Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.

Republicans…they never stop surprising me. The nation discovers that, contrary to our most basic principles, the CIA has a series of secret, illegal gulags around the world, and how do GOP leaders respond? They want to know who told the press. (Mind you, this is after stonewalling investigations into prewar intelligence and the Plamegate leak for many a year.)

To be fair, not all GOP Senators are with them on this. Said Gang of 14 member Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails…I’d like to know why we’ve got secret prisons and what oversight precautions we have.” And Trent Lott (R-MS) believes that a Republican is likely responsible for the leak, after hearing about the prisons from Mr. Torture himself, Big Time Dick Cheney. “‘Every word that was said in there went right to the newspaper,’ Lott said. ‘We can’t keep our mouths shut.‘” But, perhaps Catkiller knows this, and suspects one of his probable primary opponents? (LA Times story via Quiddity.) Update: Wheels within wheels…Was the leak investigation letter accidentally leaked? Regardless, Pat Roberts has put the kibosh on a congressional investigation…for now.

Torturing the truth (and taking uncivil liberties.)

Typical Dubya Doublespeak: Just as Bush tells the world, “We do not torture,” his vice-president continues his quest to exempt the CIA from a congressional torture ban, which would obviously be an unnecessary action were Dubya’s remarks truthful. In related news, the Dems want a wide-ranging inquiry into pre-war intelligence, and members of both parties are concerned about increased “terrorism” inquiries under the Patriot Act.

A thin grey line.

Seen tonight with Jarhead: The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Munich, with Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, and Daniel Craig, on the aftermath of, and Israeli response to, the murders at the 1972 Olympics. From this brief clip, it looks to be a very timely meditation on means and ends in the war on terror.

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.

Bipartisan Backlash.

“We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation.” Behind Sen. John McCain, who knows as well as anyone why we must set limits on our interrogation policies, the Senate votes 90-9 to rebuke the White House and constrain future interrogation abuses at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and around the world. For his part, Catkiller Frist earlier tried to smother the amendment, but ultimately ended up voting for it. Wouldn’t want a vote for torture on our 2008 transcript now, would we?

More of the Same.

“President Bush’s speech this morning, billed as a major statement about Iraq and the war on terror, was a sad spectacle — so ripe with lofty principles, so bereft of ideas on what to do with them. He approached the podium amid growing disapproval of his performance as a war president, ratcheting chaos and violence in Iraq, continuing terrorist attacks worldwide — and pleaded for nothing more than staying the course, with no turns or shifts, for a long, long time to come.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan surveys, and bemoans, Dubya’s “big” Iraq speech this morning.

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.’ “

Ex Parte Padilla.

Striking a blow against those terrorist conspirators who orchestrated the Fourth Amendment, a federal court headed by conservative Supreme Court contender Michael Luttig declares that US citizens can be held indefinitely without charges. ” For his part, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, another big-time Court contender, “hailed the ruling as reaffirming ‘the president’s critical authority to detain enemy combatants who take up arms on behalf of al Qaeda.’ Oh, yes, they will destroy this village in order to save it.

Shattered FEMA.

“‘It’s such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11,’ said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. ‘We are so much less than what we were in 2000,’ added another senior FEMA official. ‘We’ve lost a lot of what we were able to do then.‘” As Team Dubya scrambles to scapegoat state and local officials, the WP turns an eye to the dismantling of FEMA on Dubya’s watch (as noted previously here.)

Pirates, Barbary and Otherwise.

“What is needed now is a framework for an international crime of terrorism…Coming up with such a framework would perhaps seem impossible, except that one already exists…The ongoing war against pirates is the only known example of state vs. nonstate conflict until the advent of the war on terror, and its history is long and notable. More important, there are enormous potential benefits of applying this legal definition to contemporary terrorism.” Via Breaching the Web, author Douglas Burgess makes an intriguing case in Legal Affairs for using long-standing anti-piracy laws to fight terrorism. Definitely worth a read, and not only because I have pirates-on-the-brain after finishing the literary (and highly-condensable) exploits of Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds earlier this week.)