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Today's Stories February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden Dave Zirin Instep Intifada Saul Landau The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln Susie Day Our Blob in the White House Website of the Day George Carlin on Voting   February 6, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos Ben Rosenfeld Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters Vijay Prashad An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out Joe Bageant Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned Michael Donnelly What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths Allan Nairn Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion? Kathryn Gray Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit Ray McGovern Powell's UN Fiasco Sheldon Richman The Whining Empire Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks A Presidential Aptitude Examination John Chuckman Political Bits and Pieces Website of the Day Save the Albatross February 5, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget Tariq Ali Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair Stephen Soldz The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes? Chris Floyd Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War William S. Lind Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win Martha Rosenberg Live From the Killing Floor Heather Gray Conversations with Georgia Voters Ayesha Ijaz Khan Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics David Macaray Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice Eliza Ernshire Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run Brenda Norrell Hated Nation Website of the Day The Things I Used to Do     February 4, 2008 Marc Levy Winter in America Patrick Cockburn The Bird Market Bombings Saree Makdisi Strangling Gaza Uri Avnery From Stalingrad to Winograd Alan Farago Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer Ben Tripp Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter Paul Wolf Civil Wars North and South Paul Craig Roberts Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed? Joshua Frank MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change John Halle Whither Progressive Democrats? Website of the Day How to Cheat in School   February 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Hot Democratic Properties Pam Martens Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense Ralph Nader The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked John Ross Hilaria vs. "El Moreno" Wajahat Ali Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir Robert Fantina A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire B. R. Gowani Not All Veils and Guns James L. Secor China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow John V. Walsh The Invisible Green Primary Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble Dave Zirin Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul? Jeremy Scahill Blackwater and Blood Fidel Castro Reflections on Lula Joe Allen Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War Stephen Lendman Life in Occupied Gaza Patrick Irelan What Happened to the Streetcars? Andrej Grubacic Ziga Vodovnik Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo Josh Karpoff Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement Ron Jacobs Carl Oglesby's War Paul Krassner Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel Website of the Weekend Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart   February 1, 2008 Ray McGovern The Iniquities and Inequalities of War Diane Farsetta The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists Tariq Ali Et Tu, New York Times? Allan Nairn Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti Rannie Amiri Collective Punishment in Beirut Ramzy Baroud People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It Kenneth Couesbouc The Mother of All Snowballs Peter Morici Recession Looms Mumia Abu-Jamal Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro Rosemary Jackowski 27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President Scott Campbell Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges Website of the Day Betes et Hommes   January 31, 2008 Saul Landau Return to Afghanistan Andy Worthington Horror at Guantánamo Mike Whitney Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System Jeff Ballinger Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe" Tiffany Ten Eyck The Saga of the Freightliner Five William Loren Katz Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery? Alan Farago Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble Col. Dan Smith Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget? China Hand Slouching Toward Islamabad Dave Lindorff The Usual Suspects Once Again Wadner Pierre Fake Democracy in Haiti Website of the Day One Big Union   January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? Christopher Ketcham The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex Robert Weissman America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union Neve Gordon An Experiment in Famine Paul Craig Roberts Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse? Joanne Mariner How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech David Macaray Labor's Only Real Weapon Liaquat Ali Khan Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan? Raymond J. Lawrence Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication Dan Bacher The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon Website of the Day Onward Through the Fog   January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?   January 26 / 27, 2008 Uri Avnery Worse Than a Crime JoAnn Wypijewski How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina Ralph Nader Ambition, Power and the Clintons Paul Craig Roberts How Bush Destroyed the Dollar Paul Watson I'm Proud to be a Pirate! John Ross Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico Fred Gardner Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred by California Supreme Court Allan Nairn Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death Joshua Frank Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey Binoy Kampmark Société Générale and the Economic Meltdown James T. Phillips America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home Stan Cox The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants Eamonn McCann Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland" Ron Jacobs The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia Seth Sandronsky California's Health Care Crisis Ben Terrall The Future is Unwritten Poets' Basement Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend City of Immigrants     January 25, 2008 Douglas Valentine Operation Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA Patrick Cockburn