Article: "That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

They have admitted to torture. In an interview with Brit Hume that aired on Fox News January 11 2009, big bro 43 admitted that he personally authorized the torture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as he asked "what tools" were available to use on him, and sought legal approval for waterboarding. "Bubble Boy" said "One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... And I'm in the Oval Office and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools, and I said are these tools deemed to be legal? And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.

The above statement was made during the exit interviews W gave as an attempt to burnish his legacy and in these interviews he freely admitted he exceeded the boundaries of our constitution in his farcical GWOT. It seemed that W, and his president of vice, Cheney, became addicted to Jack Bauer in 24. In adhering to an unconstitutional interpretation of the president's unitary executive powers during wartime these ghouls shredded our nation's international standing. W's lying to the US that whatever crime W committed wasn't illegal simply because the president can do anything is identical to "Tricky Dick's" stance. We know how that worked out. That W wasn't impeached was a testament to his ability to sell GWOT and the greater apathy of our current middle class. We had less of our youth being chewed up in the battlefields, but our economy and international standing took a huge hit as a result of W's crimes.

In the article "Cheney Echoes Nixon: If The President Does It During Wartime, It Is Legal" at

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which was on Fox News Sunday December 21 2008 host Chris Wallace asked Vice President Cheney, "if the President, during war, decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?" "I think as a general proposition, I'd say yes," replied Cheney.
Cheney went on to defend the administration's actions over the past eight years saying " There are bound to be debates and arguments from time to time and wrestling back and forth about what kinds of authority is appropriate in any specific circumstances, but I think that what we've done has been totally consistent with what the Constitution provides for."

The article notes the irony that this era's "Impotent, reckless, feckless, yes "Tricky dickless" emulated the Vietnam era "Tricky Dick" as it stated "Cheney's answer is eerily reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon's claim that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." Nixon made the comment in his famous interview with David Frost, responding to a question about whether "there are certain situations" in which "the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal."

"Tricky Dick" knew that war sent money into his friends in the military/industrial complex' coffers and he decided that he'd expand the scope of war into Cambodia and Laos as that would give them more money and GOP votes as the protector of the US from the Communists. We all knew it was phony, but that is the box the GOP has traditionally placed itself in.

"Tricky dickless" saw what happened to "Tricky Dick" up close and personal as he was "Tricky Dick's" successor, Jerry Ford's, Chief of Staff and tried to expand presidential power, but numerous courts have ruled that the Bush administration has overstepped the bounds of the Constitution.

The article "Beyond the Pale: The Newly-Released, Indefensible Office of Legal Counsel Terror Memos" at

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20732

states "On March 1, the Obama Department of Justice released nine memos written in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Seven of these documents, written between 2001 and early 2003, outlined the authority of the president to fight terror, but they gave a misleading picture of that authority as virtually unlimited by ignoring treaties, statutes, and even the Constitution itself."

W was incompetent. Why did he want kinglike powers which any fool had to know were unconstitutional?

Big bro 43 just picked someone out of the Office of Legal Counsel whose views agreed with his and said that all earlier laws could be ignored. It doesn't work that way.

The author of this article, John Dean, researched John Yoo and realized his work contained "blatant intellectual dishonesty".

The article continues "Anyone familiar with Yoo's dubious scholarship, and his radical views, cannot be surprised by these latest revelations."

John Dean, who brought down to "Tricky Dick" as the article continues states "Also, I found that I was not alone in questioning Yoo's intellectual integrity. For example, Georgetown law professor David Luban, when reviewing Yoo's book War By Other Means for the New York Review of Books (Mar. 15, 2007), reported that "Yoo argues forcefully and intelligently, but not always honestly. Half-truths, straw men, double standards, selective quotations, significant omissions, and caricatures of his opponents' positions - all are characteristic of War By Others Means." Unfortunately, this is how Yoo wrote legal opinions for OLC as well, which was very much contrary to the prior standards of that office....

Many conservative legal scholars are embarrassed by his work, and some are speaking out."

W broke laws which are in an easily verifiable format which no amount of legal mumbo-jumbo can obfuscate. The US prosecuted US soldiers who committed waterboarding during the Vietnam War. We instituted The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "FISA" because "Tricky Dick" had hate lists and spied on his own citizens. Big bro 43's defenses can only be ignorance or insanity. Living through his term-and as an ex-practitioner of the psychological sciences, I would have to guess that it could be both. W's greatest hope is that Obama really wants to concentrate on fixing the economy and going forward. I don't know how he can brush this under the carpet though, as on January 26, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak insisted that the pursuit of Bush and members of his administration for the torture of terror war prisoners is crucial if justice is to be served.

The article continues "Even the Bush Administration, at its very end, finally retreated from the seven memos' conclusions. Memos dated October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009, issued by the acting head of OLC, Steven Bradbury, in effect repeal, reject and repudiate the conclusions of the seven prior memos."

That is like saying "Forget about the last eight years. We were fighting GWOT and anything goes against the undefined "those who are against us"." There is no begging for forgiveness because that would admit they knew they committed crimes and intentionally did so.

Not only has the OLC turned on him Yoo has other legal concerns as the article continues "In a February 18, 2008 letter to Senators Durbin and Whitehouse of the Senate Judiciary Committee, H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), acknowledged that he was investigating whether the OLC legal opinions given to the White House for dealing with terrorism were "consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.
Shortly after the November 2008 election, an enterprising online reporter with apparent sources in the OPR reported that Marshall Jarrett would "rebuke" Yoo and Jay Bybee's work in advising the Bush Administration regarding interrogation techniques and torture. And earlier this year, February 18, 2009, he reported that OPR had completed its investigation before the Bush Administration departed, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey had stifled the negative report."

If the GOP had won this election these memos would still be gathering dust.

Just like in the days of Watergate our government is slow in these matters. We all realize that any power that Obama takes away from W then he loses and we are in multiple bad spots because of W and need as much power as we can muster.

The article continues "According to the New York Times, the release of the OPR report, which will now be issued by the Obama Justice Department, is imminent. The Times reports that the Justice Department "is preparing to release a report that is expected to criticize sharply members of the Bush legal team who wrote memorandums purporting to provide legal justification for the use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees despite anti-torture laws and treaties, according to department and Congressional officials."

In addition to the OLC memos that we all could guess about as we knew their end products torture, eavesdropping, among other crimes, there were other crimes we know about but didn't have much information on yet.

When you hear that your country has done something in your name you assume that it will be positive. That would be wrong with the big bro 43 crew as the March 11, 2009 article "Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney" at

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details "Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of "America's Constitutional Crisis" whether abuses of executive power, like those which occurred under Richard Nixon, continue to this day.

Hersh replied, "After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet....

"It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

I have lived through the "war against drugs" in which the US government's role was to tell us to just say no and the Cold War in which Reagan threw away money to his chums in the military/industrial complex for his Star Wars program which W implemented also. Now I'm living through GWOT, which by the way, was a mirage in comparison to the threat caused by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The size of the war is immaterial-we can't condone torturing detainees, eavesdropping on US citizens, executive assassination rings, but the hypocrisy of W constantly playing around with threat levels to keep our masses cowering in terror of W's bogus terrorists, makes the plot obvious. If W admitted we have to be concerned about terrorists, but we can't go overboard about it, then he couldn't have perpetrated all of these crimes.