IN THE FIGHT over rules for the interrogation and trials of terrorism suspects, there is a split -- not so much between Republicans and Democrats or the White House and the Senate, but between leaders like President Bush with no combat experience and those like Colin Powell who know combat and want to maintain the Geneva Conventions as a protection for US troops. 

Well it’s about time someone said it.  You know, someone besides the millions of frakkin’ people who have been screaming it for years.

From Think Progress:

Now, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has introduced a new rationale for the invasion of Iraq, high gas prices. From a radio interview last week:

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: The fact of the matter is - if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq, he would be rolling in petrol dollars. Think of the price of oil today. He would have so much money. And he would be seeing the Iranians interested in a nuclear program, he would be seeing the North Koreans developing a nuclear program, and he’d say well why shouldn’t he - and he would. So we’re fortunate that he’s gone.

Of course, one of the reason gas prices are high is instability in the Middle East — created, in part, by the invasion of Iraq.

Well, happy Friday everyone.  Friday Dublin Pics is on the road again this week.  As you're on your way home tonight, cursing the incessant traffic congestion, just remember, it could always be worse:

Of course,  remember that there's always something pretty waiting for you around the corner...

Check out this video clip of Lauer interviewing Bush. Note the aggressive body language, the smug dissonance of a lifetime of privilege, the petulant yet threatening dismissals of this little man who deigns question our Dear Decider:

What I find most fascinating about this is Bush’s tacit admission that he, in fact, condones the use of at least one form of illegal and vicious torture – waterboarding – against prisoners of war. In other words, if Lauer were to stare him dead in the eyes and ask whether he condones the use of, say … shoving rabid deermice up the rectums of terrorists in order to glean information, Bush would simply laugh and deny it. I mean, some things are just so beyond the bounds of reason and rationality that Bush would simply call Lauer nuts and dismiss the notion of any truth to such an outrageous accusation.

But, I suppose accusing Bush of waterboarding is not such an outrageous claim after all. I guess it all depends on what you mean by “within the bounds of the law.”

It’s September 12th and I am fed up. Not much surprise there, I usually feel a bit cheeky on this day. I wake up with my annual post-11^th agita and resultant sour taste from the incessantly shrill vitriol of yesterday’s sanctimonious partisanship. This feeling has been particularly pronounced during even-numbered years as election season spins into high gear. To me, yesterday represents my yearly pungent reminder of the pronounced failures of King George the W, yet the MSM keeps enlightening us simple-minded folk about how it actually belongs to our Dear Leader. And post-hoc fallacy be damned, the smug little prince always seems to get a bump in the polls.

Could this year be different? A question I’ve asked for the last five years straight, always to the bitter disappointment of unrealized expectations. Somehow, and I’m not speculating on specifics, Team Red always seems to come out from under the negative press, pulls through the lopsided polling, and nets an October surprise catapulting them into unfathomable victory.

This morning, it’s Disney that’s really cheesing me off. ABC/Disney, despite opposition and sheer human decency, has pushed forward with their disgraceful distortion of 9-11, a vicious, epic-sized, mud-slinging campaign ad donated commercial-free to the American populace at a total cost of $30 million. Recall, if you will, that this is the same company who refused to air Fahrenheit 9-11 because of its ‘lopsided’ political content with one senior executive claiming it was “…not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle.”

Unless that film has the right partisan agenda, of course. So here we are, forced to sit through a mound of lies and distortions so egregious as to raise the ire of key members of the 9-11 commission and other experts, spark threats from entire democratic leadership, a lawsuit from American Airlines, and general disgust from any rational observer who actually possessed higher brain functions and a pulse over the last five years.

Yet I have come to terms with the fact that many – perhaps most – Americans do not exhibit the capacity for critical reasoning. That what we see on television, especially in documentary format, must constitute the truth. And the truth, as Disney tells us, is that 9-11 was Clinton’s fault, Bush is our savior, and if you don’t want to be consumed by a swarm of locusts, you’ll damn well vote Republican in November.

This $30 million gift could not come at a better time. The American public has become tired. Tired of the war, yes, but tired of the lies most of all. We’re tired of waiting for results and having to admit to ourselves, time and again, that those entrusted to operate in our national interest are incompetent and self-serving. More than half of the country can’t think of a single thing they like about the President. Nearly one-third of the country now believes that Bush should be impeached (at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, only 19% believed the same about Clinton).

