By Dave Lindorff

I don’t believe in torture, but right now, I’d like to see a few
people subjected to some of the torture techniques that they approved
for use against US captives in the so-called War on Terror.

I’d be satisfied if they just stuck to the ones used against
15-year-old Omar Khadr—techniques that a US federal judge established
constituted torture under the Geneva Conventions.

I have a 15-year old son, so I’m particularly aware of what an
atrocity it has been the way the US has treated Khadr, and some 2500
other young boys and teenagers that it admits to having captured and
labeled as “enemy combatants” in its so-called “war on terror.”

Jason Linkins at Huffington Post has a shocker:

Rumsfeld On 2006 Election: "The Correction For That...Is An Attack"

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War...

By Dave Lindorff

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.

By Dave Lindorff

Is America at the mercy of an invasion of the pumpheads?

The bizarre behavior of Bill Clinton during this campaign season, which has seen this once smooth-talking and politically uber-sophisticated campaigner repeatedly stick a foot in his mouth and undermine his wife’s struggling campaign, raises the issue of whether he is suffering from postperfusion syndrome—a now recognized cognitive impairment common in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

By Dave Lindorff

When journalists are caught lying outright, they can be fired, and can even find their careers terminated. Take Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who made up a story about a young drug user. A decade after her firing, she was earning $6/hour as a Liz Claiborne clerk in a department store. Or consider Stephen Glass, who famously made up stories at the New Republic. He landed on his feet as a fiction writer, but his journalism days are over.

So what to do about George Bush and his gang of fabulists, who now, thanks to a study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, stand shown to have lied to Congress and the American people 935 times in what the two organizations say was "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

"...the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other." - Benjamin Franklin, 1787

They say that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out, but that if you raise the pot's heat gradually, the frog won't react.

The US public has been on a slow boil since 2001. This administration's rollbacks have been so consistent and so egregious that it's no surprise many Americans feel apathetic.

And that begs the question: What exactly would it take to get the US public spurred into action?

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, President Bush sat down to play poker with the biggest stack of chips at the table, the odds-on favorite to win one of the highest-stakes games ever played. This huge initial chip advantage was built from a unified and supportive citizenry at home, a mainstream media that rarely questioned his judgment or intentions, an international community prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and a military machine bigger than the next couple dozen countries combined. But since those early heady days, Bush and his close advisers and neocon allies have made one horrendous decision after another. The great tragedy, of course, is that the president has not been playing with his own chips. Rather, in this game his poor play has cost the lives of our courageous soldiers and many Iraqi civilians, our country's stature in the world, and our national resources much needed for other purposes, domestic and international.

The Bush administration promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting five core concerns that often govern our lives—concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Looking ahead, the continued occupation of Iraq—or an attack on Iran—will likely be sold to us in much the same way. I examine these warmongering appeals—and how to counter them—in the new video above, entitled Resisting the Drums of War

(also available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UKnb5zJbM).

The news report most of you probably never saw. In the aftermath of the Pentagon IG's report last week on Cheney/Rumsfeld's lil' shop of intelligence horrors, otherwise known as the Office of Special Plans, the corporate MSM's coverage was short and sweet before moving on to much more pressing saturation coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's untimely demise...