Please forgive the repost… I thought it a worthwhile one.

“Torture Memo” Author Used Health Care Statute to Form Legal Basis for Waterboarding

By Jason Leopold, OpEdNews, February 13, 2008

John Yoo, the author of the infamous August 1, 2002 “torture memo” that formed the legal basis for so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques against against high-level terrorist detainees, used a statute governing health benefits when he provided the White House with a legal opinion defining torture, according to a former Justice Department official.

Yoo’s legal opinion stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee results in injury “such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions” than the interrogation technique could not be defined as torture. Waterboarding, a brutal and painful technique in which a prisoner believes he is drowning, therefore was not considered to be torture.

Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, said that Yoo, a former OLC attorney who now teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, arrived at that definition by relying on statute written in 2000 related to health benefits.

“That statute defined an “emergency medical condition” that warranted certain health benefits as a condition “manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain)” such that the absence of immediate medical care might reasonably be thought to result in death, organ failure, or impairment of bodily function,” Goldsmith wrote in his book, “The Terror Presidency.” “The health benefits statute’s use of “severe pain” had no relationship whatsoever to the torture statute. And even if it did, the health benefit statute did not define “severe pain.” Rather it used the term “severe pain” as a sign of an emergency medical condition that, if not treated, might cause organ failure and the like…. OLC’s clumsily definitional arbitrage didn’t seem even in the ballpark.”

Every time an important, a defining, bill has come up for a vote since November 2006, Democrats have made all the right noises, (well, enough right noises anyway) to keep the message flooding the media and beaming into peoples living rooms when they get home from work too tired to think past superficialities about how much different and better they are than republicans.

And everytime they’ve quietly slipped the knife in while the country is sleeping.

Everytime.

But… but… but… they’re better, goddammit!

Better, goddammit. What don’t you get?

Way better, goddammit!

---

I started to write this awhile ago. I got halfway through my literary masterpiece of an introduction and my browser crashed, losing twenty minutes of a disconnected rambling attempt at connection framing that you’d probably be thankful you didn’t have to wade through scratching your head wondering what the hell I was trying to say. So instead I’ll try to be a little more focussed.

This essay is going to be very broad in some ways and very tightly focussed in other ways. It will be about many subjects, and at the same time about one subject. It’ll cover a lot of ground, but later I’ll quote extensively from one very wide ranging study that was conducted late last summer.

On The Bus’s Docudharma Mission Statement opens with:

Passion, politics, poetry, prose and ponies. Silliness, snark and a serious effort to frame the future. A river of words, thought, philosophy and action that nourishes and transforms the political cultural and social landscape through which it passes. That is the spirit behind this “place”.

In practice…write whatever the hell you want!

We get all of that in abundance here, as well as in the larger society that we all reflect.

Lacking concrete evidence to the contrary I think we’re all humans here, each of us a mass of conflicting contradictions, as is the larger society we’re all part of, although some of us I think might be reluctant to include some of the political leadership under the heading “human”. I’ll leave that one dangling there in case anyone else wants to pick up on it, and try to move on here, even though I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. But bear with me, if you will.

Mama told me when I was young

Come sit beside me, my only son

And listen closely to what I say

And if you do this

It will help you some sunny day

Take your time – don’t live too fast

Troubles will come and they will pass

Go find a woman and you’ll find love

And don’t forget son

There is someone up above

(chorus)

And be a simple kind of man

Be something you love and understand

Be a simple kind of man.

Won’t you do this for me son

If you can?

Forget your lust for the rich mans gold

All that you need is in your soul

And you can do this if you try

All that I want for you my son

Is to be satisfied

(chorus)

Boy, don’t you worry – you’ll find yourself

Follow your heart and nothing else

And you can do this if you try

All I want for you my son

Is to be satisfied

This is me. It is where I come from, and it is what I think about often. I posted this essay last October. It was the first essay I posted on DD. Probably not many saw it, so I thought I’d repost it today… since Super Tuesday I think adds a bit of context to it.

Inspired by buhdydharma’s The Big Picture Vol. 2

The End Of The Beginning?

In the nineteen sixties and seventies the western world was in the throes of a cultural and psychological revolution of awareness that at times threatened to bring down the governments and destroy the societies of some of the most powerful countries on earth, and terrified many who were unable to step outside of the structure and limitations of the worldviews they had constructed for themselves in the course of their lives.

Today I am The Decider

Posted by GSMSO at 3:09 AM

(Cross posted from Gold Star Mom Speaks Out)

Today is Super Tuesday. 15 primaries and 5 caucuses will take place in 24 states to determine how more than 2700 delegates will be designated in the presidential campaign.

Today I’ve earned the privilege to make my vote count, to decide who I want to be my president.

Today I am not voting for gender or race.

Today I am not voting because some celebrity told me how to vote.

Today I am the decider.

Today I am voting with hopes that my candidate will end the occupation in Iraq.

Today I am voting to honor those who can no longer vote.

This was posted on OOIBC this morning.

IMO, she says all that needs to be said about the primaries….

Yell. Loud.

