The poor neocons - their defenfses for torture are melting away right in front of our eyes.

Thanks to the unsung but heroic journalism of McClatchy's Jonathan Landay, we now know who is to blame for the Bush System of Torture - the Neocons who worked for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

David Swanson has a full list, all of whom deserve a Citizens' Arrest for war crimes when they appear in public. (The Most Wanted cards are useful for this purpose.) Most of them belonged to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and/or were represented by the p/r firm Benador Associates, which seems to have vanished.

The Neocons who worked directly for Cheney included Scooter Libby, David Addington, John Hannah, and Cathie Martin. Those under Rumsfeld included Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Stephen Cambone, William Haynes, John Bolton, and David Wurmser. But there were many more Neocons in other key positions, including Elliott Abrams (National Security Council) and Richard Perle.

They relied on authorizing memos drafted by scheming lawyers like John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury, and John Rizzo. The evil work of all these lawyers was directed by David Addington.

Of course George Bush was The Decider who had to sign the ultimate authorizations to nullify the Geneva Conventions and thereby legalize war crimes.

President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. This act, the [Senate Armed Services] committee found, cleared the way for a new interrogation program to be developed in-part based on “Chinese communist” tactics used against Americans during the Korean War, mainly to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes.

The actual torture was directed by George Tenet, whose infamous "slam-dunk" remark about Iraq's WMD's now has a double meaning: head-slamming and head-dunking. His henchment were:

former director Michael Hayden; the agency’s no. 2, Stephen Kappes; Michael Sulick, the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service; and let’s not forget John O. Brennan, former CIA Director George Tenet’s deputy, now an Obama advisor in the White House

The whole War on Terror enterprise, including torture and the insane invasion of Iraq, was masterminded by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), led by founder Andy Card and chair Karl Rove. The other key members were: Karen Hughes, James Wilkinson, Mary Matalin, Nick Calio, Stephen Hadley, Condi Rice, and Ari Fleischer. The invisible powers behind the scenes were Henry Kissinger (who met regularly with Cheney), his partner Paul Bremer (who was chosen by the Neocons to destroy Iraq), oil superlawyer James Baker, weapons supercontractor Frank Carlucci, and media superbaron Rupert Murdoch.

In her interview with Charlie Gibson, Sarah Palin revealed some gaping holes in her knowledge of foreign affairs, including her "Moose in the Headlights" ignorance of the Bush Doctrine.

And even more revealing was her absolute certainty that she has the knowledge, experience, and credibility to be President on Day 1, based on the fact that you can see Russia from the remotest Alaska island. (And has she ever been there? Never mind.) Charlie Gibson rightly called that Hubris, and it was truly scary.

But even scarier was her near-command of neocon ideology, after just one week of coaching by McCain's neocon-in-chief, Randy Scheunemann. There was no hesitation in her delivery of neocon talking points, indicating she became a true believer under Scheunemann's tutelage.

The neocon solution to every geopolitical problem is the same - the U.S. should send bombs and troops, regardless of the consequences, because anything less is "surrender to Hitler."

Unfortunately the neocons used up all our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, so we're in no position to join Georgia's fight against Russia - even if that made any sense in a nuclear world, which it certainly doesn't.

This LoLcat pretty much sums up the empty posturing of our little would-be napoleons...

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

Who is Paul Singer? Despite his vast wealth, he's so secretive that the NY Times had to ambush him to get his photo, and he clearly was not pleased.

this year Mr. Singer became one of the biggest supporters of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign, making his jet available to Mr. Giuliani, while Mr. Singer and workers at his companies have donated $200,000 to the campaign. And he became the largest individual backer of a California ballot initiative that many Democrats believe could sink their chances of winning the presidency.

According to news reports, Florida Representative Bob Allen (Republican) was arrested last July 11 for soliciting sex from an undercover black male cop. The reason he gave was his fear of black men...

Now many will quickly ask what rational person would believe such a cockamamy story ?

But hold on, now.. READ THE REST

The career of Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, ended when her cover was blown as retribution for Ambassador Wilson's exposing the falsity of the Niger yellowcake story as a premise for the Iraqi war. Ambassador Wilson spoke tonight with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann about Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. You can watch it here.

In giving the commutation, Bush said: "... a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place...The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby's case is an appropriate exercise of this power."

As record high fuel prices, category 5 hurricanes, and drowning polar bears have helped slap some sense into the reluctant minds of many science-denying troglodytes, so to must the record hubris, category 5 incompetence, and drowning integrity of this administration slap some sense into the reluctant minds of the remaining reality-denying Bush supporters.

Oddly enough, you'd think that pardoning a traitor would be the last straw -- even for these people. You'd be wrong. In fact, acting as savior for the American betrayer known as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby might be the only thing that can salvage Bush's remaining barrel-scum protectorate. That is what they find important. So too must he.

Do you think you couldn't possibly have anything in common with a Republican, a former Reagan White House counsel? Then read on:

When I began asking questions about what I saw going on at Colorado Springs in 2004 I never expected that the inquiry would lead me to the horrifying conclusion that our country had been taken over by people who have used our own freedoms to enslave us. But that is what happened. When I began I, like most people, was focused on the personal. I believed that what was happening at the United States Air Force Academy, the harassment of cadets and staff with unwanted evangelism, was limited in scope. As the months passed, however, I found myself forced to constantly reassess my basic assumptions. The logic of events was stark and undeniable. Promises of an open inquiry were ignored; decent and courageous people like former Air Force Chaplin MeLinda Morton were intentionally muzzled to ensure the truth would not be heard and the wrongs righted.

As a Republican and an Academy graduate I find myself in head on conflict with my own oath to protect the Constitution. As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country.