A tale of two moral compasses. The NY Times issued an editorial exhorting Bush to not "abuse" the pardon privilege:

With the Bush administration drawing to a close, it is presidential pardon season. Presidents have become increasingly shameless about issuing pardons to insulate political cronies from prosecution, even to protect themselves. We hope President Bush will not abuse the pardon power by putting his appointees, political supporters or friends above the law.

The Constitution gives the president sweeping authority to grant pardons. The founders intended for presidents to use this power as an “act of grace” or to promote the public welfare. It was never intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card for people close to the president who stretched, bent or broke the law.

A nice, if a bit naive, sentiment. The editorial goes on to point out how past presidents have abused the privilege, so it's not without precedent to have Bush issue pardons to whom he wishes to repay for their political loyalty (Hi, Scooter!).

But it is svengaliesque William Kristol whose advice will much more likely be heeded by his PNAC buddies and disciples in the Executive Branch. He argues in his Weekly Standard that the right thing for Bush to do is to pardon any and all foot soldiers in his War on Terror™:

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

Unbelievable. This goes beyond immorality and straight into a complete lack of humanity. And let me for the record reiterate that Bill "Brave with other people's kids" Kristol has NEVER been right. Not once. Not when he cheerleaded the Iraq invasion and lied about the reasons. Not when he cheerleaded Sarah Palin and led the campaign to get her on the GOP ticket. Not once in his weekly appearances on Pravda, er...FoxNews has he ever given even the slightest semblance of being right. And now he goes against his employers at the NY Times (Jeez, what does it take to fire a bloodthirsty, warmongering amoral Republican flack? Obviously as much as it does in the US Senate) to suggest that those who have violated every principle that was supposed to be the American dream should get the farkin' Medal of Honor?

And sadly, the Villagers will look to this and not blink an eye.

What a surprise. Dubya had his fingers crossed when he said his administration was looking at ways to shut down Gitmo.

Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Bush’s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House this summer after a Supreme Court ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American detention center. But Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable, now or any time soon, the officials said.

Spencer Ackerman:

The “legal risks” are called “due process of law” and “adherence to universally-embraced standards of civilization.”

The place rightwingers profess to believe is some kind of "holiday camp" is still full of innocents who were tortured into confessions, too.

Like 17 Uighurs a federal court had ordered released, who now won't go free.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a federal judge's order releasing the men, and it ordered oral arguments in the government's appeal, to be heard Nov. 24.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered the government Oct. 7 to release the men, all Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years. The same panel temporarily stayed Urbina's order a day later.

The government has been trying to find new homes for the Uighurs for years. It no longer considers them enemy combatants and provided no evidence in court that they posed a security risk. The men cannot be returned to their homeland because they face the prospect of being tortured and killed. China considers the men terrorists.

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    The ACLU has won a landmark ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has slammed the Bush administration for using ridiculous arguments for withholding 21 graphic photos of detainee abuse which formed part of a FOIA request.

The government claimed that the public disclosure of such evidence would generate outrage and would violate U.S. obligations towards detainees under the Geneva Conventions because they would embarrass or humiliate the prisoners.

But the court ruled in the first instance that outrage (over abuse and torture, mind you, so it would be justified outrage) where no specific individual could be named as being at risk was too wide an exemption to grant.

"It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan," the appeals court said.

And in the second instance, the Court pointed to the way in which the US had published pictures photographs of dead, tortured and abused prisoners in Japanese and German prison and concentration camps after World War II.

"Yet the United States championed the use and dissemination of such photographs to hold perpetrators accountable," the court said.

The ACLU's attorney Amrit Singh told the AP that:

"These photographs depict abuse at locations other than Abu Ghraib," she said of the 21 pictures that the court ordered for release. "Their release is to hold government accountable for torture policies and bring an end once and for all to the abuse of prisoners."

And the ACLU's press release continues:

(T)he appeals court today rejected the government's attempt to use the FOIA as "an all-purpose damper on global controversy" and recognized the "significant public interest in the disclosure of these photographs" in light of government misconduct. The court also recognized that releasing the photographs is likely to prevent "further abuse of prisoners."
 
"This is yet another case in which the administration used national security as a pretext to suppress information relating to crimes that were endorsed, encouraged or tolerated by government officials," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The appeals court was correct to recognize both that the administration's suppression of the photographs was without legal basis and that disclosure will further the purposes of the Geneva Conventions by deterring the abuse and torture of prisoners in the future."  

Singh noted that the government admits it has other photos which are not part of this ruling, but I'd like to remind everyone that photos are just the tip of the iceberg. Back in February a Seton Hall Law report revealed that the US military military videotaped all of the interrogations at Guantanamo and other interrogation centers and retained them. There were around 24,000 recordings made, in all and the Bush administration have been highly evasive about their current whereabouts.

Still the release of these photos will once again show the Bush administration's institutionalized use of torture to the world - and they should have their feet held to the fire for such acts. Not only will the Muslim world be outraged - for does anyone doubt that most or all of the victims pictured will be Muslim? But European nations will also come under renewed internal pressure to eschew co-operation in illegal rendition with any US administration that perpetuates Bush policy.

And maybe, just maybe, someone in the press will hold up the pictures to John McCain and ask him whether he thinks what he sees there constitutes actual torture, not any lesser "enhanced interrogation techniques".

During an interview with Sky News, President Bush accused British journalist Adam Boulton of "slander[ing] America" when he noted that, despite the President's lofty rhetoric of spreading freedom, Guantanamo Bay and rendition are really "the complete opposite of freedom."

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BOULTON: And yet there are those who would say, look, let's take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down -- what you need to do -- I think I suggested you do this at a press conference -- if you go down to Guantanamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated -- and they're working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.

The standard response whenever one criticizes American policies, of course, is to proclaim that that person is an anti-American slanderer. The irony, though, is that the policies this President has pursued over the past eight years could not be more "anti-American" in the classical sense. You know, things like rule of law and respect for human rights.

But wait, there's more:

BOULTON: But the Supreme Court have just said that -- you know, ruled against what you've been doing down there.

THE PRESIDENT: But the district court didn't. And the appellate court didn't.

BOULTON: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn't it?

You see, in Bush's America, the only courts that count are the ones he controls and/or the ones who rule in his favor. Never mind the fact that, as Boulton points out, the Supreme Court is called the Supreme Court for a reason.

This man -- and the corrupt movement that sustained him for so long -- truly sicken me. January can't come soon enough.

WaPo's Dan Froomkin has more on what he calls "Bush's Senioritis" and "contempt for those who question him or doubt his accomplishments."

Full, infuriating transcript below the fold.

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On Monday night, host Dan Abrams spoke with Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Pat Buchanan and Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes about the recently revealed Bush DoJ secret 2004 torture memos. The Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman and Jay Rockefeller, have all denied having seen the secret memos, but admit they were briefed on operational details (whatever that means) which leads Abrams asks the question -- did the Democrats know more about Bush's torture techniques than they were letting on, and if so, why didn't they speak out sooner?

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Abrams and Buchanan essentially try to turn this around and blame the Democrats, concluding they MUST have known about the torture techniques in the program, labeling them as hypocrites for not speaking out about what they knew. Unbelievable. There's so much misinformation and misdirection being thrown about. So even though the Democratic leadership have spoken out (Randi Rhodes brings up Senator Rockefeller's concerns about the program), just because Bush said they were fully briefed must mean they were...and we all know how forthcoming this administration has been. Buchanan seems less disturbed by the notion of our country torturing people (watch him throw out Jack Bauer hypotheticals--including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to just about everything under the sun while being tortured) than trying to find a way to pin it on the Democratic majority in Congress.