John McCain has always had a schizophrenic relationship with women. He has constantly painted himself as the randy, tough flyboy, but, as both he and his mother (and everyone else who seems to have knowledge) readily admit, he was, and still is, a flat out mama’s boy all the way. Now McCain has found an even bigger skirt to hide behind, that of Sarah Palin. Who knew that the GOP Nominee had become so weak, addled and ineffective that the GOP, and McCain himself, was desperate enough to pluck an unknown, inexperienced and unvetted Sarah Palin off the wind swept tundra of Alaska just to manufacture an excitement diversion?

Since the jaw dropping announcement of Palin, it has been hard to tell that McCain is still the the nominee and leader of the ticket. All the buzz at the Republican National Convention was over Sarah Palin, she was the toast, and the star, of the show. Palin’s speech on Wednesday night dwarfed that of McCain’s nomination acceptance on Thursday in every measurable category. There was more excitement, more anticipation, it was better and more coherently written, and it was by far better delivered. The king of the Midshipmen upstaged completely by a probie plebe. In a skirt.

Since the close of the Sarah Palin Show Republican Convention, McCain has only further disappeared behind (under?) Palin’s skirt. As MSNBC notes, McCain-Palin has become Palin-McCain:

The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else.

"Sa-rah! Pa-lin!" came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to the nation just a week earlier. The day before, thousands screamed "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" at an amphitheater outside Detroit.
…
In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity. And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances.

"She’s the draw for a lot of people," said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar. "The fact that she’s someone new, not the old everything we’ve seen before."

Boy, no kidding. There have been several different Palin/McCain campaign appearances covered by CNN and MSNBC the last few days, and it is jarring just how dominant Sarah Palin is compared to the weak, old and wooden looking McCain.

And this does not appear to be any chance phenomenon either; after the initial position that Palin would be retreating to Alaska to cover up her scandals study foreign policy and send her son off to Iraq, that no longer appears to be operative and Palin is front and center from here on out. How humiliating for McCain, the second he realizes his greedy lifelong consuming ambition of being the GOP Presidential nominee, he is shunted aside so fast that even his creaky head must be spinning. For a sassy rookie woman from the frozen nowhere.

You could almost feel sorry for McCain. Almost, that is, if it were not for McCain’s lifelong history of using, discarding, sucking and leeching off of women to serve his personal desires and ambitions. McCain himself has written about the scores of women that he went through in his youth. Then he claimed to have found his soul mate, Carol, and settled down. Of course, all that only counted if it was all perfect for McCain; the second it was not, because of injuries Carol suffered in a car accident, McCain abandoned her and their family. Of course, McCain didn’t leave Carol before he had found his next mark, Cindy Lou Hensley, to leech off of. Years after using Cindy’s money and contacts to fuel his political career, a career he may never have had without the Hensley resources, McCain still dismisses his wife with such uncouth terms as "trollop" and "c*nt" when he is annoyed or angry.

So, with McCain now missing in action behind Palin’s skirt, it is in no small measure of irony and justice that the angry, dishonorable cad McCain, having spent his political lifetime living off of the good graces and money of his wife, is now subjugated to the role of the wooden dummy Charlie McCarthy to Sarah Palin’s Edgar Bergen. The user is now the tool. Are you ready for President Palin?

As many people have pointed out, the McCain campaign are sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to hide out until the journalists forget about her.

CHUCK TODD:Well Ron, We’ve been able to see that there are a few folks who are saying [Palin is] actually going to hole up in Alaska for a little, she’s got to see her son off who’s going to be deployed to Iraq, so we may not see her on the campaign trail for a little while.

RON ALLEN: Yes she hasn’t been home for a long time, and she’s obviously got some business to deal with there.

Obviously, part of the reason the campaign is sending Palin away to the woods is because the media has made it clear they’re not satisfied with only scripted interactions with her–the McCain campaign needs to get Palin away from the media at least until they do some real vetting of her. (Though, as Mudflats points out, there are journalists in AK, too.)

But I think there are several things contributing to their last minute change of plans.

