Daughter Of Darkness, Defeated Decisively

I have to admit, I was wrong about GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's Wyoming primary. I thought she was going to lose by 15-20 points in an embarrassing collapse of her political career, crucified by Wyoming GOP voters and Donald Trump as revenge for her role in his impeachment and as co-chair of the House January 6th Committee. But I was wrong.

 

She lost by 37 points instead. 

Trump and his allies have spent the spring and summer turning Republican primaries across the political map into bitter fights in which loyalty to the former President was the central factor.

He lost some high-profile battles, including in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held off Trump-back challengers. 

But in most open-seat races, Trump's candidates triumphed. And on Tuesday in Wyoming, Trump, who had endorsed Hageman on the day she entered the race against Cheney, claimed his biggest victory yet. 

Cheney is now the eighth of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol to exit the House. Four have opted not to seek reelection, and four more have lost GOP primaries. 

In the lead-up to Tuesday's primary, Cheney insisted she was trying to win. 

But her strategy -- attempting to convince the Republican electorate in a state the former President won by a margin of 43 percentage points in 2020 to turn on him -- suggests she'd made a different choice: to go down swinging. 

She infuriated Republicans by urging Wyoming Democrats and unaffiliated voters to switch their party registration and vote in Tuesday's GOP primary. 

Surrounded by US Capitol Police officers on the campaign trail, Cheney opted for small, private events over rallies. She lambasted Trump in television interviews. 

Her campaign's closing message was a TV ad featuring her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, calling Trump a "coward" who lies to his supporters and "tried to steal the last election" using violence. 

Her election night event, on a ranch in Jackson Hole with the sun setting over the Grand Tetons in the background, didn't feature any television screens for supporters to watch results tabulated in a race Cheney was all but certain to lose. 

She told supporters that she could have cozied up to Trump and did what she'd done in the primary two years earlier: win with 73% of the vote. 

"That was a path I could not and would not take," Cheney said. "No House seat, no office in this land, is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect. And I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty." 

 

She went down swinging, she stuck to her guns, yes. But as I said last night on Twitter:

 

The lesson from Wyoming tonight is that Republican primary voters, given a choice between the lesser of two evils, jammed on the “Greater Evil” button like it dispensed cocaine and shrimp pad thai.

— Miscellaneous Top Zandar Documents (@ZandarVTS) August 17, 2022

 

She refused to go along with Trump's lie and was butchered for it. But the GOP primary voters in Wyoming were more than happy to break out the long knives. Republicans don't want principles, or duty, or anything of the sort. They want bloody vengeance against Democrats and their voters, and they want to elect people who will destroy their "enemies" and who will permit them to join in the lynchings. 

There were never "good" Republicans left.  Hell, there aren't even sane ones left. Trying to "save" this party is a fool's errand because there's no saving it. Last night proved that. There are no good Republicans left.

Just inchoate rage goblins.

That includes Liz Cheney.

 

The three-term congresswoman has not said what her next political move will be -- including whether she'll run for president in 2024 as a foil for Trump. 

But she used her speech to preview a continued fight against Trump, without laying out exactly what that means. 

"I have said since January 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and I mean it. This is a fight for all of us, together," she said. 

"I'm a conservative Republican. ... But I love my country more. So I ask you tonight to join me: As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together, Republicans, Democrats and independents, against those who would destroy our republic." 

As she left the stage, Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" blared over the event's speakers.

 

Stopping Trump would mean electing Democrats, not finding Republican alternatives who will be purged from the party and left in piles of politically irrelevant smoking wreckage, conning the rubes into giving them money.

 

Guess which road  Cheney will take?

No, don't feel bad for her. The answer, as it has always been in the last several decades, is vote Blue.

The Defense Of The Republic

All ten living ex-Secretaries of Defense, including Republicans Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Chuck Hagel, Mark Esper, and Jim Mattis, have signed onto an op-ed warning current acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller that the election is over, and that the US military cannot be used for whatever Trump may be planning in the coup department.

The U.S. presidential election, and the time for questioning its results, are over, all 10 living former secretaries of defense wrote in a forceful op-ed published on Sunday.

"Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted," the 10 men from both Republican and Democratic administrations wrote.

"The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived," they said.

The bipartisan group of leaders published the letter in The Washington Post as President Trump continues to deny his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. On Saturday, during a one-hour phone call, Trump even pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes to overturn his defeat.

