Absolutely true, as Brad of Sadly, No! sez: “…pictures speak more than a trillion-kabillion words, so I’ll let them speak for me. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush Legacy.” And good golly Miss Molly!, has Brad compiled an awesome — if horrifying — “legacy” photo album. (Brad’s very charitable contribution to Jonah Goldberg’s scholarly crisis.)

Greenwald has been on fire analyzing the document dump the DoD was forced to make to The New YorkTimes — and Josh Marshall has had a bit to say as well — about all the retired military “analysts” spewing forth on the news networks for lo these past many years, who were directed and scripted by the Pentagon as to what the “correct” positions were. (All of which is probably illegal.) But tax-payer subsidized psy-ops is nothing new; the DEA has been doing it for years, as for example by publishing a “debate manual” (originally titled How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate) to use during exchanges with those advocating drug-policy reform. (But the DEA counsels avoiding any debate at all, if possible.)

We’ve been paying for the government to fund lies and propaganda defending its own tyrannical powers since well before Bush and 9/11.
(more…)

Professor J. Bradford DeLong writes to the Chair of Berkeley’s academic senate to request that a special committee, comprising

members of the faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law. I ask you to instruct this committee to write of a public report to the Academic Senate no later than this Labor Day, advising the Senate of the pros and cons of actions that the Academic Senate might or might not take in the matter of Professor John Yoo . . .

Because, as the Professor puts it, “I am enough of a liberal and enough of an academic to believe that discussion of these issues will help.”

But there are problems!

One is, according to said Chair of said senate, even convening a committee to take up the question of Yoo’s alleged misfeasance would be “defamatory.” That’s curious. But the other objection makes one wonder what Berkeley is doing with all that tax and tuition money they rake in:

Besides that, there’s the practical problem of finding committee members with the expertise you outline.

Professor Drummond, excuse me, sir. My name is Jim Henley, blogging at Unqualified Offerings and The Art of the Possible, and I was just wondering - are you shitting me?!

Let me rephrase that. No, on second thought, let me retype that question in all caps with an even larger count of fissiparous interrobangs: ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?!?!?!?!?!

Yeah, I bolded it too.

UC Berkeley, jewel in the crown of the California University system can’t fill a committee with “faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law?” I mean, ARE YOU - ahem. Point made.

See also the Editors.

[Important Addendum at End]

You might think that the United States Armed Forces — charged with protecting the Constitution and the rights therein for all Americans — might not itself discriminate on the basis of religion or irreligion. Yet the New York Times reports that when Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, an officer attended to berate him, shrieking (according to Hall and one other attendee): (more…)

Via Crooks and Liars: The McLaughlin Group: Pat Buchanan Says There’s A 50/50 Chance Of Air Strikes Against Iran By Fall.

ABC News recently reported a lot of support for Obama (and some for Hilary) coming from our troops in Iraq. Neocon warmongers undergo neurological synapse disconnects with such news, so they must rhetorically destroy such “wrong” military opinions.

(more…)

With a h/t to Gavin M. at Sadly, No!, I simply pass along obscene scribblings from the devout Catholic, “pro-life” Mark Noonan — formerly of Blogs for Bush: (more…)

The headline says it all: Pentagon says new Iraq fighting arises from surge’s success

(more…)

Below I wrote about my Republican, devout Catholic and former Constitutional Law professor Doug Kmiec’s having endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy. He has just given an interview to Beliefnet in which he expands on that decision, and says that the responses he’s received have been running 4-1 in his favor. Also, declares Kmiec, my emphasis: (more…)

As my author bio notes, I attended the Notre Dame law school. I learned Constitutional Law from Professor Douglas Kmiec, who had served directly under Ed Meese in the Reagan DoJ. Prof. Kmiec was and is a devout Catholic who believes abortion should be illegal, and that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. He has always been a Republican. (I tilted that way myself, then, and at the time shared his views on criminalizing abortion.)

