McCraven McCain: against torture before he was for it

The United States Senate voted 51-45 today to ban waterboarding (what the United States used to call Water Torture and execute people for) and other harsh interrogation torture techniques by the CIA . The law passed today would bring all interrogation practices by all agencies of the federal government in line with the Army Field Manual. It was passed by the House of Representatives in December. Bush promises a veto.

John McCain, who previously stood for American principles, has apparently abandoned his honor and voted for torture because that is what the bloodthirsty, amoral thugs that form the base of the Repugnant Party want, and he knows that he can't get elected without them.

How different Wednesday's vote is from the stand he took last November in a Republican debate.



Newsflash, Mad Jack - you can't get elected with them, either. Your particular brand of crazy is way past it's sell-by date.

Now...

I gotta get something off my chest. I am disgusted by the fact that we have come to the point as a society where we are even having this debate. It is abhorrent; it's sickening and disgusting. It's fucking insane that we have slid this far since we won the Cold War - less than twenty years ago! - by holding forth that we were Americans, and by virtue of that fact alone, we were simply above certain things. Gulags and torture among them. Now, we are infamous for them.

I am appalled that there are Americans among us who openly advocate for and debate the relative merits of the basic tenets of fascism. I remember a time when anyone advocating for the employment of torture (or domestic spying) would be ridiculed and driven from public life. The thought of a Supreme Court Justice absolving the practice was unthinkable.

What the fuck?

Julie Myers Finally Has Her Day in the Sun

Proof that, as long as you destroy the evidence, you can still get your cushy government job:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal government has released to CNN more than 100 photographs of a Halloween party that temporarily threatened to derail the nomination of a top Department of Homeland Security official.

At the party, Julie Myers, then-acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), gave an award for "most original costume" to an employee wearing prison stripes, a wig with dreadlocks and face-darkening makeup.

Immediately after posing for a photo with the winner, Myers later told Congress she recognized that she made an error in judgment and ordered the photos deleted from the camera.

Myers said she did not know the employee was wearing skin makeup, but ordered the photos destroyed because she did not think that "recognizing an escaped prisoner in any way was beneficial to the agency's goal of treating everyone in our custody with dignity and respect."

Bullshit! All you have to do is look at the hands! It's right there in the photo.

This week, in response to the Freedom of Information Act request filed by CNN on November 6, ICE released 113 official photographs of the party, including all of the deleted photos, which technicians were able to electronically restore.

An ICE spokeswoman denied the photos were suppressed until after Myers' job was secure, saying ICE responded in an "efficient time frame" to the FOIA request.

News of the photos' existence infuriated some members of Congress, who said they should have been made aware of them earlier.

"It is too bad that these photos surfaced too late to have dealt with her nomination, perhaps, in a different way," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, who last November put a "hold" on Myers' confirmation because of the hubbub.

Myers was confirmed on December 20. As an assistant secretary of homeland security and head of ICE, she heads the agency charged with enforcing immigration law in the nation's interior. The agency has more than 15,000 employees, including 6,000 investigators.

McCaskill said she believed the photos would have had affected the confirmation.

"This is such brutally bad judgment that, to me, it indicates that the leadership of this division is flawed," she said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose committee oversees ICE, said Wednesday he is upset both by the photos and by ICE's failure to give the photos to Congress in November.

"I was satisfied (with Myers' explanations and apology) until I found out that these pictures existed," Thompson said.

An ICE spokeswoman denied that there was any intentional effort to mislead Congress.

"We had asked that they be destroyed, and as far as we knew, that was the case," spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. Myers was "frank and honest about every aspect of that situation from the very beginning," she said.

An estimated 50 to 75 employees attended the October 31 costume party at ICE headquarters in the District of Columbia. A poster advertising the contest said costumes should be tasteful and "office appropriate."

Myers declined to talk to CNN Wednesday, but in written comments to Congress last November, she offered the following account of the incident:

She and two other ICE officials served as judges of the costume contest, and she had "very limited interaction" with the employee in the prisoner costume, who "was present at the (judging) table for less than half a minute before he moved on.

"I was not aware at the time of the contest that the employee disguised his skin color," she wrote. Nonetheless, after posing for a photo with the employee, she realized it was inappropriate.

"Although I did not know that this individual had disguised his race, I determined that I had made an error in judgment in recognizing an escaped prisoner at this party," she wrote, and she instructed her chief of staff to direct the official photographer to delete the photos.

In an internal e-mail that was sent at 3:05 p.m., shortly after the party was to end, the ICE public affairs director, Wendy Burrell, said, "Please make sure that the photos of the most creative (single male entry) are destroyed. They may not be used in any publication, Web site, compilation disk, you name it. Not just not used. Please erase all."

Okay--if someone recognizes the day of an event that what happened at the event could be construed as being politically damaging--and then orders the photos deleted--then what does that say for the honesty and the integrity of the individuals in question? Every single one of them should be fired. They have no business working for the government. That's your tax dollars they're getting paid. Should this be done in our name? I think it's fair to say that people have been fired for a hell of a lot less.

Myers said she was "shocked and horrified" to learn the next day that the employee had used skin-darkening makeup.

The employee was counseled, and Myers sent out a note to all agency employees expressing regret over the event, agency spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in November,

"It is now clear that, however unintended, a few of the costumes were inappropriate and offensive," Myers wrote.

Bullshit. Why the order to destroy the photos at 3:05PM the same day and then the bald-faced lie that she "learned the next day" about what was going on? If this isn't a clear cut example of lying I don't know what is.

The fact that this woman still has a job, no doubt thanks to nepotism, is beyond belief. Congress WAS mislead, and whether they do anything about it is up to them.

Isn't it a great day to be an American?

Wolfowitz knows no shame

This is embarrassing. Totally embarrassing. Wolfowitz is still refusing to step down at the World Bank. The man has no shame. No shame at all.

WASHINGTON, May 7 — Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank’s next chief, but only if Mr. Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said.

European officials had previously indicated that they wanted to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Mr. Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily, rather than be rebuked or ousted.

The goal, they said, is to avert a public rupture of the bank board over a vote, possibly later this week, to sanction Mr. Wolfowitz. Even if the vote is a reprimand, they said, it could effectively make it impossible for him to stay on.

The Europeans worked to arrange a quick exit for Mr. Wolfowitz as a special bank committee concluded that he was guilty of breaking rules barring conflicts of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion and a bank employee, in 2005.

Will he finally do the right thing, and step down, or will he insist on a battle royal and a dramatic ouster? It looks like the latter and it’s just one-more rock-jawed refusal to accept that the reality these neocon assholes created pretty much sucks.

Jesus Christ. Someone fetch me a mallet and let’s just drive a stake through the heart of Neoconservatism and kill it once and for all. Those mendacious bastards have been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything and they have spectacularly fucked up everything they have touched on an epic scale. It is time to ostracize them, brand them as the pariahs they are, drive them from the public square and denounce them for being the social cancers they are, unfit to keep company with decent folks.

When they die, and it won't be a moment too soon, bury them in unmarked graves, and future generations will speak their names no more, except as the most vile of curses.