Former Secretaries of Defense Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld signed the opinion piece.

Two Pentagon heads who served under Trump — Jim Mattis and Mark Esper — also signed it. Trump removed Esper in November as part of a major shakeup at the Department of Defense.

The op-ed comes as some Republican lawmakers in Congress plan this week to formally object to the certification of the Nov. 3 presidential election results.

Since the vote, Trump and his attorneys have repeatedly asserted false claims of voter fraud and blamed, without evidence, that his loss to Biden was due to widespread irregularities. But his insistence that the election was stolen has led to some speculation he could somehow use the military to remain in office past Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.

The 10 signatories made it clear that any effort to involve U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take the country "into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory."

They wrote, "Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Former Defense Secretary Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, wrote on Twitter that the idea for the statement originated with Cheney, a Republican who served under President George W. Bush as vice president and President George H.W. Bush as secretary of defense.

"Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party," Perry tweeted, reiterating the op-ed's lines.

 

We're really to this point, folks. 

 

Understand that war criminals like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't be saying a word about this if they didn't believe there was a credible chance that Trump would resort to using the US military in a coup d'etat. To me, that means Trump has certainly called them and asked them about the possibility already, and this is their very public response.

Mark Esper signing this means that he believes the threat is real, because, again, he was almost certainly asked to do this. Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Imagine the phone call recorded Saturday by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and do the math from there.

 

Trump isn't fundraising, guys. He's trying to stay in power through whatever means necessary. Just because the coup attempt is ham-handed and obvious doesn't mean that it's not a serious and dangerous one if enough enablers allow it to happen. 

 

Eric Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary of Defense for George W. Bush who endorsed Biden for president, said he organized the letter after talking to Cheney.

“I talk periodically to Cheney,” Edelman recalled in an interview Sunday. “This summer, when I was starting to get ready to help organize the national security Republicans who endorsed Biden, along with Sean O'Keefe, who was [Cheney’s] secretary of the Navy … I was talking to him about this on and off and expressing my concerns about Trump, much of which he shared.”

“When the David Ignatius piece came out,” Edelman continued, "that was alarming. It was not inconsistent with conversations I had with Esper after he resigned, in term of concerns about what might be going on with this clown car of people that they’ve got over there around Miller.

“When you are a former senior official, people you know are still there, you hear stuff,” he added. “I'd heard things that were eerily similar to what was in the Ignatius column.”

 

I said last month that Trump was gathering civilian Pentagon officials who wanted him to use the Insurrection Act to overturn the election. It's well past time we start taking that seriously.

 

Deadly seriously. 

A Pence-ive Escape Plan

Mike Pence, doomed to be the final traitorous villain in Trump's downfall, is hoping that if he runs away in the final two weeks of his term that the Trump cultists will forget who he is.

On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Then he’ll likely skip town.

As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding over the session of Congress that will formalize Biden’s Electoral College victory — a development that is likely to expose him and other Republicans to the wrath of GOP voters who believe President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him.

But Pence could dodge their ire by leaving Washington immediately for the Middle East and Europe. According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6.

Though Pence aides declined to confirm details of the trip, which remains tentative, a U.S. government document seen by POLITICO shows the vice president is due to travel to Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the possibility of more stops being added. A pre-advance team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials left earlier this week to visit the planned stops in preparation for the multicountry tour, which would be Pence’s first trip abroad since last January, when he traveled to Rome and Jerusalem on a whirlwind two-day sojourn.

On the surface, the trip is part of a push to underscore the Trump administration’s role in brokering a series of diplomatic agreements to normalize relations between Israel and a handful of Arab countries, including Bahrain. But for Pence, visiting these countries is also a way to bolster already-strong credentials with the Christian right, which strongly supports Israel. And it allows Pence — once again — to put distance between himself and Trump’s complaints about the election outcome that are likely to intensify after Congress affirms Biden’s win.

It’s a tactic Pence has used to navigate the final days of Trump’s presidency: stay out of the spotlight and insulate himself from his boss’s baseless election-fraud crusade, all while still finding ways to burnish his own credentials and technically toe the party line.

Pence has promoted Trump in his work as head of the government’s coronavirus task force and while boosting two GOP Senate candidates facing runoff races in Georgia. But he’s declined to publicize his minimal involvement in the president’s election-fraud strategy. And while he has privately assisted the Trump campaign when asked — joining donor calls and lending his signature to fundraising pleas — his public comments since the election have almost all centered on other topics, including hosting an event focused on the Trump administration's anti-abortion policy at the White House on Wednesday.

