Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Brit must be steamed.

Kristol is likely in a fit of complete collapse, providing he's heard the news.

So much for their dire warnings to McCain on Sunday. Brit's '08 threat that McCain won't get to be the nominee seems more and more like a lot of hot air. However, for hardliners, McCain could still have some trouble.

But the rubber stamping Republican Congress has got some explaining to do.
After all, if they hadn't shut up and gone along all along we wouldn't have been
torturing people in the first place. It certainly isn't going to keep us safer.
All it does is make sure we lose the hearts and minds of the people in places
like Iraq that we're trying to win, never mind the fall out around the region.

As for George W. Bush, he's poised to lose a big one. He's learning that a democracy really
is founded on the rule of law. He has nowhere to go, according to the Washington Post, because not even Boehner
could get his language out of committee, and Feckless Frist ran to border issues
for cover. As a result it “significantly dimmed prospects that Congress can complete its national security agenda before adjournment”. It was bad enough to hear Warner, McCain and Graham pushing hard,
but once Colin Powell finally chimed in — he had to really be feeling ill over the matter to utter even a sound — the ball game was over and the cascade of negative
events started spiraling out of the White House's control.

It didn't help that the Red Cross had started interviewing some of our newly
transported prisoners only to hear of stories of waterboarding and God knows what else.

So Bush gave in and common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions will not be
rewritten to get his torturers off the hook. Read that sentence again to really
understand how far the government under Bush and the Republicans have sunk. Oh, but Feckless Frist is going to filibuster. I can't wait to see that one.

Seeking a deal with Senate Republicans on the rules governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects, the White House has dropped its insistence on redefining the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions, members of Congress and aides said Tuesday. The new White House position, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday night, set off intensified negotiations between administration officials and a small group of Republican senators. The senators have blocked President Bush’s original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody. Until this week, Mr. Bush had sought to address the issue through two channels. One was to clarify the limits on interrogation techniques under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions by proposing legislation saying that the nation’s obligations under the article would be satisfied as long as it complied with the Detainee Treatment Act. That legislation was passed by Congress in December and bans “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The other was to seek changes in the War Crimes Act, a step the administration had said was necessary to provide interrogators for the Central Intelligence Agency with protection from prosecution at home and abroad. The Republican group led by Mr. Warner favors addressing the issue through changes to the War Crimes Act but has resisted efforts to recast the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions. … White House Drops a Condition on Interrogation Bill

The War Crimes Act is the next target for Bush. Because after you almost
drown your suspect, provided they live through the next phase of torture, you
can't have them coming back and suing you. It would be so untidy for the U.S., now wouldn't it?

A very well known conservative put it another way the other day.

… The US military has not learned anything from torturing detainees and continues to loose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite its widespread use of torture. Lying is now a full time occupation for US military spokespersons as well as for President Bush. Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for US military detainee operations in Iraq says that every detainee ” is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces.” President Bush says, “These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation.” Someone needs to tell Bush and Lt. Col. Curry that what they allege cannot be true if 70-90 percent of detainees are mistaken detentions and if 18,700 detainees have been released in the last 14 months. Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi is a good example. He languished in detention limbo for 20 months without charges and without apology when released. Many studies have concluded that people who go into interrogation and police work are bullies who like to exercise power and to hurt people. Bush is willing to make such people even less accountable in order to protect himself from war crimes charges. If Bush were a real man, he would fire Gonzales and the neocons. He would say he was given bad advice and regrets that he didn’t know better than to follow it. He would order closed all the secret prisons, end the illegal policy of rendition, and order that all US military detention facilities be run in strict accordance with the Geneva Conventions. This would serve Bush and America’s reputation far better than his attempt to legalize torture. War Criminal at Bay, by Paul Craig Roberts

We'll have to see if George, our Torturer in Chief, gets to rewrite the War Crimes
Act. He may yet be able to twist and bend and drown some of the other suspects he's
been holding for months and months, without charges or a trial.

Oh, unless of course Bill Frist can save his boss with a filibuster. It's hard to read that one with a straight face.

As for that secret evidence Bush wants to keep in hiding while sending people
to their death, well, it's the most un-American activity from our president and his administration in recent months and that's saying something with this crowd.