Just quoting myself......

It was a few weeks ago that I pointed out that the only real commodity that matters in the world is consensus. After all the value of money only exists because we all agree to value it. The chain of command in a military heirarchy only exists because everyone agrees to obey it. Our Constitution has only survived because we all agree to honor it. These instiitutions have tons more power than we give them credit for.

This is why the battle for "hearts and minds" is so important and it's also why the "moral high ground" and "rule of law" that we've so blatantly abandoned when the going got rough needs to be reclaimed.

Digby's turn again.

Yes, it has had widespread political implications, political implications predicted by many, many of us who could see that sending a bunch of Americans into the heart of the middle east with no knowledge of the culture, a lie for a mission, an officer corps convinced that Arabs were primitive creatures who had to be subdued by brute force and sexual humiliation and a political leadership that lived on starry-eyed dreams of American omnipotence and high-tech fairy dust --- was a colossal mistake of epic proportions.

It was all there for people to see. Seymour Hersh saw it and he was called a terrorist by Richard Perle. That was par for the course.
link

Here's an extremely pertinent quote from Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift when he was on Hardball last week.

SWIFT: It‘s not whether they deserve it or not. It‘s how we conduct ourselves. It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we‘ve lost who we are. We‘re the good guys. We‘re the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do. It‘s what sets us apart. It‘s what makes us great and in my mind, it‘s what makes us undefeatable, ultimately.

I find the fact that we're even having a discussion about torture, let alone that some people are coming out in favor, profoundly troubling. When we have become our enemy, then we no longer have the standing to attack the enemy. What next? A debate on the efficacy of beheadings in discouraging crime in cities?

here's the link

I liked my comment on Glenn's site so much, I posted it here too.

PS. Does this mean killing has now been sanctioned by the left?

Shooter's epiphany reveals a lot about how the right wing mind works in general.

He just can't get it through his head that there's a difference between legitimate self defense and wanton aggression.
He can't understand that there's a difference between taking prisoners in a field of battle and interrogating them vs sticking light wands up their asses just for yucks.
He doesn't realize that there's a difference between a joke based on the premise that the president is an idiot vs one based on the premise that 50% of the nation are traitors against the other 50%.
And lastly, he doesn't understand that there's a difference between using wiretap technology to detect and thwart those who would do us harm following the procedures set in place for the purpose vs. giving one agency carte blanche over the entire US communication infrastrusture and telling them to "have at it!"

Digby wins the "irresistable quote of the day"

Whether Rove cut a deal or Fitz just couldn't make a case for those two crimes is unknown. What is not unknown is whether Rove is a lying, scumbag piece of shit. He is.


Link here

Digby

The right specializes in schoolyard taunts and sleazy gossip because they must attract the stupid vote in order to get elected and that's the only humor stupid voters understand. Link

From Alan Bock

The U.S. has made mistakes in dealing with jihadism in part because it has had little firsthand intelligence of the kind that only human beings operating in delicate and sometimes dangerous environments can gather.

Link

From Matthew Yglesias guest-blogging at TPM

The issue is that there are actual limits to what our troops can accomplish. They're soldiers, not magicians.

Link

via Paul Craig Roberts

The question presents itself: Are Americans guilty of treason when they turn their backs on the Constitution? Treason is betrayal of country. And what defines country? In the United States, the Constitution defines country. The Bush regime's assault on the Constitution is an assault on America.

Link Here

From: An Open Letter to Richard Cohen By William Rivers Pitt

It isn't an excess of outrage that plagues this nation today, but an abject lack of it.

Link

Billmon depresses again...

Friends don't send friends to jail -- or smash their presses or abolish their political parties or line them up against the wall and shoot them.

The problem is that the tissue of this particular lie has been eroding ever since the Clinton impeachment, if not before, and is now worn exceedingly thin. It's becoming harder and harder to conceal the ruthlessness of the struggle for power, or ignore the consequences of losing it.

Here's The Link

Stolen from Digby

Are we all clear on how this works now? Lying about fellatio leads to lethal abuse of power by the state. Flatly refusing to obey the laws he signed and lying about national security serves the common good. This is your modern Republican party in a nutshell: A dictatorship of puritanical busybodies.

link here

Re Glenn Greenwald's new book....

>i love the thought that there are going to be thousands of wigged out, right-wing super patriots who buy this book thinking it's their preferred type of reading.<

As well they should. Patriotism is after all about not only loving your country, but participating in its governance and accepting responsibility for its actions. If our country's actions don't reflect our values, then we have a responsibility to try and bring about change.

I think more and more people are realizing this and are waking up to notice that our values are NOT being reflected in our governments actions.

I'm actually holding out hope that more Republicans will also realize that civil liberties are not a partisan issue but rather affect us all and will help to pull us back from the precipice

Today we quote Scott Ritter

Sandy Berger is a liar every bit as much as Condoleezza Rice is. Madeleine Albright’s a liar every bit as much as Donald Rumsfeld is. I mean, they’ve all lied about the same thing, which is that Iraq represented a threat in the form of weapons of weapons of mass destruction that warranted military action.

The article



His Book

Buy this while your at it!

Too short to excerpt

Just follow the link

Re: Iran

So Bush wants to be remembered as the one President who had the "courage" (read - complete lack of accountability) to prevent Iran from aquiring a WMD and he refuses to rule out the first use of an atomic weapon against a country with which we are NOT currently at war.

Tell me again which one is the rougue state?

Stolen from Digby

Pacifism is a respectable philosophy that has been a part of the American (hell, the Christian) experience forever. And it, at least, has some intellectual coherence, unlike this hawkish/centrist mish mash of nothingness you find among the so-called liberal hawks
Full post here

Another excite poll

Testifying before a Senate committee, former Nixon White House counselor John Dean asserted Friday that President Bush's conduct in connection with a domestic spying program exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled President Nixon from power. The Senate, Dean said, should censure or reprimand Bush as proposed in a resolution by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin). (AP)
Do you think the Senate should censure President Bush over conduct related to the domestic wiretapping program?


Yes 49% => 4178 votes

No 48% => 4113 votes

I'm not sure 2% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 8515

Kool-aid anyone?

President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government. In response to critics who say the U.S. presence in the wartorn nation is fueling the insurgency, Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day. (AP)
What do you think is the chief cause of ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq - ongoing U.S. involvement in the country, or the legacy of Saddam Hussein?


Saddam's legacy 36% => 2252 votes

U.S. involvement 29% => 1815 votes

Both are equally to blame 30% => 1909 votes

I'm not sure 3% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 6200

From John at AmericaBlog

You simply can't sit back, hug a tree and sing cumbaya in your Birkenstocks by the campfire and expect the crystal fairy to hand you your civil rights and your country back.


Link