US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari JoAnn Wypijewski Down to the Wire in South Carolina Heather Gray Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with South Carolina Voters Marjorie Cohn Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA Erica Rosenberg Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration Alan Farago Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear Robert Weissman Reclaiming Economic Freedom Laura Carlsen Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada Stephen Lendman Israeli Repression in the Hebron Website of the Day The FIX is In   January 24, 2008 JoAnn Wypijewski Obama as Anthologist of Uplift Paul Craig Roberts President Hillary Alexander Cockburn Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her Nursing Home Scam? Kathleen Christison One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus Jeff Halper Power to the (Palestinian) People! Stanley Heller The Siege of Gaza is Broken George Wuerthner The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands Patrick Cockburn Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium Jeff Sher Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance? Patrick Irelan Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally? Charles Modiano Restoring the Anti-War King Website of the Day An Illustrated History of Trepanation   January 23, 2008 David Rosen The Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Sex David Isenberg Is It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons Program? Farzana Versey Hillary's Harem Paul Craig Roberts The Empire That Must Be Obeyed Alan Farago Where Did All the Good Times Go? Allan Nairn Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights Activist Kenneth Couesbouc Another Turn of the Screw Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West was Re-Sold Michael Donnelly Obama Strikes Back Norman Solomon The Power of Love Website of the Day Rafah Today   January 22, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums JoAnn Wypijewski King Day in Columbia, South Carolina Al Giordano Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada Felice Pace Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon Paul Wolf Bolívar's Sword Robert Weissman Deregulation and the Financial Crisis Dave Lindorff The Bush Dollar Trap Marjorie Cohn Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction Richard Neville Keeping Shakespeare in a Box Don Fitz / Zaki Baruti St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform Ben Terrall Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness Sam Husseini Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr. Website of the Day Defend the Mapuche!     January 21, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Playing the Race Card Linn Washington, Jr. Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up David Macaray Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party? Uri Avnery Look Who's Talking Omar Barghouti Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide Joe DeRaymond Protest and Trial in D.C. B.R. Gowani Why Islam Should Tolerate Images Shepherd Bliss The False U.S. Economy Jean-Guy Allard Philip Agee Versus the CIA Dan Bacher Leaping Steelhead! Website of the Day Destroyed By a Rising Flood January 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Campaign in Black and White Saul Landau Good Time Charlie's War China Hand Endgame for Pakistan? Conn Hallinan Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About? Ron Jacobs No Retreat Dave Lindorff A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess Andy Worthington Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture Paul Armentano What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think Seth Sandronsky High Crimes and Economics Michael Donnelly Dodging Ecocide Patrick Irelan The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki Martha Rosenberg The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit Sherwood Ross Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade David Michael Green So You Want to be My President, Eh? James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: Under House Protection Daniel Gross Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King Peter N. Carroll In Memory of Milton Wolff Susie Day Croakin' on Hudson Paul Krassner Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu Poets' Basement Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Day Rocky Mountain Blues   January 18, 2008 Allan Nairn Killing Civilians, Carefully Ralph Nader When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill? Joanne Mariner Terrorism and Preventative Detention Alan Farago The Stimulus and the Meltdown P. Sainath Pity the Brahmins R.F. Blader Beyond Steinem's Feminism Andy Worthington A Letter from Guantánamo John Jonik Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health Brian McKenna Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan Women's Prison Daoud Kuttab This Time Next Year? Website of the Day Those South Carolina Voting Machines   January 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Leader and Vassal Christopher Brauchli The FBI's Bills Come Due Robert Fantina Leadership, Bush and the New York Times Patrick Irelan Eternal War Paul A. Moore When the Rich Pay No Taxes Stephen Lendman Institutionalized Spying on Americans Beena Sarwar Bhutto and the "State Within a State" Walter Brasch Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment Brenda Norrell Bush Legacy in Texas Sours Adam Federman End of the Left? Website of the Day Democrats for Romney   January 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Return of the Native Franklin Lamb The Bombing at Qarantina Julian Sanchez David Weigel Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? Sharon Smith Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope? Allan Nairn Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market Ayesha Ijaz Khan How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation Andy Worthington A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo Richard Behan Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach! Website of the Day Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!   January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds Wajahat Ali An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy and the Prospects of War with Iran Joe Bageant Getting Out the Bling Vote Ralph Nader The Candidate Taboos John Ross Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse Elaine Cassel Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified? Peter Morici The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy Beena Sarwar Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade Robert Weissman Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought Binoy Kampmark Going Tata in India Dave Zirin Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame Website of the Day David Lynch on the iPhone   January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH       Subscribe Online