“I suspect the timing is anything but coincidental,” one Pence ally said of his tentative travel plans.

 

I have no sympathy for the guy, and I'm actually glad to see that like the previous two Republican Veeps we've had, his political career is essentially over and he has no shot at the Oval Office. Granted, both Quayle and Cheney are making bank in the private sector these days, and I'm sure Pence will go back to Indiana and join a legal firm or stay in DC as a venture capital outfit lobbyist, but what I'd like to see is Pence end up in Leavenworth instead.

What he won't do is run for office again.  He'll be primaried out of existence if the tries, and he knows it. Trump's boundless capacity for retribution will see to that.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

 

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Robert Mueller's flip of two of Trump's biggest fixers, Michael Cohen and George Nader, are the gifts that keep on giving (and we know Rick Gates continues to provide information too).  We've yet to see the real fruits of these efforts but they are coming, Cohen has led to the Trump Organization case currently being run by the AG of New York's office, and Nader's turn has led to some major international players.

On that last front, now we're learning that Nader is leading us to back to the Trump transition team and Republican operatives who are now in boatloads of trouble, starting with Dick Cheney's former national security aide, John Hannah.

Dick Cheney’s former top national-security aide has come under scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, two people with knowledge of the probe tell The Daily Beast. It’s the latest sign that Mueller’s probe has expanded beyond the narrow bounds of Russian interference in American politics.

Mueller’s team has been looking into the communications and political dealings of John Hannah, the former Cheney adviser who later worked on Trump’s State Department transition team. This includes interactions with Lebanese-American businessman and fixer George Nader, who brokered meetings between foreign dignitaries and Team Trump, and Joel Zamel, a self-proclaimed social-media guru with deep ties to Israeli intelligence. The Daily Beast previously reported that the three men met with a top Saudi general in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration to discuss plans to undermine and overthrow the government of Iran.

Hannah, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, is close with Nader and Zamel, both of whom the special counsel has questioned, according to two people with knowledge of those relationships. Hannah is listed on the website of one of Zamel’s firms, Wikistrat, as a member of its advisory council. Nader worked with Hannah on Iraq policy during the George W. Bush administration, according to four people who worked with the two or who knew of their interactions during the war. Hannah is now a senior counselor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank known for its criticism of the Iranian regime.

Hannah and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The Special Counsel’s Office declined to comment. A representative for Nader declined to comment. And a lawyer for Zamel did not respond to requests for comment.

Nader and Zamel have both been questioned by the Special Counsel’s Office and are reportedly cooperating with its probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Nader has been questioned about his ties to high-level officials in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, his relationship with Zamel, and his interactions with the Trump campaign. Mueller has questioned Zamel about his role pitching top campaign officials on an influence operation to help Trump win the election—which could have broken federal election laws.

Mueller’s interest in Hannah’s communications and interactions with the two suggest the special counsel’s probe is broader than previously understood.

“Mueller might be opening another front here,” said John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the CIA. “His mandate is to examine Russian collusion, but there’s the clause in his mandate that’s very open-ended—to the effect of ‘and any associated matters.’ It could be a separate line of inquiry about efforts to influence the election by foreigners.”

Everyone is expecting more indictments soon.  They could come at any time, but my experience tells me Mueller likes to ruin people's weekends on Friday afternoons.

We'll see.

The Irreverent Revenant Is Resurgently Relevant

All this talk of Trump's CIA head pick, former 9/11-era torture maven Gina Haspel, and her disastrous confirmation hearing yesterday (so bad in fact that John McCain has turned on her) has had the effect of re-engaging the "debate" of whether or not torturing people is a good idea, and by "debate" I mean the Nameless One has risen from the Void and hungers once more.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. should restart its enhanced interrogation techniques — often considered torture — after the issue was thrust to the forefront during Gina Haspel’s confirmation fight to become CIA director.

Yeah, that first sentence is a piece of work by the way.  Thanks, Politico.

 

“If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” he said in an interview that aired Thursday morning on Fox Business. “I’d have them active and ready to go, and I’d go back and study them and learn.”

And feed on their souuuuuuuls.

Cheney has long defended the post-9/11 tactics even as the national climate shifted over the years. Congress has since banned them. 

