America Embraces Room 101.

As the Cheney-Addington gang work to strip the Geneva Convention from prisoner treatment manuals, the Washington Post uncovers an overseas network of CIA “black sites,” a.k.a. gulags, some of which actually use old Soviet compounds in Eastern Europe(!) “It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas…Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.”

Whatsmore, these gulags, created under this administration since 9/11, “were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees’ chairmen and vice chairmen on the program’s generalities.” There’s no other way to look at this: By appropriating the tactics of our enemies, as John McCain warned earlier this month, we have abandoned our most fundamental principles and shamed our nation. Evildoers? Please. Dubya need look no further than his own White House and CIA. Update: Congress and the EU want answers.

The B-Team.

“‘Everyone thinks it is over for Karl and they are wrong,’ a source close to Rove said. The strategist’s legal and political advisers ‘by no means think the part of the investigation concerning Karl is closed.’” As Scooter Libby preps for his Thursday arraignment, Rove continues to sweat the Fitzgerald investigation. Meanwhile, Cheney picked Libby’s replacements yesterday, and they’re more of the same: The new chief of staff, David Addington, was the co-author of the infamous torture memo, and Cheney’s new national security advisor, John Hannah, acted as the conduit for false Iraq intel in the lead-up to war. And, as you might expect of Cheney’s cronies, both are already implicated in Plamegate.

The aspens have turned.

But how deep go the roots? As you know by now, Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby (a.k.a. “Cheney’s Cheney“) has been indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. (So much for “restoring honor and dignity to the White House.”) As for the other rumored indictment, it seems Karl Rove has slipped off the hook for the time being, but the investigation continues…

Fitz of Impatience.

For Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, the White House, and all of Washington, the waiting is the hardest part. But, word is we’ll know the results of Fitzgerald’s Plamegate inquiry tomorrow, and not a moment too soon.

First Blood for Fitzgerald?

As breaking everywhere this morning, it seems Scooter Libby, for one, has clearly perjured himself in the Plamegate investigation. Whatsmore, his boss, “Big Time” Dick Cheney, may well have initiated the smear campaign against Valerie Plame, in order to promote the administration’s push for war in Iraq. What else has Fitzgerald uncovered? We should know within 72 hours.

Fleeing the sinking ship.

“‘The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney,’ Mr. Scowcroft told Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker. ‘I consider Cheney a good friend – I’ve known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.'” As Cheney consigliere Scooter Libby preps for a likely Plamegate perp walk, the NYT refocuses on the broader question of our entry into the Iraq war. And, as the Scowcroft quote attests (and as Medley also notes), prominent Republicans are starting to pile on. “‘Iraq was at core a war of choice, and extraordinarily expensive by every measure – human life, impact on our military, dollars, diplomatically,’ said Mr. [Richard] Haass, a former senior State Department official under President Bush.“

Or, as former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson puts it, “[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my study of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy didn’t know were being made.“

Update: Jeffrey Goldberg discusses his Scowcroft piece, and Slate‘s Fred Kaplan evaluates it, noting that George H.W. Bush is also something of a Dubya critic in the article. Speaking of Scowcroft, Dubya Sr. says: “He has a great propensity for friendship. By that, I mean someone I can depend on to tell me what I need to know and not just what I want to hear….[He] was very good about making sure that we did not solely consider the ‘best case,’ but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not.” Listen up, sonny…Papa just learned you.

Release the Hounds.

With the administration’s numbers in a continuing death spiral ever since their sheer incompetence, blatant cronyism, and general heartlessness was exposed by Katrina, several recent anti-Dubya speeches of note:

President Clinton: “Now, what Americans need to understand is that means every single day of the year, our Government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else…We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don’t think it makes any sense. I think it’s wrong.“

John Kerry: “‘Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to ‘Mission Accomplished’ and ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.‘”

John Edwards: “I might have missed something, but I don’t think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts…This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn’t approve or a millionaire’s tax cut he wouldn’t promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable.“

Bill Maher: (I forgot where I saw this one first, but it’s a toss-up between Booknotes and Follow Me Here.) “On your watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you’re just not lucky. I’m not saying you don’t love this country. I’m just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: ‘Take a hint.’ “

Protecting the Trough.

“Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings…But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.” Via a colleague in the department, an Army contracting official is demoted for questioning no-bid contracts given to Halliburton, proving once again that Cheney conservatism has less to do with competition or capitalism than it does sheer, unmitigated cronyism.

Cheney’s Tortured Logic.

Much to the consternation of the Dubya White House, a handful of GOP Senators, including Gang of 14’ers John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), are trying to establish congressional oversight over prisoner treatment at Guantanamo and elsewhere. McCain’s proposed amendments include restricting interrogation techniques to what’s in the Army field manual, stopping the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” forcing the government to register all detainees with the Red Cross, and prohibiting “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody no matter where they are held.” For his part, Graham’s amendment appears just to rubber-stamp the current Dubya policies…but apparently even that’s too much legislative oversight for Cheney, Rummy, and the rest of the admin whip-hands, who are trying to enlist their Senate allies to offer up a watered-down, smoke-and-mirrors version instead. For shame.

Delicate Dick.

“‘Frankly, I was offended by it,’ Cheney said in the videotaped interview. ‘For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don’t take them seriously.'” Awww. Our thin-skinned veep’s feelings are hurt by an Amnesty International report claiming all is not kosher at Guantanamo Bay. Well, as a colleague of mine noted, perhaps someone should fill Dick in on Abu Ghraib (or, for that matter, countless other episodes in US history, from chattel slavery to the Trail of Tears.) For his part, the president of Amnesty responded: “It doesn’t matter whether he takes Amnesty International seriously. He doesn’t take torture seriously; he doesn’t take the Geneva Convention seriously; he doesn’t take due process rights seriously; and he doesn’t take international law seriously. And that is more important than whether he takes Amnesty International seriously.” Touche. (FWIW, the WP cried foul as well.)