February 11, 2008 Torture with Decency and Compassion Waterboarding for God and Country By RAY McGOVERN Former CIA Analyst After one spends 45 years in Washington, high farce does not normally throw one off balance. I found the past few days, however, an acid test of my equilibrium. I missed the National Prayer Breakfast-for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer: "When we lift our hearts to God, we're all equal in his sight. We're all equally precious...In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion.... When we answer God's call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man - and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father." Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday's prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol "the interrogation program run by the CIA...a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11," without conceding that the program has involved torture. But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney's remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience yesterday that America is a "decent" country. After all, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly on Tuesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other "high-value" detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique has since been discontinued. An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone-except the hired legal hands of the Bush administration. On Wednesday President Bush's spokesman Tony Fratto revealed that the White House reserves the right to approve waterboarding again, "depending on the circumstances." Fratto matter-of-factly described the process still followed by the Bush administration to approve torture-er; I mean, "enhanced interrogation techniques" like waterboarding: "The process includes the director of the Central Intelligence Agency bringing the proposal to the attorney general, where the review would be conducted to determine if the plan would be legal and effective. At that point, the proposal would go to the president. The president would listen to the determination of his advisers and make a decision." Dissing Congress Cheney's task of reassuring us about our "decency" was made no easier Thursday, when Attorney General Michael Mukasey stonewalled questions from the hapless John Conyers, titular chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers tried, and failed, to get straight answers from Mukasey on torture. Conyers referred to Hayden's admission about waterboarding and branded the practice "odious." But Mukasey seemed to take perverse delight in "dissing" Conyers, as the expression goes in inner city Washington. Sadly, the tired chairman took the disrespect stoically. He did summon the courage to ask Attorney General Mukasey directly, "Are you ready to start a criminal investigation into whether this confirmed use of waterboarding by U.S. agents was illegal?" "No, I am not," Mukasey answered. Mukasey claimed "waterboarding was found to be permissible under the law as it existed" in the years immediately after 9/11; thus, the Justice Department could not investigate someone for doing something the department had declared legal. Got that? Mukasey explained: "That would mean the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice." Oddly, Mukasey himself is on record saying waterboarding would be torture if applied to him. And Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was even more explicit in taking the same line in an interview with Lawrence Wright of New Yorker magazine. McConnell told Wright that, for him: "Waterboarding would be excruciating. If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture." Okay, it would be torture if done to you, Mike; how about if done to others? Sadly, McConnell, too, missed the prayer breakfast and the president's moving reminder that we are called "to love a neighbor as ourselves." Is there an exception, perhaps, for detainees? Cat Out of Bag When torture first came up during his interview with the New Yorker, McConnell was more circumspect, repeating the obligatory bromide "We don't torture," as former CIA Director George Tenet did in five consecutive sentences while hawking his memoir on 60 Minutes on April 29, 2007. As McConnell grew more relaxed, however, he let slip the rationale for Mukasey's effrontery and the administration's refusal to admit that waterboarding is torture. For anyone paying attention, that rationale has long been a no-brainer. But here is McConnell inadvertently articulating it: "If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it." Like death. Even Alberto Gonzales could grasp this at the outset. That explains the overly clever, lawyerly wording in the Jan. 25, 2002 memorandum for the president drafted by the vice president's lawyer, David Addington, but signed by Gonzales. Addington/Gonzales argued that the president's determination that the Geneva agreements on prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban: "Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)...enacted in 1996... "Punishments for violations of Section 2441include the death penalty... "[I]t is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT, January 25, 2002, p. 2 Mike McConnell needs to get his own lawyers to bring him up to date on all this. For that memorandum was quickly followed by an action memorandum signed by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002. The president's memo incorporated the exact wording of Addington/Gonzales' bottom line; to wit, the U.S. would "treat the detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of [Geneva]. (emphasis added) That provided the loophole through which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA director George Tenet and their subordinates drove the Mack truck of torture. Even the Bush-administration-friendly editorial page of the Washington Post saw fit on Friday to declare torture "illegal in all instances," adding that "waterboarding is, and always has been, torture." Waterboarding has been condemned as torture for a very long time. After WW-II Japanese soldiers were hanged for the "war crime" of waterboarding American soldiers. Patriots and Prophets Patriots and prophets have made it clear from our earliest days that such abuse has no place in America. Virginia's Patrick Henry insisted passionately that "the rack and the screw," as he put it, were barbaric practices that had to be left behind in the Old World, or we are "lost and undone." Attorney General Mukasey, for his part, recently refused to say whether he considers the rack and the screw forms of torture, dismissing the question as hypothetical. As for prophets, George Hunzinger of Princeton Theological Seminary