Crossposted from Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus

The Beginning of the End

By William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist, Tuesday 29 January 2008

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

– Revelations 8:1, King James Bible

 George W. Bush’s State of the Union (SOTU) speeches have been the basis for a new kind of drinking game for several years now, basically because the things have always needed some kind of actual substance from somewhere, and because it was a good way to dull the pain of it all. The rules: 1. When he says the word “terra” or “terra-ists,” take a drink. 2. When he says “tax cuts,” take a drink. 3. When he says “Iraq,” take a drink. 4. When he says “nook-yuh-lerr,” take a drink and a shot and a good swift kick to the head. Et cetera.

 But that’s just one night out of the year. Reality has proven to be far more alcoholic in nature. For seven years now, the whole phenomenon of this government has been one long drinking game played out each and every day. The rules of this game? 1. Say the words, “George W. Bush is in charge of the country.” 2. Turn off the TV. 3. Just drink.

 Sounds familiar, right? Just about everyone has played that game a time or two by now. We have endured seven Bush SOTU speeches as of last night. Seven years worth of lies, carnage, greed, disgrace, failure, ignominy, calamity heaped upon calamity heaped upon calamity for more than two thousand five hundred days now, with three hundred and fifty seven more days still to go.

 Seven speeches. Seven years.

 No more.

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen.

Aleve is also called Naproxen.

Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra.

After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.

Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer.

It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one.

Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of ‘cocktails’, ‘highballs’ and just a good old-fashioned ‘stiff drink’ . Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.  

This was posted at OOIBC this past Sunday by The Buffalo In The Midst from My Buffalo River Home.

It is one of the saddest, most disgusting and sickest things I have have ever heard of being done to troops in Iraq by their leaders that I can recall. It turns my stomach. I am reposting it here FYI, because I think everyone needs to know this is being done….

Lean Mean (Drugged) Killing Machines – HR3256 Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007

Pentagon’s new lethal weapon

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:55:17

The US Department of Defense’s wide-ranging ‘warfighter enhancement program’ is preparing grounds for the most lethal weapon ever.

Pentagon’s ‘the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007’ puts forward the idea of using different drugs to insulate combat soldiers from the stressful psychological element of killing.

The move not only desensitizes them to the horrendous aspect of war, but also maximizes soldiers’ lethality by bypassing their moral autonomy.

Analyst Penny Coleman criticizes Pentagon’s attempt to peddle magic pills to chase away the horrors of war, saying: “The neurological and genetic re-engineering of soldiers’ minds and bodies is aimed at creating what the Pentagon calls ‘iron bodied and iron willed personnel… tireless, relentless, remorseless, and unstoppable.”

Barry Romo a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, also denounces the plan: “That’s the devil pill, that’s the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That’s the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn’t work, what’s scary is that a young soldier could believe it will.”

SBB/RA

Press-TV (Iran)

More @ Google

Why we are in Iraq. Why Democrats and Republicans are not listening to us.

Peak Oil could trigger meltdown of society

By: Energy Watch Group

Published: Oct 23, 2007

There has been much talk about a possible collapse of the American “empire”, or in more concrete terms, a likely economic collapse with all of the horrors that might be associated with such a collapse.

Virtually all scenarios for such a thing happening are predicated upon the exhaustion of oil and fossil fuel reserves around the world – the loss of the cheap energy needed to keep the US economy humming.

Pluto talks this morning at SanchoPress  about some of the things we’ll have to deal with if replacement energy sources cannot be developed in Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society + My Spin.

The “Washington Consensus”, both Democratic and Republican, seems to be narrowly focussed on only finding ways to appropriate remaining existing supply sources around the world, even on stealing and killing for them – witness the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the resulting deaths of more than a million Iraqis if the 10 years sanctions war is included, which in my view it should be.

So what do we do about it?

Treason for sale

Larisa at-Largely, January 14, 2008

We know that there are a number of Saudi royals sympathetic to the Jihadi cause. We also know that many in the Saudi royal family fund terrorism in general and al Qaeda in particular. We know that the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudi nationals – killing our troops. We know too that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Yet, the US has continued to supply the Saudis with weapons, despite their role as being the world sponsor of terrorism. The latest is as follows:

“RIYADH (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush, trying to counter Iran’s growing military clout, made clear his commitment on Monday to go ahead with a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia as he began his first visit to the Islamic kingdom.

   Just hours after his arrival in Riyadh, the U.S. administration said it notified Congress of its intention to offer the Saudis a controversial package of advanced weaponry as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with Gulf Arab allies.”

Sorry? If I recall we were fighting a war on terror and yet we are providing advanced weapons to the terrorists? How the hell is this not treason? Seriously, I want a Constitutional scholar to tell me how this is not treason. The Saudi regime may be Bush’s ally in the mythical war on terra, but they are no ally of the US, and they are certainly no ally of Israel or or India, or to any other democracy in the world.

Oh did I mention what types of weapons we will be handing to the Saudis? Our deal includes – sit down now – Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits.

Let’s hear a big round of applause for George W. Bush and his idiot supporters….