RIP Darth Cheney

Yes, plenty of others have written already, but here's my few thoughts.

Torture. That's the bottom line, not just being a neocon nut in general.

In the 2008 presidential transition, people like me prodded Dear Leader to name a war crimes special prosecutor. Rahmbo Emanuel nixed that, and O'Bummer wouldn't override him. 

Weaselshit Anthony Romero (he is, for MANY reasons), executive director of the ACLU, was a weaselshit with "prosecute then pardon." 

Judge Napolitano, who perhaps deserved more credit even back in the day, wanted Cheney — and Bush — indicted, then of course prosecuted, without mentioning pardons. 

A year later, Uncle Fester admitted to being a war criminal, after all. 

Of course, today, many BlueAnon, and lamestream media like CNN, are normalizing Darth Cheney cuz he and daddykins' daughter Liz were/are Never Trumpers. (That said, even after Dems regained control of Congress in 2007, Fancy Nancy Pelosi refused to support Kucinich's impeachment push.) Reality? This same Liz, so high and mighty about the power of Congress after Jan. 6, 2021, a dozen years earlier didn't want to talk about her dad hiding secret CIA assassination plans from Congress. More on the hit squads here. 

Speaking of media, there's also the issue of whether or not Shrub Bush was Uncle Fester's puppet, along with the related idea, per the likes of Tim Weiner, of whether or not Bob Woodward was a sucker for a line of Bush bullshit. Woodward's lies regarding both already started in 2005. This brief may get us closer to Bush-Cheney relationship.

That said, give Vlad the Impaler Putin credit for telling Cheney to STFU long ago. 

Forwarding to the Middle East of then and today? Darth only liked democracy when it was pro-Merikkka. Freely elected Hamas? Can't have that. (They were, Ed Buckner, or pretty much so.)

Domestically, meanwhile, there was his sekrut energy task force. Daughterkins never challenged that, did she? Per the link, never did any Gang Green type enviros that sat in. Non-Gang Green, like Center for Biological Diversity, were never invited.

In a combination of domestic and international, Darth had connections to international bribery. 

Speaking of lies and liars, here's Shrub on Darth's death:

"I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best. He held to his convictions and prioritized the freedom and security of the American people."

Uhh, sure. Those lies are joined by others from Nuclear Condi Rice and Slick Willie Clinton.

'Days of Fire'? Peter Baker's book is barely kindling

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Why do I say what I do? Veteran New York Times reporter Peter Baker has too much "mainstreamitis," too much "have-a-beer-itis," in this over-length tome.

Per the first, this book reads exactly like it was written by who it was: not "Peter Baker," but a decade-plus White House correspondent for a major mainstream paper. Take torture, for example. In the index, it links to pages that don't actually use the word, but, euphemisms or softenings.

Per the second? Baker seems to have that stereotypical "guy I'd have a beer with," as it was called in 2000 and again in 2004, man-crush on W.

As a result, other than looking at some details of how Bush wasn't totally Cheney's puppet, and even more details about how, after office, every Bush Administration official, including the Head Cheese and Darth Cheney, who has written a book, or been interviewed for a partisan one, has told at least one lie about one major interaction with other Bushies, there's not much here. On length, it could have been cut 150 pages without much loss.

I was on the 2/3 star border, but, this book is getting too much unworthy praise, so I went down rather than up.



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Palestinians negotiated away right of return

In the latest stories coming out of the Al Jazeera A-bomb of leaks, shared with the Guardian, this one has to be the hottest news today.

Palestinian Authority negotiators with Israel agreed to cut the "right of return" of Palestinians whose families had been born in land that is today Israel to just 10,000 people. And, apparently, with no compensation from Israel.

Oh, and it gets worse.

Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested settling additional Palestinian refugees in South America. Well, now we know just how one-sided the Bush Administration was on this.

Ah, but it's not just the Bush Administration. Team Obama threatened to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority if it replaced Mahmoud Abbas as leader.

Almost a year later (than November 2008), the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, reacted angrily to news that Abbas had threatened to resign and call for new presidential elections. She told Palestinian negotiators: "Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] not running in the election is not an option – there is no alternative to him." The threat was withdrawn and no election was held.

As the Guardian notes, on background as to Abbas' legitimacy, or lack thereof:

Abbas was elected president in 2005, but his mandate expired in 2009 and is no longer recognised by Hamas, among others, as the legitimate Palestinian leader. (Prime Minister Salem) Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Abbas after the Hamas takeover of Gaza but his legitimacy is also strongly contested as his appointment was never confirmed as required by the PA's parliament.

The Guardian notes no new elections are immediately on the table. And, if the PA wants U.S. dollars, they can't be. Talk about a Catch-22. Talk about yet more justification for some PA person to leak to al Jazeera.

This would be the same Abbas whose negotiating team, in private, officially accepted that Israel could define itself as a Jewish state.

That, in turn connects closely to the right of return. It gives Israeli leaders justification for saying the PA has officially waived the right of return. It also theoretically gives Israel justification for Palestinian expulsion. Indeed, it already popped up in "negotiations":

In several areas, (then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni) pressed for Israeli Arab citizens to be moved into a Palestinian state in a land-swap deal, raising the spectre of "transfer" - in other words, moving Palestinians from one state to another without consent. The issue is controversial in Israel and backed in its wholesale form by rightwing nationalists such as the Yisrael Beiteinu party of the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

"Transfer" is such a polite euphemism.

Going back to yesterday's posts, this sheds some more light on the "who wins" from leaking this information.

Madame Waterboarder and liar

Sounds like BushCo National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condi Rice told a past Congress some lies of omission about her role in waterboarding.

Condi shot at Veep killed due to lez rumors?