has awakened enough religious folks to form the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of 130 religious organizations from left to right on the political spectrum. Hunzinger puts it succinctly: "To acknowledge that waterboarding is torture is like conceding that the sun rises in the east," adding: "All the dissembling in high places that makes these shocking abuses possible must be brought to an end. But they will undoubtedly continue unless those responsible for them are held accountable.... A special counsel is an essential first step." Sadly, Hunzinger and his associates have been unable to overcome the pious complacency of the vast majority of institutional churches, synagogues, and mosques in this country and their reluctance to exercise moral leadership. How It Looks From Outside Sometimes it takes a truth-telling outsider to throw light on our moral failures. South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, erstwhile chaplain to Nelson Madela in prison and longtime outspoken opponent of apartheid, has this to say to those clergy who might be moved to preach more than platitudes: "We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly or indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. "All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet." Mukasey's thumbing his nose at Conyers' committee yesterday was simply the most recent display of contempt for Congress on the part of the Bush administration. The Founders expected our representatives in Congress to be taken seriously by the executive branch, and expected that Members of Congress would hold senior executives accountable-to the point of impeaching them, when necessary, for high crimes and misdemeanors. That used to worry those officials and put a brake on more outlandish behavior. Not any more. No Worries, George One reads George Tenet's memoirs with some nostalgia for the days of a modicum of congressional oversight, and with a strong sense of irony-as he confesses concern that Congress might one day hold him and others accountable for taking liberties with national and international law. It seems likely that then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington counseled Tenet that his concerns were quaint and obsolete and, alas, they may have been right, the way things have been going. But Tenet apparently entertained lingering misgivings-perhaps even qualms of conscience. In the immediate post-9/11 period, Tenet says he told the president "our only real ally" on the Afghan border was Uzbekistan, "where we had established important intelligence-collection capabilities." We now know from UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray that those "collection capabilities" included the most primitive methods of torture, including boiling alleged "terrorists" alive. Tenet adds that he stressed the importance of being able to detain unilaterally al-Qaeda operatives around the world. His worries shine through the rather telling sentences that follow: "We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act." At the Center of the Storm, p. 177-178 Tenet need not have worried. He would be shielded from accountability by a timid Congress as well as an arrogant White House able to arrogate unprecedented power to itself and to shield those it wished to protect. Setting the Tone It was President George W. Bush who set the tone from the outset. After his address to the nation on the evening of 9/11, he assembled his top national security aides in the White House bunker-the easier, perhaps, to foster a bunker mentality. Among them was counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who quoted the president in his memoir: "I want you to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they're gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda... "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." Against All Enemies, Free Press, 2004 Clarke, of course, took his book's title from the oath of office we all swore as military officers and/or senior government officials: "To defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." John Ashcroft, head of the Department of Justice at the time, fell in lockstep with the thrust of the president's comment dismissing any concern with international law-or, as would quickly be seen, domestic law, as well. With the enthusiastic assistance of David Addington, the affable Ashcroft assembled a cabal of Mafia-like lawyers whose imaginative legal opinions on torture, warrantless eavesdropping, and other abuses mark them forever as "domestic enemies" of the Constitution. Add Mukasey to this distinguished roster. Torture: the Hallmark What is not widely known is that Justice Department-approved torture was first applied on an American citizen, John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan in late November 2001. The White House and corporate press immediately sensationalized Lindh as "the American Taliban." Jesselyn Radack, a conscientious legal advisor in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, which gives ethics advice to Department attorneys, insisted that Lindh be advised of his rights before any interrogation. Instead, he was tortured mercilessly during the first few days of his internment and denied medical care. Lindh had had the foolishness and bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; i. e., in a large group of prisoners rounded up by CIA and Army paramilitary forces-too large a group, it turned out. A spontaneous uprising took place, and CIA paramilitary officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, who had questioned Lindh just minutes before, was shot dead. Outraged, Spann's colleagues applied "frontier justice," totally ignoring the Constitutional cautions of Ms. Radack. The Department of Justice moved quickly to fire Radack for her principled stand. But she had the presence of mind to save emails providing chapter and verse of the difficult exchanges in which she had insisted on respect for Lindh's rights as an American citizen. Newsweek carried the story briefly, but neither Congress nor anyone else in the media showed much interest. Radack's book recounting this experience, The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, is available on line at: http://www.patriotictruthteller.net/. Against this backdrop, together with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, Patrick Henry's warning remains a challenge for our time: Are we "lost and undone?" I think not; but we had better get it together soon, for, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., cautioned, "There is such a thing as too late." Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates' branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com A shorter version of this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

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