The soft touches at the FBI

The bleeding heart FBI agents gave blackwater credit for 3 out of 17 kills, what do you think, have they lost their edge?

"A separate military review of the Sept. 16 shootings concluded that all of the killings were unjustified and potentially criminal. One of the military investigators said the F.B.I. was being generous to Blackwater in characterizing any of the killings as justifiable."

If the new AG gets to rule on this one, his answer might be something like 'well if what they did was a crime then it would be illegal, but even though i dont like it i can't say if it is or not since it could subject the people who did it to possible legal ramifications, and since i wasnt present at the incident it wouldn't be prudent to make that judgement'

Harry Reid has no testicles

Michael Muksaey was sworn in today as the next AG after winning his confirmation vote by a slim margin of 53-40. While 4 senators who publicly opposed his nomination, who are also running for president, skipped the vote, quite a few others publicly opposed it but then voted for it anyway.
A few months back, the 'conventional wisdom' was you needed 60 votes to get anything done in the senate, as some republican senators liked to say. The newspapers would say 60 votes were required for passage. Why, I wonder, were 60 votes required? If so, why was Thursday's vote passed with only 53 votes? Gee whiz this government stuff is so complicated I don't think I'll ever understand it.

A for effort

Two more senators have said they will vote for Mukasey to be AG. The reason? Because we think he is probably the best Bush will come up with. Yes we know he won't say waterboarding is torture....but what the hell he's probably the best we will get....

“Judge Mukasey is not my ideal choice,” the senator said. “However, Judge Mukasey, whose integrity and independence is respected even by those who oppose him, is far better than anyone could expect from this administration.” - Charles Schumer

Amazing how standards have dropped.

The law specifically says it is illegal, for the military.... but if the CIA or private contractors-merenaries- do it, maybe its ok. Sure we may have prosecuted it as a war crime in the past, but 9/11 changed everything so I can't say its torture for sure without further review. And I probably won't do any further review either and just hope you forget about it.

Besides, like he said in his testimony, if he admitted it was illegal people who might be using or authorizing it might get worried. ( I'll take that as code for we have people doing that as we speak)

Although they may be right...if our pres of VP has authorized what is generally seen as war crimes, it would be best not to talk about them, hence we will just change the definition and assure you we don't technically torture. Not gonna get specific bub.

“I’m not going to talk about techniques,” he said, adding, “My view is this: The American people have got to understand the program is important and the techniques used are within the law.”

well...within the law as we define it.

Then it's time for the good old standby:We have a war to fight. We can't be worried about war crimes during a time of war...As Bush said this week-

“On too many issues,” Mr. Bush said, “Congress is behaving as if America is not at war.”

I can't imagine what I would have thought if I had been able to read these things in 1999.

Abbreviated for brevity

I could probably go on for a few pages on these, but in the interest of keeping things short I won't.

Update on Waxman's Blackwater investigating

Laws schmaws, we've got a fence to build!

To get your law degree you have to take the bar exam, which I've hard is tough. To become attorney general, I guess all you have to do is agree that torture is illegal.

More acid please, carbonic.

If someone is waterboarded in the forest, is it torture?

After a rather uneventful first day of hearings for the Attorney General Nominee, Michael B. Mukasey (who I might start referring to as shifty bastard), the second day turned out to be a bit different. Day 1 was filled with lots of feel good folksy talk, but details were sparse. He said the first day that the president could not order torture;

“Torture is unlawful under the laws of this country,” Mr. Mukasey said. “It is not what this country is all about. It is not what this country stands for. It’s antithetical to everything this country stands for."

Bush says that the US doesn't torture. But as long as they dont die or have organ failure, it isn't torture. And those couple that did die were just accidents, and then a few suicides too. Oh yea and it's not torture if we send them to another country that will do it for us (now a major motion picture movie), kind of in the same way as it doesn't make you gay as long as your not the one doing the blowing.

So when he was asked to be more specific:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: “Is waterboarding constitutional?”

Mukasey: “I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Whitehouse: “is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?”

Mukasey: “If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”

Seems like the trend is to avoid direct talk, and invent a new word for what we do like 'terrorist surveillance program' or 'enhanced interrogation'

Extra: a short history on waterboarding from Dick Durbin:

The United States has long taken the position that this is a war crime. In 1901, the U.S. Army Major Edwin Glenn sentenced to 10 years hard labor for water-boarding a captured insurgent in the Philippines.

U.S. military commissions after World War II prosecuted Japanese troops for engaging in water-boarding. The torture statute makes it a crime to threaten someone with imminent death. Water- boarding is a threat of imminent death.

I'm hoping that you can at least look at this one technique and say that clearly constitutes torture, it should not be the policy of the United States to engage in water-boarding, whether the detainee is military or otherwise.

MUKASEY: It is not constitutional for the United States to engage in torture in any form, be it water-boarding or anything else.