Steal, flip, bounce: “Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times.”

Breath deep. And read.

I predict there will soon be new stories about more torture tapes that were destroyed and new stories about more high-level officials that were either tainted or corrupted by this scandal, and others who opposed this travesty who will ultimately testify about who they approached to attempt to prevent it.

Washington and America will momentarily ask once again: What did the president and vice president know, and when did they know it?

In an administration facing an ocean of scandal on multiple and multiplying fronts, this scandal above all will be the Watergate of our times because it involves extremely probable crimes of torture, extremely probable obstructions of justice, and a steady stream of revelations that will only escalate until the inevitable special prosecutor is named.

Congress should, and I predict ultimately will, take the decisive action of seeking evidence, and if necessary file the great contempt case of the Bush years that will be defined clearly and specifically as follows:

Can executive privilege be claimed to hide acts that would be violations of criminal law?

I predict the answer of this Supreme Court, and any Supreme Court, will be unequivocally “no.”

Even a mass pardon by the president, which I have predicted and predict again here, will not solve their problem, because he would have to name so many recipients of pardons, and so many potential crimes that would be pardoned, that it would be both ridiculous and logistically impossible.

Read more pundits.thehill.com.

Torture. Could this be the aspect of the Bush presidency, the big thing, the fucking big awful thing, we talk about over glasses of whiskey with voices rising in anger in 30 years on the back porch while our grandkids play in the yard? I’m going with yes, yes it is. This, more than anything in an sea of falsehoods, lies and crimes, this is completely over the top. We are no better than those we call our enemies.

I have seen the enemy. And he is I.

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

6 Replies to “Steal, flip, bounce: “Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times.””

  1. …i’m not gonna address this subject but rather the personal repercussions…

    …i drink very little…i love a good quality beer, i can really enjoy a great glass of wine or at this time of year, a nice tasty port to help shake the chill & damp off…

    …every story you’ve posted tonight, along w/ the current electoral ‘considerations’ honestly make me wonder why i don’t drink a lot more than i do…

    …make no mistake here, i’m not blaming you one iota, in fact the opposite is true…you are the harbinger & i’m the willing recipient of all this news…without it, i would be an ignorant fool…

    …it’s just that occasionally, all this input makes me take a step back & go “holy fuck”, it never stops…

    …so it’s late, it’s raining out & the glass in my left hand is warming & releasing some fine heady vapors…while it never stops, tonight i’m doing my best to slow it down…cheers…

  2. I disapprove of the phrase “[insert scandal here] will be the Watergate of our times.” because it has been used for so many hings, that have YET to be anything more than a small blip in the blogoshphere.

    Plame-gate? nothing.
    Voter fraud? nothing.
    Bogus/misleading info leading us to blow up Iraq? nothing.
    Downing Street Memos? again… nothing.

    The media is as complicit in everything evil and wicked this administration has done, and is still not willing to admit their own culpability. No one wants to run a story about corruption and decadence in the White House; unless it involves Britney Spears’ 16 year old sister being pregnant and looking like a big white house.

    [I turn towards Jonny, glass in hand and slap him briskly across the face.] ‘You sir are sorely mistaken, and I cannot continue this discussion until you admit the error of your previous statement.”

    [I get up, grab the bottle from the table and walk down the steps, off the porch and into the yard; steeling myself for the inevitable ‘Hey fuckface, get back here with my Maker’s!!!”]

  3. Watergate schmatergate. The bastards have been at it since befroe they got in office. This is not news. Dont get me wrong, it SHOULD BE NEWS. I think that we the people somwhere along the line got scandal fatigue.

    Here is a clip from my Senator finestine in an email “she” sent me yesterday.

    Thank you for your letter concerning impeachment proceedings against President Bush. I appreciate the time you took to write and welcome the opportunity to respond.

    In our recent elections, the American people expressed clear disapproval with the path this country was on. They are tired of partisan politics and of an Administration that pays little heed to the wishes of the American people. They want-and deserve-a Congress that holds the Administration accountable and fulfills its Constitutional responsibility to check and balance the Executive. I share this sentiment and am determined to work hard and across party lines in the United States Senate to promote issues that are of real concern to most Americans, including the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security, global warming, and lobbying and election reform.

    At this time, however, I believe that impeachment proceedings against President Bush will only divide the country even further, frustrating our hopes for a meaningful change in direction, while having little chance of success.

    I have been deeply disappointed by many of this Administration’s actions and have been outspoken in those instances. Nevertheless, given the challenges our country faces I believe that we need to focus on constructive and cooperative steps that would lead us in the right direction.

    Clearly she does not want to rock the boat. Give me a break the boat is sinking. It has a big massive hole and is going down fast. AGGGGHHHH!!!

  4. Can we just try him for crimes against humanity and shoot his scawny ass and get it over with? I mean I have been trying to keep up but I’m on my third sheet of college ruled notebook paper and I’m only up to January of 2004 so far…

    Opus

  5. >

    Maybe.

    But I’d bet those 3,800 and counting US families that have been devastated by losing their loved one in Iraq, or the 10,000 and counting that have had their’s seriously wounded with life changing injuries, or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that have lost loved ones … yeah those folks … I’d bet they’ll have something else to remember old Shrubya by.

    Just thinkin’

  6. First post. Great blog. Daily read.

    Anyway, I don’t think the Gov. would go as far to illegaly trash tapes to cover torture techniques that many people are fairly aware of. It would make more sense that they destroyed the interrogation tapes because of the Saudi-Pakistan 9/11 connection. That would put a big hurt on the Bush family in particular (Bush sr. is very tight with the Saudi Royal family.)

    (snip)
    In a newly released book, Intelligence Matters, Graham asserts that
    “evidence of official Saudi support” for at least some of the hijackers is
    “incontrovertible.” Graham is the ranking Democrat and former chair of
    the Senate intelligence committee that carried out a joint congressional
    investigation into 9/11 with its counterpart in the House of
    Representatives
    In his book, Senator Graham writes that the FBI concealed from the joint
    congressional committee the fact that its paid informant, Abdussattar
    Shaikh, had established a close personal relationship with the two
    hijackers. (Shaikh is reported to have confirmed that al-Bayoumi was a
    Saudi intelligence agent). When the committee staff discovered Shaikh’s
    role and the committee issued a subpoena to question him under oath, the
    FBI and Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to serve the subpoena.
    Graham in his book cites a memo that a senior FBI official wrote to him
    and the Republican co-chair of the intelligence panel, Rep. Porter Goss,
    a Florida Republican, declaring, “the administration would not sanction a
    staff interview with the source [Shaikh]. Nor did the administration agree
    to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena or a notice of deposition on the
    source.”

    Graham writes that this was the only time he had ever heard of the FBI
    refusing to serve a congressional subpoena. He comments: “We were
    seeing in writing what we had suspected for some time: the White House
    was directing the cover-up.”

    Nor was this the only evidence of a cover-up. When the congressional
    panel released the report on its investigation, 28 pages were classified on
    the orders of the White House, their contents blacked out. All of the
    material dealt with the Saudi role in 9/11.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-posner/the-cias-destroyed-inter_b_75850.html