(more…)

The kind of thinking Jim Henley did in the period before the Iraq war, which he recounted in the excellent piece linked by Mona, is one reason why I find the Republicans’ “But everyone believed the case for war at the time!” defenses so lame. (Not to mention Hillary’s lame “But everyone believed it!” justification for accepting Bush’s case for war.)

(more…)

As one of those penitents who came to initially support the invasion of the Iraq and now regards it as the most irresponsible political decision she’s ever made, I well appreciate my Unqualified Offerings’ host and co-blogger, Jim Henley’s, disdain for those who got it wrong, when he was dismissed as unSerious for opposing the mad venture. Jim posits an alternate universe in which he  meets Kenneth Pollack, who inquires of Jim with regard to Jim’s having been right: “What the fuck was so special about you, anyway?” A few excerpts from Jim’s post, which ought to be read in its entirety: (more…)

A very provocative piece appears in a recent issue the Berkeley Daily Planet titled Commentary: Why I Don’t Support the Troops, and which as memorandum shows has the right-o-sphere raging; Kenneth Thiesen therein argues that one cannot support the troops without also supporting American imperialism and the wars the troops fight to facilitate it. Sayeth Thiesen: (more…)

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, criticized the military commissions for clinging to archaic policies regarding the torture of detainees. He argued that permitting the use of evidence obtained by waterboarding would be “not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.” While waterboarding has recently been declared illegal by Congress, Davis pointed out that at a “Senate hearing in December, the legal adviser for the military commissions, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, refused to rule out using evidence [previously] obtained by waterboarding.”
Today, an article for the AP by Ben Fox announced that Davis will serve as a defense witness for Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, who has been charged with “conspiracy and supporting terrorism.” Davis described being called as a witness as “an opportunity to tell the truth.” Here is an excerpt from the article: (more…)

I came across a disturbing series of articles in the New York Times which chronicles
more than a hundred cases of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan charged with committing murder after returning home from active duty. Many of the cases involve domestic abuse resulting in the deaths of spouses and children of these veterans. In some instances, soldiers already had charges of abuse pending when they were deployed: (more…)

In his Washington Post op-ed today, Michael Kinsley, takes on those who claim that Bush’s surge in Iraq has been a success. He argues that until we see significant withdrawals of our troops from the region, we will not know whether or not the surge was successful. The very fact that we still have more troops in Iraq than when the the surge was launched suggests that it was not. Here is an excerpt: (more…)

I came across two op-eds in the New York Times, both by Morris Davis, who was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay from 2005-2007. The first piece was published June 26, 2007, and in it he described the detention center as being a “clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants.” Obviously, he was doing damage control for the bad press the government had been receiving for its treatment of detainees. He derided the media for misrepresenting the center as a place where detainees lack basic rights and legal recourse, and are subject to inhumane treatment in the course of their detention. This is what he had to say in 2007, while still working there: (more…)

In his op-ed column for the New York Times today, Nicholas D. Kristof gives his take on the torture debate. What seems like common sense is lost on the Bush administration, and, sadly, we will be dealing with the consequences of its errors for a long time to come, particularly in terms of foreign relations. The fact is, our government holds prisoners in secretive conditions, without legal recourse, and uses torture to extract desperate admissions which can then be used against them. And all this at the same time as condemning other countries for their human rights abuses and holding up our own political system up as the model that other countries should mimic. How we reconcile the disparities between our values and our practices is not a private process. In fact, it’s embarrassingly public, and does not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Kristof gives as an example Al Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Hajj, who has gone on hunger strike after being subjected to six years of inhumane treatment in Guantanamo, despite admissions from military officials that he is not considered a real threat to the our national security. Here’s some of what Kristof has to say on the matter: (more…)

The surveillance bill passed yesterday in Senate is being debated in the House today. Bush is putting the pressure on to pass the bill immediately, amidst complaints over not having had adequate time to weigh the consequences for civil rights. (more…)