“I think the techniques we used were not torture. A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn’t deemed torture at the time,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “People want to go back and try to rewrite history, but if it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Just a friendly reminder that the GOP was awful and repugnant well before Trump, and white people put them back in power anyway.

Haspel, the acting director, faced a barrage of Democratic questions on the morality of techniques like waterboarding at her Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday. She oversaw a secret CIA facility in Thailand where two suspected terrorists were subject to them — one on her watch — in 2002 and later pushed for the destruction of tapes of the interrogations.

That should have been the end of Haspel's career.  Alas, it was not.

“I think she’d be a great CIA director,” Cheney said. “I think she’s done a great job in terms of the career she’s built, and the people I know at the agency are very enthusiastic about having one of their own, so to speak, in the driver’s seat at the CIA.”

I bet they are.  Hey listen, "Dick Cheney thinks this is a good idea" should be a pretty big disqualifier for everything, but in the Trump era it's a bonus!

By my math, McCain and Manchin are trading places, so Haspel will still get 51 votes and probably more.  If I'm Rand Paul, I'm calling Susan Collins and seeing what I can get out of the White House while I can.

Last Call For Invasion Of The Liz's People

Don't look now, but it appears that the House in 2017 will include the reprehensible Liz Cheney as she zeroes in on her father's former Wyoming House seat. You didn't think America would ever be free of the scourge of the Cheney political family, did you? 

Liz Cheney isn’t giving up.

After stumbling in her bid to become a senator in 2014, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney was back making the rounds at the Wyoming Republican Party’s state convention in hopes of becoming the state’s sole member in the House of Representatives. In a year when anti-establishment fervor is at a peak, Cheney is balancing the benefits and burdens of her famous last name.

“Not everybody likes Dick Cheney, I don’t know if you know that or not,” Cheney told the audience of Wyoming Republicans, when one inquired about the former Vice President’s health. “He’s doing great, thanks for asking,” she answered, adding he’s spending much of his time driving her daughter Grace to rodeos in the state. Continuing the story, Cheney said another child once taunted her daughter about her grandfather.

“Gracie didn’t miss a beat,” Cheney retold, speaking at a luncheon she sponsored for delegates to the state’s GOP convention. “She said that kid doesn’t know anything—he drives a Prius.” The line drew guffaws among the Republicans in the energy-heavy state.

Politics for the Cheneys is a family affair. The former Vice President held the seat she hopes to occupy for a decade in the 1980s. Liz Cheney’s children, including Grace—who skipped a rodeo to come—worked the convention in matching t-shirts and hats, handing out pamphlets and stickers to delegates.

Cheney’s first effort at statewide office—a primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi—ended before a single vote was cast. Branded by some as a carpetbagger (she lived in Virginia and worked in Washington, but grew up in Wyoming), Cheney’s decision to run against a member of her own party rubbed many Republicans the wrong way.

But whatever bitterness was there has since subsided, as Cheney has barnstormed the state. She is now the front-runner to replace Rep. Cynthia Lummis, facing off against as many as 10 GOP rivals in the state’s Aug 16 primary. On Friday, Cheney reported raising more than $730,000 for her effort since she launched her campaign in February—far out-raising her chief rivals—with more than $600,000 on hand. Her campaign bragged that “she didn’t accept one dollar of PAC money from Washington, D.C.”

Plenty of political families have existed in American history like this.  Few, outside maybe the Bush family, have done as much damage to the country as the Cheneys.  Now it looks like Liz will win the seat that got her father's awful career jump-started nearly 40 years ago.

How much damage will she end up doing?  We'll find out.

Last Call For Lies, Dirty Lies, And Cheney Lies

If there's one person who lacks any and all reliability and credibility on US foreign policy matters, it's former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is desperately trying to remain relevant by directly attacking President Obama's nuclear deal on Iran.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney launched a broad attack against President Barack Obama's foreign policy in an excerpt of a forthcoming book that was published in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Both Cheneys accused Obama of lying about the Iran nuclear deal and said that the agreement would lead to the first use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.

"Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal," they wrote. "The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

The Obama administration has aggressively defended the deal, saying that it cuts off all pathways to a nuclear bomb. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that a better deal simply does not exist.

The Cheneys also blamed the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 -- a talking point that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bushhas also used.

"He has abandoned Iraq, leaving a vacuum that is being tragically and ominously filled by our enemies. He is on course to forsake Afghanistan as well," the Cheneys wrote.