That’s the straight poop per PageOneQ, saying she was McCain’s first choice.

Those rumors have floated around for years, of course, but, if this story is true, it’s interesting the McCain camp would give them that much weight.

Maybe, behind the smoke …

Update: Here's another thing I don't get. McCain has a gay chief of staff. Has had for years. Apparently not worried about that. Not worried even to the point ofMark Buse being outed. So, why was he that worried about the Rice rumors? Or, did he think Buse would be more “discreet”?

The heartless of BushCo on Cuba

As Hurricane Ike is set to basically obliterate Cuba, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says “I don’t think … lifting of the embargo (against Cuba) would be wise.”

Let’s see if John McCain toes the BushCo line for Cuban votes in South Florida or not.

On the coffee table — ‘Condoleezza Rice’

Basically, this Elisabeth Bumiller bio of Rice is a biography of an intellectual middleweight BY an intellectual middleweight

Where’s the analysis?

There’s not a lot new here about Condi Rice, especially for people involved enough with tracking politics to have formed a basic picture of her already.

That said, there is a fair amount of information from her childhood and pre-NSC adulthood to confirm what became apparent then was not new.

That includes:
1. A blinkered mindset, not just on things like Iraq issues, either;
2. A lack of original thought;
3. A lack of bureaucratic steel at times, especially when limited by blinkered or unoriginal thought.

The first point goes all the way back to segregated Birmingham, Ala., of Rice’s childhood. She maintains to this day that segregation wasn’t as bad as MLK and other civil rights leaders maintained, and, even more laughably, that more upper-crust black leaders there were making progress.

The lack of originality? The lack of relative depth in her PhD study. Her time as Stanford provost.

Tying some points together, that Bumiller doesn’t look at enough:
1. WHY the blinkered mindset held all the way back to childhood?
2. WAS Condi’s PhD that “derivative”?
3. DID she get tenure, not just appointment at Stanford, on minority grounds? Or female grounds? Or a combo?
4. DID she, per a book like Randall Kennedy’s “Sellout,” “pull the ladder up” after her at Stanford, both vis-à-vis other minorities and vis-à-vis other women?
5. HOW RESPONSIBLE is she for the federal lawsuit against Stanford for discrimination against women? How responsible is she for that having spread to racial discrimination, too?
6. PSYCHOLOGY of her attachment to older, “mentorish” men? Effects on her two stints in Washington?
7. HARD-CORE CONSERVATIVISM after her Bush I service in 1989-91? Everybody at Stanford remarked on the changes, but it doesn’t look like Bumiller asked Question No. 1 about this.

Through in the fact that Bumiller swallows the conservative/BushCo talking points about the pre-9/11 “firewall” between domestic and foreign intelligence, calls Wolfowitz a “conservative” and not a “neoconservative” and you see Bumiller in over her head as much as Rice was on Jan. 20, 2001.

How Bumiller got to be a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, or how Random House thought they would get a serious analytical bio (if it wanted one) from an author whose other publishings are all non-analytical women’s issues books, is beyond me. And, using that leave of absence from the New York Times to write this book and it STILL being this shallow? That is what got it knocked down from three to two stars.

As for alternatives? Judging by other reviewers, I think Kessler’s bio has to be better, and Mabry’s possibly worse than this.

And, let’s not forget this hugely insightful quote of hers, about her squish, nonaggressive coverage of the Iraq invasion:

“I think we were very deferential because ... it’s live, it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you’re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”

Glenn Kessler’s bio of Rice, which I’ve not read, rates slightly higher at Amazon. That said, Bumiller at least is a voluminous enough steno to provide confirmation of just what Rice is about is not new to her personality.

The verdict on Bush’s War

I just got done watching Part 1 of the new Frontline special.

Not really anything new for me to learn, but it reinforces a few things. Beyond Shrub and Uncle Fester, other people, like Tenet, Rice and a few more, are traitors in spirit to the real, actual foreign policy needs of the United States.

Getting a non-traitorous “F” would be Colin Powell, for not resigning as Secretary of State.

Coming close to that would be Tom Daschle. The then-Senate Majority Leader has never been castigated enough for not using every parliamentary trick in his book to delay the Iraq war resolution (and yes, Hillary, that’s what it was), until after the November 2002 midterm elections.

And, a special charge of treason against Judith Miller.

The Dallas Morning News veers right on Cabinet ideas

The News apparently thinks Nov. 2 was a Bush mandate, based on its Nov. 7 editorial suggesting Bush second-term Cabinet picks. By starting with John Negroponte, rather than the talked-up consensus pick, John Danforth, the News showed just how Cro-Magnon it still is at times.

Here's my reply to editorial page editor Keven Ann Willey.

1. Negroponte at State? The man who says he knew nothing about Central American right-wing killers when he was down there? I'd pay a Senator to mention "School of the Americas" during his confirmation hearing.
And why, when so many people are talking more multilateralist sounding Danforth, would you even mention Negroponte, who is certainly not known as that?
2. Rice at Defense? She should, rightfully, get flayed over Iraq, and her pre 9/11 failures. She's not shown enough bureaucratic or managerial skills, either.
Your "one-two punch" would likely leave many foreign leaders shaking their heads.
3. Rudy for Homeland Security? The civil liberties minded would bring up Louima or Diallo. I'd bring up the "the troops lost the HDX" comment, too.
4. Rudman would be good as intelligence czar. Who’d be better but will never get appointed by Bush: Richard Clarke.
5. Gonzales as AG? Not after his "you can ignore the Genevas and rewrite international law" legal memos to Bush. Horrible choice.
6. Pete Peterson would be great at NEC, but his advice to Bush would go down a black hole, unfortunately, unless Senate Republicans could get him to leak enough to lean on Bush.