Washington Post: The White House endorsed CIA waterboarding policy in classified memos in 2003-2004

Condoleezza Rice:
Authorize torture?

No problem! Where do I sign?

Richard "Dick" Cheney: The Constitution
exists solely to make it easier for me to
lie. Disagree? Let's see if you disagree
under torture, muthafucka!

According to the Washington Post, the George W. Bush White House gave the explicit thumbs-up to the secret CIA torture of terrorism suspects:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

The rest of the article documenting this charming matter can be found here.

Our United States President: Never seen a torture I didn't approve of -- in writing!

Stop the creeping fascism of the GOP! Seriously. Let's stop these cynical, racist, authoritarian, totalitarian motherfuckers before it's too late. Who else is going to stop them? Antonin Scalia?

Citing McCain's "boiling moralism & bottomless reservoir of certitude," conservative George Will questions McCain's fitness to occupy Oval Office.

A recent Crib From This post discussed the growing number of conservative journalists and Republican politicians who have expressed serious reservations about supporting McCain or have withdrawn their support outright. On last Sunday's This Week on ABC, longstanding conservative columnist/commentator George Will described McCain's recent behavior as "unpresidential," concluding that "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful."

Will reaffirms his criticisms of McCain's temperament and character in today's Washington Post:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama. ....

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)....

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases." ....

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

This is not mild criticism. That it comes from perhaps the most stalwart, respected and intellectually honest figure in American conservatism is a significant development. I mean, seriously. If George Will is starting to lean toward supporting Obama, it means there's hope that pretty much any conservative -- even my parents -- could be convinced to support the Democratic candidate in November.

Not the John McCain we used to know:Conservatives are beginning to dump him like milk that's gone sour.

With the unveiling of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, there were a number of conservative journalists and commentators who expressed immediately everything from incredulity to shock to outright derision. And then there were those who gleefully whored themselves out to the cause of the GOP's latest desperation tactic, writing fawning, preposterous propaganda that pandered and condescended shamelessly to its readership. You know, par for the course when it comes to lying, fanatical GOP brown shirts...ahem..I meant brown-nosers with no shred of journalistic integrity to uphold in the first place.

With the passage of time, and particularly after the broadcast of her surreal interview with ABC's Charles Gibson -- during which she was revealed to be even more ignorant and dumb than we had feared previously* -- Sarah Palin's stock has continued to plummet, both among quote-ordinary voters-unquote and the more intellectually honestho members of the Republican pundit caste. One by one, each of these conservative journos -- the ones capable of speaking in complete sentences -- have thrown up their hands and admitted that the jig is up, this Palin thing is one pig that just won't fly. Among them:

• David Brooks, The New York Times, 9/15/08,
  
• David Cohen, The Washington Post, 9/17/08, and
  
• Through The Huffington Post, watch the ABC News This Week panel agree unanimously that, in light of his behavior since the financial crisis began, McCain's age is becoming an unavoidable problem, as are his judgment and character. Veteran ultraconservative George Will is the hardest of them all on McCain, saying, among other things: "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful," 9/21/08.
  

And now, they're joined by Republican politicians who tell the truth and recognize that it would be insanity to let that crazy woman continue to ruin our lives (I nicked that phrase from Gypsy Sun & Rainbows, [thanks, Gypsy Sun & Rainbows]), let alone sit within a heartbeat of the presidency. Among them:

• Senator Chuck Hagel, as reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/19/08.
• Congressman Wayne Gilcrest, as reported by Politico, 9/18/08.
  

[Updated 9/21/08]

____________

* And throughout which Palin came across as phony, hollow, opportunistic and dishonest. Not to mention self-centered, but we already knew that in spades.