This would be laughable if this wasn't the same line of "mushroom cloud" garbage that was fed to the American people about Iraq, which caused us to invade and cost trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of civilian lives, and thousands of American soldiers.  Now he's saying the same thing about Iran.  The guy should be laughed out of the room.

Instead he's in the Wall Street Journal and on a book tour.

Amazing.  Even with the hindsight of the Iraq disaster, he's still out there pitching the same outright lies and of all things, accusing the President of misleading the American people.  This guy.

Why isn't he in prison?

I know, I know, Obama said we need to look forward.  But this is one time I wish the guy would have been vindictive as hell and put him and his boss in the slammer.

The Best Case For The Iran Nuclear Deal...

...is the fact that warmonger and generally awful supervillain prototype Dick Cheney is speaking out against any agreement with Iran and is trying to undermine this president once again,

Dick Cheney will speak out against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran during a speech next month at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 

According to an AEI news release, the former vice president will share his concerns about the deal’s “consequences for the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.”

In July, Cheney said on Fox News that the deal would make the use of nuclear weapons more likely. 

“What Obama has done has, in effect, sanctioned the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a matter of months until we’re going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability,” he said. “And that will, in fact, I think put us closer to use — actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.” 

Cheney will speak on Sept. 8 — just a week ahead of the Sept. 17 deadline for Congress to vote on the deal’s authorization.

The guy behind lying us into a war with Iraq wants us to go to war with Iran.

That's all I need to dispel any doubts I may have ever had about this Iran nuclear agreement and that it's a massive win for the US, the world, and President Obama.

What possible credibility on foreign policy issues does this madman have?  He should be giving this speech at a federal prison, not a think tank.  By all means, Dick, let's have you on America's teevee screens to remind us once again what another four years of insane Republican rule will bring in 2017: hundreds of thousands of US troops fighting and dying for another massive lie in yet another idiotic war in the Middle East.

Please proceed, Dick.

Meawhile at Dick's House

America may love torturing brown people, but there are still some of us who remember that Dick Cheney and his buddies should be in prison on war crimes charges about now.

Two protesters were arrested at the McLean, Virginia, home of former Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday after 20 demonstrators, some in orange prison jumpsuits, walked onto his property to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay prison.

The protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink walked up to the house before police arrived and asked them to leave, said Fairfax County police spokesman Roger Henriquez. Two members who refused to go were arrested on trespassing charges, he said.

Police identified the two as Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, both of Washington DC. The pair face misdemeanor charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct, police said.

Another Code Pink group demonstrated without incident outside the home of CIA Director John Brennan, also in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, as part of its "Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour."

I don't agree with everything Code Pink does, but harassing the hell out of Cheney?  Go right ahead, ladies.  In a fair and just world he'd be in prison anyhow.

Time For Torture Trials

The NY Times on Sunday called for the investigation and if necessary, prosecution of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his crew of merry inquisitors over the CIA's torture program.

The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president.

But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.

One would expect Republicans who have gone hoarse braying about Mr. Obama’s executive overreach to be the first to demand accountability, but with one notable exception, Senator John McCain, they have either fallen silent or actively defended the indefensible. They cannot even point to any results: Contrary to repeated claims by the C.I.A., the report concluded that “at no time” did any of these techniques yield intelligence that averted a terror attack. And at least 26 detainees were later determined to have been “wrongfully held.”

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

Sadly, the American people are perfectly fine with torture and see it as an American value.  Hell, a majority of Americans say the torture report should have never seen the light of day.  And no, nobody will ever be held accountable for this.  As long as the CIA can bleat "We saved American lives" then we don't care and we don't want to know what Cheney and his ghouls did in order to "get actionable intelligence".

The Times is shouting into a hurricane.

Last Call For YayTeam Torture!

So, how did America react to the Senate torture report?   Well, I certainly got a chuckle out of Fox News host Andrea Tantaros proclaiming that torture made America "awesome" and all, but the problem is that's exactly what America thinks.

Six in 10 Americans say the CIA’s treatment of suspected terrorists was justified, more than half think it produced important, unique intelligence – and 52 percent say it was wrong for the Senate Intelligence Committee to issue a report suggesting otherwise. 

Those results in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll underscore the public’s sense of risk from the threat of terrorism, and specifically the extent to which majorities support controversial measures to combat it. Indeed just two in 10 flatly rule out torture in future cases. 

