Un-freaking believable

File this one under "more insane than you can possibly imagine." If you thought my embrace of the rule of law and my call for prosecutions against those who violated it during the Bush era were shrill, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Last week, President Obama asked for the files prosecutorial officials had gathered on Guantanamo prisoners be assembled and reviewed by his staff at the Justice department. There's only one problem with his request: There are no files. Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, of the Reserve JAG Corps, wrote of the case he was assigned to prosecute:

To the shock of my professional sensibilities, I discovered that the evidence, such as it was, remained scattered throughout an incomprehensible labyrinth of databases primarily under the control of CITF [Criminal Investigation Task Force - elf], or strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks vacated by prosecutors who had departed the Commissions for other assignments. I further discovered that most physical evidence that had been collected had either disappeared or had been stored in locations that no one with any tenure at, or institutional knowledge of, the Commissions could identify with any degree of specificity or certainty. The state of disarray was so extensive that I later learned, as described below, that crucial physical evidence and other documents relevant to both the prosecution and the defense had been tossed into a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten.

Got that? Over the course of six years of operation, holding these poor guys in detention, President Bush's Office of Military Commissions made no effort whatsover to create a systematic method of assembling evidence and tracking its whereabouts, defining procedures for assessing the validity of statements made by and about the suspect, none of that. The routine work that every police department and prosecutor's office, from the smallest town to New York City, goes through every day was ignored from the start at Guantanamo.

Juan Cole writes: "The moral of this story is not the danger for Obama going forward with his Gitmo decommissioning, the moral is that when venal, shallow, small men are given unfettered power and authority, they do incompetent, stupid, and evil things." Spencer Ackerman wisely adds, "The truth of the matter is that just as not all of the Guantanamo detainees are guilty, not all of them are innocent, either, and so a process to cull one from the other is the appropriate way to proceed. What isn't ever appropriate, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, is to hold them indefinitely and without due process."

Take it like men, you bloodthirsty bastards.

More from the torture does not work file:

During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."

Everyone got that? The CIA agents working in the field during the Bush administration flat out said that the interrogation techniques approved by Bush and Cheney, and wholeheartedly embraced by keyboard commandos like Rush, Hannity, Bill Kristol, and the entire gamut of the Free Republic, did not improve the quality of intelligence gathering at all. That's why Obama's executive orders were so sweeping: they changed nothing in terms of America's safety and security.

And what kinds of torture are we talking about? Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, of the Reserve JAG Corps, wrote of the case he was assigned to prosecute:

Military records show that Mohammed Jawad was subjected to the "frequent flyer" program from May 7 to May 20, 2004. Over that fourteen-day period, Mr Jawad was forcibly moved from cell to cell 112 times, on an average of about once every three hours, and prevented from sleeping. Mr. Jawad's medical records indicate that significant health effects he suffered during this time include blood in his urine, bodily pain, and a weight loss of 10% from April 2004 to May 2004. ... The statement -- essentially a recitation of Mr. Jawad's account -- indicated that Mr. Jawad had experienced extensive abuse while at Bagram prison from December 18, 2002 to early February 2003. This abuse included the slapping of Mr. Jawad across the face while Mr. Jawad's head was covered with a hood, as well as Mr. Jawad's having been shoved down a stairwell while both hooded and shackled.

Did you ever get the feeling that George Bush was bullied as a young child and that the past eight years have been little more than him trying to prove how tough he really is?

The vicious, bloodthirsty bastard who said "We need these techniques" were simply wrong. And now we have to pay the price of six years of wrong-headedness.

Cut That Shit Out Right Now. Right Freakin' Now, Got It?

While I don't make a habit of listening to Air America any more than I listen to The Truth, I do try to tune in to the Stephanie Miller show in the morning (it's not an Air America product, but Stephanie appears to have overwhelmed whatever Air America offers in her timeslot), which is often a screamingly funny little morning radio show from a very leftist point of view.

AM 1090, the local radio station, though, makes a big deal about this being an Air America affiliate, and often plays bumpers from their audience members touting their liberal bona fides. It's a little creepy and more than a little sad. I can't tell if station director Lee Callahan puts them up because they're idiotic, despite their being idiotic, or she can't tell that they're idiotic. Calls to nationalize our banking system or our automobile manufacturers and one blazingly stupid complaint about how the Bush era's "regulations" make it hard to innovate financial products here that conflict with "offshore banking," whatever that means. (If he thinks that sucks, wait until the MPAA, the RIAA, and the telecomms all get control of what you and I can put on the Internet. It'll all start with trying to save the children, of course.)

Today, though, AM 1090 went too far. The bumper had a listener calling for an auto-da-fe of Phil Gramm and his wife, "fueled with all the worthless stock certificates." It was outrageous I sent the station director this email:

Lee, the bumper you've been playing during Stephanie's show calling for an "old-fashioned burning at the stake" for Phil Gramm and his wife is simply beyond the pale. Eliminationist rhetoric is supposed to be the tool of the right. Normally, I wouldn't complain, but calling for the murder of a politician, even in jest, is grotesque.

That one needs to be pulled.

[Edit: Ms. Callahan kindly responded to me and let me know that although she's the morning voice of AM 1090, she doesn't get to decide which bumpers are aired. She says she will forward my email to the people that do.]

Mütter, Mütter, Mütter

I got this email today:

i am now not going to have to call you on the phone because i can drive you crazy with my emails. This will be a short one just to give you my email address. love mom

Well, that's interesting. Do I give her the address of this blog?

I'm thinking yes. We're both adults.

Sometimes, you just whip out the camera because it's cute

Cute Candy Ravers

I walked through Westlake Center today to get something for Omaha. Monster, the "energy drink" company, was distributing free samples from a pickup truck parked by the side of the road, and as I crossed the street these two utterly cute candy ravers skipped past me. It must have been barely 40°F or so, and yet there they were, bare legs and all, and I had to pull out the camera and take pictures. Had to, damn it!