After John Ashcroft's testimony last week in which he bobbed and weaved his way around answering every question about what he did during his time in the White House, Jon Stewart and John Oliver compare Bush and his merry band of obfuscators to other American Presidential liars in order to make a historical comparison. Needless to say, the Bush team is in a league of its own.

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Oliver: "I just hope everyone at home appreciates the magnitude of what they're witnessing here. For 7 straight years, this administration has been untouchable in hearings. These guys are the '27 Yankees of dodging questions. The '55 Dodgers of yanking Congress' chain. They're the right stuff of wrong stuff. John, this is once in a generation bullsh*t."

Steart: You really think this admininstration is that good at this?

John: Sure, look, we can quibble at the level of competetition. You can criticize the strength of their opponents -- lets face it, the Democrats have been pathetic. But you still can't help but be impressed at the level of skills on display. I won't be surprised if in years to come they describe these hearings as the 'Immaculate Deception.'"

I truly can't wait to see those jerseys hanging from the rafters.

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Now there's a shocker, no? This is just one of many reasons why we shouldn't torture. As more details about the Bush administration's torture program come to light, (see Jane Mayer's The Dark Side) we find that torture brings about more bogus intelligence and coerced confessions have led our intelligence agencies on a host of wild goose chases and wasted valuable time and U.S. tax dollars.

The judge ruled that some of Hamdan's statements made at Gitmo may be allowed, but his defense is arguing that all his statements were coerced by using abusive tactics. How much evidence will be thrown out is yet to be determined, but if this article from the AP is accurate, the first of King George's war tribunals is shaping up to be yet another three ring circus. 

The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver, ruling he was subjected to "highly coercive" conditions in Afghanistan.  

At Bagram, the judge found Hamdan was kept in isolation 24 hours a day with his hands and feet restrained, and armed soldiers prompted him to talk by kneeing him in the back. His captors at Panshir repeatedly tied him up, put a bag over his head and knocked him the ground. 

In addition to the other interrogations, the judge said he would throw out statements whenever a government witness is unavailable to vouch for the questioners' tactics. He also withheld a ruling on a key interrogation at Guantanamo in May 2003 until defense lawyers can review roughly 600 pages of confinement records provided by the government on Sunday night.  Read on...

We in the reality-based community always knew that the abu Ghraib abuses didn't originate with those "few bad apples," but a new Senate probe conclusively proves that Donald Rumsfeld and his senior lawyers began pushing for "harsh techniques" long before those infamous photos surfaced.

Guardian:

A Senate investigation unveiled today found that senior Pentagon officials began planning to use abusive tactics at Guantánamo Bay earlier than they previously acknowledged, borrowing from a programme that trained US troops to resist cruel interrogations.

New documents disclosed today show that lawyers in the army, navy and marines objected vigorously to the use of violent methods against detainees but were overruled by aides to the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Not only does torture utterly ruin our image overseas, it also puts our soldiers at risk of being tortured themselves God forbid they get captured. Thanks, Donald Rumsfeld!

C&L covered this segment from last Friday's Countdown, but I thought an emphasis on Richard Clarke's scathing remarks about the lack of, and the need for, accountability from the Bush administration for the countless lies they told their country and the world about pre-Iraq invasion intelligence, was well deserved.

I have been telling anyone who will listen, that we must watch out for these bad pennies when their names start to creep back into the political arena - names like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who both worked in the Nixon administration. Looking back, we find ourselves wondering how we didn't see this disaster coming, or why more people didn't speak out at the time. I fully agree with Richard Clarke's statements; we must not allow these thugs back into civilized society -- they should not be rewarded for perpetrating so many horrific and destructive crimes against their own people, and other places around the globe.

Clarke: "Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that's been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you're forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way."

"Now, I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they'll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."

You can rest assured, the day that names like Karl Rove, Tom Delay, Condoleeza Rice or those of anyone who served in the Bush administration creep into the public or political sphere, we, and the rest of the blogosphere, will sound the alarm to make sure none of these people are able to damage our country ever again. More from Think Progress.

Yahoo:

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

At one point after passing out, al-Janabi said, he was told by an L-3 translator "welcome to Guantanamo." He said he even asked a cellmate whether he could see the ocean from a window. Read on...

Senator John McCain may look the other way when it comes to torture, but we won't. These atrocities were committed in our name. I hope "Big Steve" and all the rest of these war criminals are punished to the fullest extent -- but we live in Bushworld and it is unlikely any of these thugs will ever be held accountable. Senator Barack Obama has said that if elected he will investigate crimes committed by the Bush regime...we intend to hold him to that.

Through newly obtained internal documents, The New York Times has uncovered an elaborate PR campaign run by the Pentagon that coached former military officials -- or as they're known on television, Serious Independent Military Experts -- on how best to shill for Donald Rumsfeld during the fallout from the "General's Revolt," when numerous high-ranking retired Generals broke long standing tradition and began speaking out harshly against the former Secretary and his prosecution of the War in Iraq.

Click here to see the video.

The full article is lengthy at 11 pages, but it's a stellar exposé of how politicized, coordinated and deceitful the media campaign is under Bush. With the assistance of Peter Pace, Rumsfeld would literally convene meetings with former military brass -- who, according to the article, consisted of "more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants" -- and conspire on how best to manage the press. Worse still, these compromised soldiers would then manipulatively go on television as Serious Independent Experts to parrot administration talking points and secure lucrative defense contracts. The Military-Industrial Complex is not alive and well, but thriving under the auspices of the Bush administration.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. "This was a coherent, active policy," he said. [...] It was, he said, "psyops on steroids"

And it wasn't limited to the mainstream media alone. Bloggers were also hired and paid to shape opinions at home. But don't be surprised Sunday when this story is neglected in favor of endless discussions about bowling scores and various other "distractions."