A plurality, 49 percent, believes the CIA did in fact torture suspected terrorists; 38 percent think its actions did not amount to torture, with the rest unsure. Regardless, the public by a broad 59-31 percent also says the agency’s interrogation actions were justified. 

One reason is that 53 percent think these interrogations produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way. Just 31 percent reject this claim, a focus of the recent debate.

So yeah, solid majorities in favor of "enhanced interrogation techniques" because they work, and got us intelligence we could not have otherwise gotten, and that the Senate Democrats should never have released the report at all.

47% found the report unfair to the CIA, and 57% think there should be no charges against those responsible (only 1 in 3 want to see prosecution.)  Hell, even 46% of self-identified liberals and 46% of registered Democrats believe the CIA actions were justified.

The majority of the country is no different from Dick Cheney in this respect.  Some 13 years after 9/11, we're still a nation of bloodthirsty monsters. Politically this issue is a loser for team D and they know it, and you'd better believe we'll hear over the next two years how those weak, Neville Chamberlain liberals should never be allowed to be in charge of foreign policy anymore.

Yay Team Torture!  America is firmly a charter member, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.

Last Call For Done In Our Name

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Bush/Cheney era torture of detainees by the CIA is out, and it details nothing short of absolutely Inquisition levels of physical and mental torture.

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”

The report also suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The committee obtained a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water at the prison in Afghanistan commonly known as the Salt Pit — a facility where the C.I.A. had claimed that waterboarding was never used. One clandestine officer described the prison as a “dungeon,” and another said that some prisoners there “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

And surprise!  Dick Cheney lied out of his ass about this program too.  Torture provided no useful, actionable intelligence whatsoever, but we did it anyway, and we kept doing it.

Monstrous.  Heads should roll for this, but of course they won't.

The release of the Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques prompted the Justice Department to say that it stands by its decision not to bring criminal charges after its own probe five years ago. "That review generated two criminal investigations, but the Department of Justice ultimately declined those cases for prosecution, because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain convictions beyond a reasonable doubt," the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Oh well.  I guess that's that then.

Gitmo will remain open and CIA black sites will continue to hold detainees infinitely and nobody will ever be responsible for what was done in our name.

But the report dumps it all on the CIA, and not of course Bush/Cheney.  So we'll hear some paeans to "reform" and nothing will happen, and all this will happen again, if it's not happening now.

Same as it ever was.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page:

No, not linking to the story.  This story can go to hell, and Dick Cheney along with it.

Last Call For Nameless Helpers

Dick Cheney is not only not in a small cell, he's giving the House GOP election advice.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will meet with House Republicans on Tuesday, according to a Politico report.

A source told Politico that Cheney will talk about the midterm elections and "highlight the importance of keeping a GOP House majority."

The Huffington Post and CNN confirmed that Cheney will address the House GOP.

To recap, President Obama, horrible albatross on his party.  Dick Cheney, trusted party statesman and adviser.

America, you've lost your way.

Last Call For The Nameless Bunch

Team Cheney's Rehabilitation Breakfast and War Criminal Fete, courtesy of Politico, was simply too much for Chuck Pierce to take as he righteously savages everyone involved in this festering mountain of stupid.

Its puerilty has finally crossed over into indecency. Its triviality has finally crossed over into obscenity. The comical political starfcking that is its primary raison d'erp has finally crossed over into $10 meth-whoring on the Singapore docks. Once a mere surface irritation, Tiger Beat On The Potomac has finally crossed over into being a thickly pustulating chancre on the craft of journalism. It has demonstrated its essential worthlessness. It has demonstrated that it has the moral character of a sea-slug and the professional conscience of the Treponema pallidum spirochete. Trust me. Stephen Glass never sunk this low. Mike (Payola) Allen has accomplished the impossible. He's made Jayson Blair look like Ernie Pyle. 

It's not just that TBOTP invited the Manson Family of American geopolitics to come together for an exercise in ensemble prevarication. It's not just that the account of said exercise is written in the kind of cacophonous cutesy-poo necessary to drown out the screams of the innocent dead, and to distract the assembled crowd from the blood that has dripped from the wallet of the celebrity war-criminal leading the public display. And it's not as though this was a mere interview—a "get" that could help you "win the morning (!)." In that, it might have been marginally excusable. No, this was one of Mike Allen's little grift-o-rama special events—a "Playbook lunch," sponsored by that noted mortgage fraud concern Bank Of America. There's an upcoming TBOTP "event" in L.A. that is sponsored by J.P. Morgan. I know what Mike Allen is, but I am so goddamn tired of haggling about the price.

