Harvey Wasserman's accurate, if disheartening, encyclopedia of indictable criminal actions by the man that our Republican Supreme Court chose to have lead us into the 21st century is imperfect only in the very important action that it fails to cite: Bush's tolerance of the continuing employment at the highest level of government of the two "senior officials" who revealed both the identity and the employment cover of an active CIA agent.  His conspiratorial participation, by failure to order the exposure of these two traitors,  is at the very least a felony under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.  It is almost as clearly a conspiratorial violation of the 1917 Espionage Act, something for which Eisenhower tolerated Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's execution, if not of Article III, Section 3 which defines 'treason'  as, among other things, 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy' -- And surely conspiring to retain these two traitors in positions that give them access to such information as they have already revealed to the enemy (as well as to ourselves, via columnist Robert Novak) does aid our increasingly numerous enemies.

We've all been wondering where the 'smoking gun' which would show that the Bush folks knew the attacks were coming and did nothing went, well it appears that the answer is into trash cans around the FAA offices.  Where might evidence exist showing that NORAD ordered military aircraft to stand down and not engage the off-course commercial flights....which would have been necessary to keep the Air National Guard from automatically engaging.....and would have been necessary for it to take more than an hour to scramble a jet......yep, on these tapes.  Hell, even I didn't believe this at first, but it's starting to walk and talk more and more like a duck. However, there is no evidence that Bush has ever had sex with an intern, so don't expect an energetic Congressional investigation just yet.  Keep it up Free Pressers.

[Article references a Washington Post article: "FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tapes: Recordings Contained Accounts of Communications With Hijacked Planes" By Sara Kehaulani Goo, May 6, 2004.]

AUSTIN, Texas -- Let's get real. On Fox So-Called News, former Army Sgt. Tony Robinson was allowed to claim without contradiction that what happened at the prison at Abu-Ghraib was no worse than "fraternity hazing." Rush Limbaugh concurs.

            Let me speak up on behalf of the Kappa Sigs, K.A.s and even Dekes (where only "minor" branding incidents occurred when George W. Bush was the head Deke at Yale). This is straight from the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba:

            "Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous acts of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force. ... The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence ... including the following acts:

            -- Punching, slapping and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

            -- Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

I agree completely with Mr. Wasserman's arguments. Shrub's tenure as governor of Texas was remarkable for killing more people in the death chamber than any other governor. If we wonder what the conditions in the Texas prison system were, it is very likely that looking to iraq will give us some indication. These sorts of practices are marks of the "leaders" during whose term they are practiced.

Torture's back in the news, courtesy of those lurid pictures of exultant Americans laughing as they torture their Iraqi captives in a prison run by the U.S. military outside Baghdad. Apparently it takes electrodes and naked bodies piled in a simulated orgy to tickle America's moral nerve ends. Kids maimed by cluster bombs just don't do it anymore. But torture's nothing new.

            One of the darkest threads in postwar U.S. imperial history has been the CIA's involvement with torture as instructor, practitioner or contractor. Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents, such as Klaus Barbie. The CIA's official line is that torture is wrong and ineffective. It is indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective.