When anxiety strikes, go for the status quo - sell more weapons and ditch accountability for the guilty

an addict's first response to anxiety is to turn to the substance(s) of choice... in the case of the leaders of our dear country, the substances high up on the preferred list have always been 1) selling more arms and defense systems to ensure that the bottomless cravings of the super-rich elites who profit from our policy of endless war continue to be fed and 2) that those who supported those elites by aiding and abetting criminal and unconstitutional actions remain unaccountable...

so, on this sunday morning, the last day of the first month of the year 2010, i wake to find a two-fer...

U.S. steps up arms sales to Persian Gulf allies

The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran, according to former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern government officials.

The initiatives, including a U.S.-backed plan to triple the size of a 10,000-man protection force in Saudi Arabia, are part of a broader push that includes unprecedented coordination of air defenses and expanded joint exercises between the U.S. and Arab militaries, the officials said. All appear to be aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran.

The efforts build on commitments by the George W. Bush administration to sell warplanes and antimissile systems to friendly Arab states to counter Iran's growing conventional arsenal. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are leading a regionwide military buildup that has resulted in more than $25 billion in U.S. arms purchases in the past two years alone.

cool, eh...? now, let's have the double shot...

No sanctions for Bush lawyers who approved waterboarding, report will say

Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed.

The work of John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, officials in the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, provided the basis for controversial interrogation strategies that critics likened to torture in the years after al-Qaeda's 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil. The men and their OLC colleague, Steven G. Bradbury, became focal points of anger from Senate Democrats and civil liberties groups because their memos essentially insulated CIA interrogators and contractors from legal consequences for their roles in harsh questioning.

The reasoning, set out in a series of secret memos only months after Sept. 11, 2001, prompted a multi-year investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews the ethics of Justice lawyers. The legal source was not authorized to discuss the report's conclusions and described them on the condition of anonymity.

ya know, sometimes i just hate reading the news...

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Conyers wastes no time

he's jumping right on the dynamite murray waas national journal piece that i posted on earlier today...

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding he answer allegations that he may have advised the President to shut down an Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) inquiry into the Administration’s domestic wiretapping surveillance program because of his role in the program.

[...]

"It would be an extraordinary abuse of authority if you advised the President on this matter after learning that your own conduct was to be investigated," Conyers wrote. "The decision by the President to shut down the OPR investigation by denying security clearances to key Department personnel was itself extremely unusual, controversial and, in our view, improper. But the issue of your role in advising the President on this question raises what may be even more serious concerns."

ah... this is all heating up REAL nice...

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More rope to hang Gonzo with (and Bush too, maybe)

tell me, does this sound like routine bush administration behavior...? never mind... silly question... of COURSE it does... using your executive power in the most potentially criminal ways is only to be expected from this president...

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.

Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program would likely have examined the actions of Alberto Gonzales.

Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general.

i truly hope this utterly damning story by murray waas gets the traction it deserves... as i've said nauseatingly often, the best gift i could possibly receive is for bush, cheney, and the whole goddam cabal to be sent packing...

(thanks to atrios...)

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