And it gloriously goes on from there.  As Pierce reminds us, Dick Cheney happily botched 9/11, then used it to personally enrich himself and his friends at the cost of thousands of US troops, millions of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and trillions of bucks.  The guy should be in a hole.  Instead, he gets meet and greets.

Dick Cheney is everything wrong with American politics, and Politico is everything wrong with political journalism.  Of course they deserve each other.

Last Call For Nameless Nonsense

Dick Cheney, who should frankly be behind bars somewhere, still gets to go on TV and all but call the President a traitor for not re-invading Iraq.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Cheney was asked about his scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Obama for withdrawing troops from Iraq and failing to adopt a more muscular foreign policy in response to the crisis in the Middle East.

“In this op-ed, you suggest the president is a fool,” reporter Jon Karl said, “That is the word you used, ‘only a fool would take the approach he’s taking in Iraq right now.’” “It almost seems like you’re accusing the president of treason, that he’s intentionally bringing America ‘down a notch.’”

Without denying that he was questioning Obama’s intentions or dismissing the premise of Karl’s question, Cheney reiterated his criticism of the president for leaving “a big vacuum” in the entire Middle East, failing to recognize the terrorist threat, and limiting “the capability of future presidents to combat crises” by trimming military spending. Cheney ended his answer by stressing that he doesn’t “intend any disrespect for the president.”

"I won't say he isn't a traitor, but I intend no disrespect to that one".  Sure. Dick.

By the way, a Republican party who has no shame in parading a war criminal like Cheney on national TV to attack the president would certainly choose to invade Iraq, Iran, Syria, and everywhere else if they get the White House and the Senate back, yes?  So they can send your kids to die for their oil money?

But you'll vote Republican anyway or stay home in November.  Good job on that, America.

Army Of Madness

Nothing good is going to come from this, folks.  Nothing good at all, especially for the people of Iraq.

It had been quite the morning for Jamli Umm Saif, a mother of four. After morning prayers on Saturday, she sent off her husband and eldest son to join a military parade by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia run by the populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Then she rang up her girlfriends, and told them to come watch the parade wearing white shrouds draped over their black chadors, as a sign that they too, the women of the Mahdi Army, were ready for martyrdom.

“Yes, we are women,” said Umm Saif, a nickname meaning “mother of Saif,” giggling from behind her black face cover. “But don’t be mistaken. We can fight too. We will all fight.”

Here in the Shiite heartland of Iraq, volunteers have revived battalions of the Mahdi Army, one of the dominant groups preparing for battle following the call for a “defensive jihad” June 13 by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the highest authorities in the Shiite faith.

From the sidelines of the parade on a main street in Najaf, Umm Saif, 47, and her friends waved green flags, one of the colors of Shiite Islam, as their men marched by the thousands, singing in support of Mr. Sadr.

The cleric himself, who only recently returned from Iran, where he is studying theology, was not present, but his “army,” which he had disbanded in 2008, seemed to be back in full strength.

The long-predicted sectarian civil war in Iraq is back, and we bear the responsibility for giving birth to it.  There's also nothing that we can do militarily that won't make this worse and won't cause more deaths than lives it might save.

But the match that lit this powder keg?  That was in Bush and Cheney's grubby little hands.

Meanwhile, Back At Castle Nameless

I see the Nameless One and his spawn have dredged themselves up from the depths of the earth's mantle in order to advocate for more war crimes in the Wall Street Journal while passing the blame for their own actions onto President Obama because he hates America or something.  You know, unlike the guy that lied us into a ten-year war.

As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. "If a J.V. team puts on Lakers' uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant" (January 2014). "[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated" (August 2013). "So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding" (September 2011).

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is "ending" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America's enemies are not "decimated." They are emboldened and on the march.

Yes, Dick and Liz actually wrote these words after faking intelligence to illegally gin up a case for an illegal war that was 100% based in falsehood, killed hundreds of thousands, and cost us trillions of dollars.  These two accusing Obama of being wrong should be done so from insude a very, very, very small prison cell.

When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge. Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Actually, after we spent nearly eight years murdering the hell out of the Iraqi people, they told us to get the hell out of their country and to not come back.  Because it was their country, and that they didn't give us a choice, we left.  I'm sure Cheney would have just invaded again and hit the magic regime change button a second time, which totally would have solved the problem.

But hey, war criminal gets to write op-ed in WSJ.  WaPo's Paul Waldman destroys Chaney quite handily.

When it comes to being wrong about Iraq, Dick Cheney has been in a class by himself. It was Cheney who said, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” 

It was Cheney who said: “it’s been pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta “did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service.” 

It was Cheney who said: “we do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam Hussein] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon” 

It was Cheney who said in 2005: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” 

All those things, and many more, were false. There is not a single person in America — not Bill Kristol, not Paul Wolfowitz, not Don Rumsfeld, no pundit, not even President Bush himself — there is no one who has been more wrong and more shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney.

Dear Dick:

You were wrong about everything in Iraq, and you will always be remembered as the worst veep this country ever had.

Signed,
Your Friend,

History

The Best Free Speech Money Can Buy

This is how our politics works in the post-Citizens United era:  super wealthy casino mogul Sheldon Adelson spent $92 million on the GOP in 2012 and feels he is entitled to purchase the Republican candidate (and President) in 2016.  As such, Republican hopefuls flocked to kiss his ring this weekend as he hosts the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual convention.

Several prospective Republican presidential candidates have gathered in Las Vegas for the opening round of what has been dubbed “the Sheldon Primary,” an event emblematic of how warped the system for financing presidential elections has become.

The Sheldon Primary is named for Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy casino owner who, with his wife, poured more than $92 million into the 2012 elections. Despite all that money, Adelson made some bad bets in the last election, first on former House speaker Newt Gingrich to win the Republican nomination and then on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama in the general election.

He is now looking toward 2016 with a fresh eye, determined, according to The Post’s Matea Gold and Philip Rucker, to find a non-extremist candidate who can actually win the presidency. Those who are looking at running would be happy to have that kind of financial support. Some of them have come to Las Vegas on Friday for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, but also to meet privately with Adelson.

Adelson has become a symbol of the new system of financing presidential elections. He and others play under legal rules. But this new financing structure has had a corrosive effect on public confidence in government and politicians. It is why so many Americans feel shut out of the process.

One trained seal barking for cash this weekend at So You Want To Be President is Ohio's own governor, John Kasich.

Gov. John Kasich can say all he wants that he isn’t interested in running for president. Yet here he is this weekend, along with a few others whose national ambitions are far less ambiguous, rubbing elbows with top donors.

Kasich delivered the luncheon keynote Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring conference, held at casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s opulent spread on the strip.

“All the things we believe in? They work,” Kasich told a ballroom crowd of about 300.

They're all here, because Adelson owns every single one of them.

Besides Kasich, the list of Saturday speakers included New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador.

Jeb Bush the former governor of Florida, headlined a private dinner for upper-level RJC donors Thursday evening. And former Vice President Dick Cheney will speak Saturday evening over dinner. There are plenty of other faces familiar to political junkies, too, including Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under President George W. Bush.

All of them are auditioning to Adelson.  What GOP voters actually want, Adelson will tell them.  $100 million is chump change to a guy worth tens of billions.

Don't Care How, I Want It Now!

Liz Cheney is apparently not going to get that Senate seat in Wyoming after all.

Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN late Sunday.

Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.

Cheney's surprising decision to jump into the race, an announcement made in a YouTube video last summer, roiled Republican politics in the Wyoming, a state Dick Cheney represented in Congress for five terms before moving up the Republican food chain in Washington.

Enzi was a low-key presence in Washington who was elected in 1996 and, with few blemishes, amassed a conservative voting record in the Senate. He expressed public annoyance at Cheney's decision to mount a primary challenge. A number of his Senate colleagues quickly rallied to his side and pledged support for his re-election bid.

There was little public polling of the race, but two partisan polls released last year showed Enzi with a wide lead, an assessment mostly shared by GOP insiders watching the race.

Pretty sure this call has nothing to do with the Tea Party vs. GOP leadership scuffle, and everything to do with Liz Cheney being a horrible person, even by Republican standards.  She's so bad in fact that all indications are she would have lost her primary by something like 50 points.  She stomped in and demanded Daddy buy her a Senate seat, and this is what happened:

She was a bad egg, as the man says.  And not even Daddy is going to throw good money after bad rubbish.

Bye-bye, Liz!