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Jon Stewart takes the administration to task for, well, there's no delicate way to put this, deciding the intimate details of how we would torture people. It pains me to type those words.

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You gotta wonder, how could these administration officials be so confident that we don’t torture? Well, there’s only two options, really. One, the administration reminded all military and intelligence agencies of the moral commitment that civilized nations have to remain humane, even in times of peril. Or…. They sat in a room and meticulously crafted an interrogation regimen in the lawyer-created space between cruelty and torture. Hmmm….I wonder which way they went.

UPDATE: John Amato: It's good to see TDS pick up on our push with the ACLU to get this information out there. C&L will not let up on this issue and the blogoshere has responded in kind. Thanks. And Condi Rice should be forced to resign over this issue.

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Every week on The Chris Matthews Show, Matthews has a segment where he asks his panel of pundits to "Tell Me Something I Don't Know."   This week, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic spoke as bluntly as any talking head has done since Bush/Cheney took office:

The latest revelations on the torture front show—the memo from John Yoo—as well as revelations from Phillippe Sands’ book, mean that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be at some point indicted for war crimes.  They deserve to be.

Damn straight.  Phillippe Sands has an article in this month's Vanity Fair highlighting aspects of his book, which comes out next month.

Jon takes an intimate look back at the first five years of the Iraq War, and pays respect to all the brave and wise leaders whose rosy predictions have entirely come true.

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Stewart: "Hard to believe folks -- five years. And they said it wouldn't last. No, seriously, they said it wouldn't last."

MR. RUSSERT: [D]o you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim.

RUMSFELD: It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

The reverse historical breakdown is classic.

Via Rolling Stone:

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence. Read on...

This article by Nir Rosen is a long read, but it's well worth it. Rosen describes in detail how the situation on the ground in Iraq is tenuous at best, a powder keg ready to ignite at any given moment. We haven't been getting much honest or detailed reporting from Iraq in quite some time and this article unveils much of what many of us have assumed for some time. The successes of the surge amount to trapping people in run down neighborhoods turned to rubble, imprisoning thousands and creating millions of refugees. Freedom is on the march...

Remember this memorable Rumsfeld quote: "You go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

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Well as the USA TODAY found out. That was a fib.

Pentagon balked at pleas from officers in field for safer vehicles.

Oh wait, they did decide to buy them for the troops. The Iraqi troops that is.

Even as the Pentagon balked at buying MRAPs for U.S. troops, USA TODAY found that the military pushed to buy them for a different fighting force: the Iraqi army. On Dec. 22, 2004 two weeks after President Bush told families of servicemembers that "we're doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones"...read on

Their decision cost a lot of people pain. Except Rummy that is....

News.com (Australia):

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the United States and Britain of pursuing policies like those of South Africa's apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial.

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) today, the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a "huge blot on a democracy".

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Archbishop Tutu said. Read on...

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The Washington Post came out this week with a report on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bizarre methodology to communicate with underlings at the Pentagon.

Obviously a big believer in the "trickle down" theory, Rummy would issue forth 20 to 60 memos daily, quaintly dubbed "snowflakes", perhaps in an attempt to de-emphasize the avalanche of paper coming out of his office.

Steve Benen:

There aren't any shocking new revelations, per se, but we do get a sense of an intolerant man with unusually thin skin.[..]

One of the more notable points from the WaPo article is that Rumsfeld, despite leading the Pentagon during two wars, took a very personal interest in newspaper columns that critiqued his job performance.

He was even personally involved in the Defense Department's message development.

And John Edwards was derided for characterizing this White House's bumper sticker mentality. Turns out he was completely right.

Via CNN:

Students and professors at Stanford University are protesting Donald Rumsfeld's appointment to a campus think tank, saying the former defense secretary does not uphold the "ethical values" of the school.

Shortly after Rumsfeld's appointment was announced in September, professor Pamela Lee began an online petition from faculty members opposed to bringing him to the Hoover Institution.

Since then, the petition has gained more than 3,500 signatures, including nearly 300 faculty members from such diverse disciplines as law, computer science, electrical engineering and drama.

"We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested inquiry, respect for national and international laws, and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed," the petition reads. Read more...

We know Rummy doesn't lose any sleep over the soldiers he's responsible for sending to their deaths, so a little petition to keep him off the Stanford campus will probably roll off his back like so much dandruff.

Donald Rumsfeld, interviewed at his Taos ranch by GQ Magazine:

"In terms of what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan today, what the Department of Defense is doing is working. What isn't working is the diplomatic side. The government of Iraq has not been able to find ways to bring the elements of that country together sufficiently that they can create an environment hospitable to, uh, whatever one wants to call their evolving way of life, a democracy or a representative system or a freer system. Look at Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets."

All your theories worked there, in other words.

"It's been a big success! The Iraqi government has not been successful as yet. And, uh, it's gonna take some time and some effort."

"When do you see it resolved?"

"I'm not gonna get into that."

Right. But if you distill the general sense…the measured general sense…of what the American public feels about Iraq right now, it would be: a plan in but not a plan out. Do you agree with that?

"No! No, no! The military has to have plans for post-major-conflict stabilization, and they did. And, uh, the focus of the insurgents and the terrorists and the Al Qaeda have put on Iraq… It's enormously important to them."

But you sleep okay?

"I do. Always have."

No nightmares?

"Nope."