And Iraq. Oh, Iraq. More than two-thirds believe Iraq is a failed elective war. The hunt for bin Laden has become “stone cold” – truly tragic considering how the admin botched whatever intel they actually had on the guy. The use of torture by the “civilized” United States is now freely and abundantly admitted, and Bush is even secretly attempting to kill the War Crimes Act. Bush dutifully trotted out his pro-Iraq propaganda for us non-believers yesterday, but failed to mention that the precipitous drop in body count last month was because the Pentagon decided to no longer include those killed by car and suicide bombs in the death tally! And this is the man who is going to make us all safer?

Yesterday, I threw together a hasty post on the last five years. But Olbermann treated us to one of the most lucid accounts of Bush’s impeachable offenses to date while adding the following to my list:

Five years later this space is still empty.

 

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

 

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

…

Who has left this hole in the ground?

 

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

 

* pics borrowed from AmericaBlog's "Path to Mickey: The Movie" .

With my book publication deadline looming I am, as usual, swamped with the incessant banality of editing minutia. Had it not been for a brief glimpse at my computer, I might have missed entirely the reminder that today is the fifth anniversary of September 11^th. This is one of those dates each year when I am grateful to live in Europe. Not for any political reason, but simply to spare myself the sometimes painful, sometimes sanctimonious reflections of political hacks trying to somehow categorize the meaning of this catastrophic wound in our national and global identity. But, since I seem to have divinely ordained to be reminded of the date, I will dutifully oblige and scribble down some of my own humble reflections.

It’s been five years since one of the most tragic events ever to transpire on U.S. soil. Five years nearly to the minute as of the time of this writing. Certainly a moment worthy of serious and sobor reflection and not simply a post hastily thrown together during a fleeting break from book editing.

But here I am. And here are we all. Our lives go on and this day serves as a painful reminder of both the atrocity that happened and those yet to come. And yet another sharp reminder that five years later, our elected officials have only made the problem painfully worse.

Five years to the day that a group of criminals, deranged by the twin evils of deprivation and marginalization, embraced destruction against their perceived oppressors. And in five years we have failed to learn the lessons they sought to violently impart and are each and every day convincing our global brothers and sisters that perhaps the terrorists were right about us.

Five years to the day and the United States is directly responsible for the deaths of a minimum of 62,000 people worldwide. Some sources quote as high as 180,000. This says nothing about the collateral damage caused by displacement, destroyed infrastructures, disease, and famine which have cause an additional 4.5 million refuges and cost our country more than the total amount of debt worldwide. Our own initiation of violence has effectively inserted the United States as a causal problem in the creation of thousands new terrorists every. single. day.

Five years to the day and the U.S. foreign policy is in shambles, we’ve allowed ourselves to become consumed with a failed civil war that was initiated through lies, manipulation, and greed. And five years later, our leadership says that we would have invaded Iraq with or without WMDs. Meanwhile, the Taliban are making a daily resurgence in Afghanistan, effectively robbing the world of the single benefit to have come from the administration’s deranged counter-response.

Five years later and we are daily uncovering lies here at home. Every time we bother to pay attention, there is a new report of how the White House manipulated the media coverage and investigation of 9-11. And the administration has yet to effectively respond to credible evidence that the events of five years ago did not go down as officially reported. Please, please answer these questions – I would LOVE to dismiss these rational and educated opinions as mere partisan gibberish.

Five years later and I am scared, frustrated, angry, and cynical. Five years ago, the terrorists robbed us of our innocence in a single clear morning. And in the five years hence, the Bush administration has systematically robbed us of everything else.

BUT…

Five years later and we have all become more educated about the lives and beliefs of our Muslim brothers and sisters.

Five years later and we have become more educated about the region we have invaded.

Five years later, and we are beginning to see that only more death and destruction lay at the end of a violent path and are ready to consider our own complicity in forming a lasting peace.

Five years later and the War for Oil has prompted one of the more marked price jumps in decades and we are finally starting to consider sustainable environmental alternatives.

Five years later and we have shed our naiveté that we somehow transcend the events in the rest of the world.

Five years later, among all this destruction and chaos, the war mongers have not yet robbed us of hope and we are reminded that governments belong to We the People.

Five years later, and we can all look forward to regime change.

I'm taking a bit of a break from Dublin this week to present you with these lovely photos of the Cliffs of Moher from my recent holiday in County Clare (west Ireland). Have a great weekend everyone!!

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot go off your rocker without ever having set your sanctimonious keister anywhere near the damn thing in the first place. So let’s just say that Phelps is blessing us all with yet another heaping spoonful of crazy. Enjoy!

And if that wasn’t enough to brighten your day, for the truly demanding reader I present – kittens in a box of Kleenex!! I mean, honestly … if this doesn’t put a smile on your face ... well, let's just say you have a black lump of bile where your soul oughta be.