It has now come to light that the detainee abuse in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan started when the Bush administration ordered our interrogators to use a document called: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."

This was a 1957 document that showed how the Chinese Communists tortured people -- in order to get false confessions! The only thing we changed was that we dropped the title of the document. Otherwise it is exactly the same. We have been using communist torture tactics that are designed to get false confessions. Meanwhile, The Bush administration has been calling it "enhanced interrogations" and saying we got "valuable intelligence" from it.

More details on the story here:




If you want to read the story of how we came to use this document for our own interrogations, you can click here. This is deplorable. Will anyone ever suffer the consequences for ordering this illegal torture? Will the press question John McCain on why he voted to allow the CIA to continue doing this? I wouldn't bank on it.

But if we do this, and no one ever gets punished for it, can we really say that America doesn't torture anymore?

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Two well-established non-profit journalism organizations did a study of Bush administration statements before the Iraq War. Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism, found that there were 935 false statements about Iraq by Bush officials in the two years following September 11, 2001.

Here's an Associated Press summary of the study:

It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Bush himself led with 259 "false statements." Obviously, they're being polite by calling it "false statements." They mean he lied. And, of course, this was no small matter. When Bush lied, people died. Over 150,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,000 Americans, to be specific.

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I don't normally do this, but you have to read this article. It's the story of two people who worked high up in the Bush administration who witnessed the effort to start the Iraq War -- and then saw it again when it came to Iran. It's an amazing article with complete insight into how this Bush administration works.

Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have done untold damage to our country. Iran had basically surrendered in 2003 and we refused to accept their surrender. Because we weren't interested in fighting terrorism or stopping their nuclear program. We were interested in their oil.

One last interesting thing you'll find in the article is that if they had done things right immediately following the Iraq invasion, interestingly, it could have had some positive results. Yes, the different ethnicities inside Iraq were always going to fight and we would have had this awful civil war and guerrilla warfare in the cities no matter what. And yes, it was a war of aggression, so it can never be justified. But if the administration had just played it a tiny bit right, we could have at least had complete capitulation by the Iranians. I would not have expected that and that could have at least been one very good benefit of the war. As it stands, we blew that, too.

The Young Turks

Here is the intense Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina - a must watch. To view in full screen, click here and then click on the button in the lower right hand side of the video (YouTube loads pretty quick, so it should be smooth.) The documentary is incredible - it contains no narration, just human stories. For a full synopsis click here.

As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster, but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to document this modern American tragedy, a morality play witnessed by people all around the world. The result is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. The film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans

Hot off the presses, from the New York Times:

WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 - ­ Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.

No video yet, but here is a related Alberto Gonzales video.
*Edit, Okay, I first posted the the James Comey testimony from from May 2007, but it's early Monday and you deserve a laugh, so here is some TDS Gonzales coverage.

At the end of July, I posted a poll here on News Bloggers asking: What makes the Bush Administration so unpopular?

The obvious answers grabbed the top slots - Iraq War and the Katrina response. Surprisingly sitting in third place is "Silencing Science." I decided to take a look and find videos that may have generated this opinion.

This first clip is from a 60 Minutes episode that aired in March 2006, the story of James Hansen, who's a climate scientist for NASA. Here he talks to 60 Minutes about how his research was altered by an ex-oil lobbyist working in the White House. (Watch full doc here)

Did you enjoy that? It was quick, I know. Remember you can watch the full segment if you want to learn more. You can also watch this next clip, it's from Mr. Gore's epic documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." There are a few interesting points in this four minute clip. First the archive footage of Gore in '89 - that's Hansen he's warning about science suppression, which was 18 years ago! Another thing that blew my mind, Philip Cooney, the fella who edited the climate change document, Gore shows his resume on the big screen.

1995 - 2001 - American Petroleum Institute.
2001 - 2005 - White House Council on Environmental Quality.
2005 - Exxon Mobile.

This is probably the best example I can find, if you have any others you would like to share, please do in the comments below, but please don't turn the comment thread into an "Al Gore bash fest."

I'm not a guy who is very fond of protests. I'm also not fond of giving up a part of my Sunday. But I am going to do both of those things for the foreseeable future because I have had enough. When Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I am tired of politician's being above the law. I am tired of this administration breaking every conceivable law and endlessly violating the constitution. I am also tired of the ineffectual opposition party that never holds them to account.

So, we are going to try democracy the old fashioned way. We are going to get together and try to make our voices heard by our government. We will be doing protests every Sunday at 12Noon to 1PM. Just one hour every Sunday, starting this Sunday. All across the country, with one simple message: Enough!

If you'd like to join us, you can either come to the one Wes Clark, Jr. and I will be attending in LA or simply pick a spot in your hometown and show up with a sign or t-shirt. Wes explains the protest a little more in his Daily Kos diaries, where people are beginning to organize local get togethers or you can read more about it on Huffington Post or The Young Turks.

We want this to be low key and very open to all participants. We hope to see you there.

The Young Turks

This incredible post by Andrew Sullivan (conservative blogger who no longer supports the Bush administration) explains how the Germans used what they called "enhanced interrogation" in 1937. He explains how it took on a life of its own and turned into the nightmare that became Nazi Germany.

As he carefully explains in his post, this is not to say that present day America is the same as what Nazi Germany became. That would be a ridiculous statement. It is to say that we should be careful in heading down certain paths because they lead to terrible and ugly places -- and gain momentum as time goes on.

When I see people defending torture in this country under the guise of getting tough with "terrorists" ( the Germans also used the word "terrorists" to describe some of their enemies) and when I see the audience cheering in the Republican primary debates when the candidates talk about "enhanced interrogation," I get a chill down my spine (to be fair John McCain came out strongly against torture in that debate, it was Giuliani and Romney who seemed so eager to cozy up to "enhanced interrogation techniques").

Israeli Prime Minister told Nancy Pelosi to pass a message to the Syrians that Israel is open to dialogue. This might have gotten him in some political trouble at home, so he felt a need to issue a clarification.

The clarification was that Israel and Syria are not allies and that Israel still considers the Syrians bad guys. Wow!!! You don't say. We still consider Syria the bad guys -- that doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to them. We have talked to our adversaries for time immemorial -- that's how you do diplomacy.

Conservatives these days think that just labeling someone an enemy is good enough reason to never talk to them again. Third graders across the country agree. "Suzy told Johnnie that I like him, and I don't, so I'm never going to talk to her again!"