Binyam Mohamed, who was released on Saturdy, and upon medical evaluation, appears to have been badly beaten clear up until the time of his release. But, of course, the DOD claims that Gitmo is (and has always been) free and clear of any claim of abuse of the prisoners.

For reasons that human rights groups and detainees' lawyers immediately pointed out, this self-exonerating Pentagon report, from the start, was suspect in the extreme. But a sign of how broken our discourse is and how in love with ourselves we continue to be is that, on the question of current Guantanamo conditions, the conclusions of the United States Pentagon released this week were treated not only as credible, but authoritative. If the DOD -- which has long overseen Guantanamo and continues to do so -- says that everything is great there, well, that's the end of that. What else is there to know?

This is, of course, distressful. Obama promised to close Gitmo, and now it appears he is backtracking. I thought, at least, when it came to foreign policy actions, Obama would be straight forward, but alas, that does not seem to be so.

Of all the defining practices and policies of the Bush administration which the Obama administration has already enthusiastically embraced -- and they're piling up so quickly, it's becoming difficult to keep track -- one of the most disturbing is the Obama administration's press management approach. The administration is singling out particularly supportive journalists to whom they anonymously leak purely favorable pro-administration spin; giving access to others who are have a history of such sycophantic behavior that they predictably produce profiles so one-sided and glowing that even People Magazine would be embarrassed to publish it; and -- worst of all -- they are systematically hiding behind anonymity to disseminate their claims in order to evade accountability, the exact opposite of the "transparency" Obama continuously promised (read David Cay Johnston's superb account of dealing with the Obama White House Press Office to see what a real journalist -- as opposed to one desperately jockeying to serve the White House in exchange for favored access status -- does when faced with baseless demands from administration officials for anonymity and off-the-record chatter).

I, personally, think the faulty guidance that Obama is getting stems directly from Rahm Emanuel, whom we all know did such a fantastic job as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) [cough cough], and how he butted heads with Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. If Dean had not been so singularly focused on the 50 state strategy, and Rahm had his way, the Republicans would still be in power, and McCain would most likely be the current president. And this is whom Obama has chosen to be his White House Chief of Staff? The man who has not been right on anything for the past four years, and Obama is taking advice from him?

That's not to say that I have one shred of evidence at this point in time, but given Emanuel's track record, given the theme of Obama's campaign, "change" and Obama's promise to run the government differently, I am having a hard time in distinguishing the "difference" between Obama and Bush, outside of the fact that Obama can put together complete sentences. The advice being given to Obama is not in the best interests of this country, and although the polls still are pulling in Obama's direction, he's going to go down, and hard.

The stimulus package is too weak, the Republicans are thumbing their noses at him, the TARP money is not working, and is simply being pocketed by the rich, unemployment is through the roof, and it looks more and more like our men and women in uniform will still be fighting imaginary bogey men/women while our country drops faster than a sinkhole into a full blown depression. The only thing that is remarkably different in this scenario than with the 1930's is that the world, as a whole, is financially sinking as well.

Perhaps this is what is truly meant by Armageddon.

Obama Fails Again -- This Time HIS DOJ Upholds Bush's "State Secrets" Defense

An insightful piece by Glenn Greenwald today:

Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.

[snip]

That the Obama DOJ -- when faced with its first real test to determine what it intends to do in these areas (as opposed to engaging in symbolic rituals and issuing pretty words) -- explicitly adopts exactly the Bush position is about as inauspicious a start in these areas as one can imagine.

Apparently, I am not the only one the sees Obama not fulfilling his campaign promises. At least I don't have to bear the brunt of being a Democrat that has been lied to. I never voted for the man based on his promises anyway, because, to be perfectly honest, I had my doubts about his ability to actually deliver. I did, however, think he had a fighting chance if he actually believed his own rhetoric.

Apparently not. First the sucking up to the Republicans in the name of bipartisanship, the unanimous "nay" vote by the House Republicans despite the sucking up, the complete and utter failure of the Senate stimulus package, and now this -- standing firm on the Bush Administration's claim of "state secrets" defense.

This most certainly does not bode well for the America that many of us voted Obama into office to restore back to its rightful place in the world.

Good Lord, Heaven Help Us, Because Our Government's Warped Priorities Won't Anymore

Because the films which Little produced included scenes involving sadomasochism, the Bush DOJ alleged, and the federal court found, that the films were not merely pornographic, but also "obscene," and thus illegal (Little's lawyers argued, unsuccessfully, they were intended primarily for distribution in Europe, where such films are legal). Ironically, Little's defense to the obscenity charges was quite similar to the defense which the Bush DOJ itself, years earlier, had embraced in order to claim that Bush officials were not engaged in "torture" when subjecting helpless detainees to gruesome treatment: namely, because the acts in question didn't involve the infliction of severe pain, they weren't illegal:

[snip]

So, to recap, in the Land of the Free: if you're an adult who produces a film using other consenting adults, for the entertainment of still other consenting adults, which merely depicts fictional acts of humiliation and degradation, the DOJ will prosecute you and send you to prison for years. The claim that no real pain was inflicted will be rejected; mere humiliation is enough to make you a criminal. But if government officials actually subject helpless detainees in their custody to extreme mental abuse, degradation, humiliation and even mock executions long considered "torture" in the entire civilized world, the DOJ will argue that they have acted with perfect legality and, just to be sure, Congress will hand them retroactive immunity for their conduct. That's how we prioritize criminality and arrange our value system.

A must read for all, from Glenn Greenwald. Remember, it isn't illegal if the president (or anyone he so deems) does it, but for the rest of you peons, go fuck yourselves. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek - ha ha).