Regarding Mukasey: It is NOT 'just' * about Torture

[Solly Mack]

* As if torture is 'just' any old mundane issue


From this article, originally posted by EV_Ares here:

"George Bush's nominee to replace disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, retired Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, must be rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the same reason that Gonzales should have been rejected in 2005."

"Like Gonzales, Mukasey refuses to accept that the president of the United States must abide by the laws of the land, beginning with the Constitution."

- Of course, by refusing to accept that the president must obey the law, it does make the torture issue easier for Bush. -

"Mukasey embraces an interpretation of presidential authority so radical that it virtually guarantees more serious abuses of power by the executive branch" (Unitary executive squared)

- Which not only makes torture easier for Bush, but also illegal wire-tapping and any other breaking of the law, all in the name of 'national security'. -


"he (Mukasey) has defended the administration's attempts to dramatically expand the definition of executive privilege, telling the Judiciary Committee that it would be inappropriate for a U.S. attorney to press for contempt charges against a White House official who claimed to be protected by a grant of executive privilege."

- and -

"Under questioning from Feingold, Mukasey endorsed the administration's argument that congressional attempts to define appropriate surveillance strategies and techniques could infringe inappropriately on presidential authority.

When pressed by Feingold, Mukasey refused to say whether he thought the president could order a violation of federal wiretapping rules. Feingold's response was measured. "I find your equivocation here somewhat troubling," said the senator."


- and this gem -

"Consider the nominee's suggestion that the president can ignore any law, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, if he and his lawyers determine that the law impinges on his authority as commander in chief during wartime.

"The president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law," Mukasey explained, with a response that employed legalese at levels not heard in Washington since Richard Nixon boarded that last plane for San Clemente. "The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution."

- Mukasey is saying that it's not illegal if the president does it. -

[seemslikeadream]

1. georgie why was it so very important for you to waterboard?

WHY?

[Solly Mack]

4. That is the question

What's really going on?

No doubt they are water-boarding but I can't help but think the secret prisons and the exposing of torture is the thief admitting to the theft to hide the murder that hasn't been discovered yet.


There's something else going on as well.

[seemslikeadream]

6. To get folks to admit to things that are not true

Isn't that what torture does? Got to keep us safe, can't keep us safe if there is no terror, if there is no terror, got to make some up.

[Solly Mack]

8. That's a big part of it - to justify their other crimes and their power grabs

and it may well be the whole of it.


They invaded Iraq for the same reasons

[tekisui]

2. Exactly!! Unitary Executive.

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd! nt

[deacon]

5. Gonzales Part II - WTG schumer and feinstein. May it end your political careers. n/t

[seemslikeadream]

7. schumer and feinstein.

traitors, war criminal enablers


feinstein's got to keep that "footprint"

Dianne Feinstein "footprint" America's Empire of Bases
Posted by seemslikeadream on Sun Nov-04-07 10:17 AM

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm


Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors we've allowed into our vocabulary, none quite equals "footprint" to describe the military impact of our empire. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and senior members of the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such as Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are apparently incapable of completing a sentence without using it. Establishing a more impressive footprint has now become part of the new justification for a major enlargement of our empire -- and an announced repositioning of our bases and forces abroad -- in the wake of our conquest of Iraq. The man in charge of this project is Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. He and his colleagues are supposed to draw up plans to implement President Bush's preventive war strategy against "rogue states," "bad guys," and "evil-doers." They have identified something they call the "arc of instability," which is said to run from the Andean region of South America (read: Colombia) through North Africa and then sweeps across the Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course, more or less identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and perhaps no less crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. Hoehn contends, "When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly well-positioned to deal with the problems we're now going to confront."




http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/17/1354236


The two mother hens of the Defense Facilities Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the people committed to taking care of our bases are easily Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Dianne Feinstein of California, the two states with the largest number of military bases, and those two senators would do anything in their power to keep them open. This is the insidious way in which the military-industrial complex has penetrated into our democracy and gravely weakened it, produced vested interests in what I call military Keynesianism, the use and manipulation of what is now three-quarters of a trillion dollars of the Defense budget, once you include all the other things that aren't included in just the single appropriation for the Department of Defense.

This is a -- it's out of control. We depend upon it, we like it, we live off of it. I cannot imagine any President of any party putting together the coalition of forces that could begin to break into these vested interests, any more than a Gorbachev was able to do it in his attempted reforms of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

[sam sarrha]

10. the thugs must have some very compromising photos of those 2

[riderinthestorm]

14. I just don't believe it's about compromising photos anymore.

Forget incriminating photos, even scarier is the exposure of how deep the military/industrial money goes. Schumer and Feinstein have voted to continue enabling BFEE, Halliburton, Blackwater, the Carlisle Group, Guantanomo Bay and a whole host of nasty shit that revolves around corporations and their dirty tricks, to continue unsupervised and unpunished. Mukasey isn't going to dig up any dirt or take any positions against his masters - he's been hired to ensure that the status quo continues.

Schumer and Feinstein have now just voted to allow in an AG who believes the executive branch is above the law AND that torture can't really be defined or stopped. I don't for one moment even believe that their consciousness' are troubled. Mukasey IS Schumer's friend, he's been thoroughly vetted by Bush's masters, DiFi and her husband have their snouts deep into the govt trough.

I wish it were about incriminating photos but it's even more terrible than that imho.

[sam sarrha]

9. the pResident says he doesn't torture, but apparently he contracts it out ..LINKs>>

not only to egypt and syria but to this psychotic tyrant..birds of a feather torture together.. here * is sharing some ideas from his childhood

there are some graphic photos if you scroll down on this link
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3943.htm

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27873.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1146979,00.html

this is what extreme rendition is all about and the WH does it to citizens kidnapped from their own countries sent to people like this

[Solly Mack]

13. and the CIA secret prisons that are still up and running

[C_U_L8R]

11. It's about the election

Gonzo was working to put another fix
on the elections, this Bushnik will
finish that job.

[Solly Mack]

12. kick