• They intend to shield her from the media, as everyone has mentioned.
• McCain campaign staffers have been in AK for several days, trying to bury all the dirt on Palin; I’m certain they need her personal involvement to bury some of it, not least on TrooperGate, in which her promised cooperation has disappeared in the last several days. 
• She’s a quick study, no doubt, but she still has a great deal of cramming to do before she can answer any real questions about McCain’s policy or foreign policy in general.
• If the MI Independents quoted in this focus group are even remotely representative, then I suspect the McCain camp has internal polling showing that Palin helps immensely in some places, but drags down the ticket in others. Sterling Heights is adjacent to Oakland County, where all those Independent voters were panning the Palin pick. I think the campaign realized they better get a better sense of where Palin helps them before they roll her out and offend voters in swing states.
• After last nights underwhelming speech, McCain is being overshadowed by his Veep candidate. He needs to reassert himself as the dominant player on the ticket, before Palin comes out of her hibernation and wows the crowds again.

She’ll be back, probably in heavily vetted appearances and fundraisers. But for now, McCain’s campaign have to figure out what they’ve got on their hands, and figure out how to manage it to get the wrinkly white dude elected.

Detroit’s long urbam nightmare is over moving onto new scandals now. Kwame Kilpatrick finally admitted to perjuring himself yesterday, and stepped down so Detroit can let some other place–perhaps Alaska–be the laughingstock for the next two months.

In a standing-room-only Detroit courtroom, Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges in his perjury case and no contest in his assault case, ending his steadfast refusal to resign amid a scandal that only grew in intensity over the past eight months.

"I lied under oath," Kilpatrick told Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner, almost echoing the Free Press headline in January that sparked the mayor’s text message scandal.

Under the terms of his deal, Kilpatrick will spend four months in jail, forfeit his law license and his pension from the state Legislature, pay up to $1 million in restitution and serve 5 years of probation. He will leave office Sept. 18 and has promised not to run for office while on probation.

Even the plea deal made a lot of sense: it requires jail time, it tries to recoup some of the $9 million this cost the city of Detroit, and it ensures that Detroit will be Kwame-free for the five years he serves probation. It would all have been fairly satisfying, if only Kwame hadn’t pre-empted about 20 minutes of the Giants-‘Skins game yesterday to say a long goodbye (grumble grumble).

This is what should happen to public officials who lie about important matters. Not like some other liars we know. Scooter Libby, whom George Bush saved from having to spend a day in jail (and who never admitted his guilt). Alberto Gonzales, who thus far hasn’t paid a price for lying about the warrantless wiretap program and the US Attorney purge. Karl Rove, for his lies about outing Plame and firing Governor Siegelman. Who knows? Governor Palin may soon be on this list for her attempts to cover up the firing of Walt Monegan.

But, as the old rule works, Republicans don’t ever actually have to pay for their abuse of public trust.

Remember what Monica Goodling said when she had to admit to using illegal questions during hiring? She "crossed the line."

Here’s Jack Abramoff, pleading for leniancy.

It is hard to see the exact moment that I went over the line but, looking backwards, it is amazing for me to see how far I strayed and how I did not see it at the time. So much of what happens in Washington stretches the envelope, skirts the spirit of the rules, and lives in the loopholes. [my emphasis]

These Republican goons have a big problem with lines, I guess.

The country and the progressive blogosphere have long been suckers for Cheney/Rovian shiny object distractions. I am afraid that is happening as we speak. First off (and i will come back to this later in a separate post) all of the heat, passion an unity that was generated and consolidated by Los Dos Clintonos, Al Gore and then, mightily and masterfully, Barack Obama, is being dissipated by the wind of fixation on Sarah Palin.

But more importantly, critical and substantive things are going on that we need to be paying attention to. Eric Lichtblau in the NYT reminds us of a huge one this morning:

Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda.
…
The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.
…
The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months, has taken to make permanent important aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. From a new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I. investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics. (Emphasis added)

In all the flurry and bustle of the conventions and Palin, not to mention back to school and Labor Day weekend for the nation, this could be lost in the flow. It must not be. This provision has all the potential implications, problems, and potential for abuse that the Authorization For Military Force (AUMF) had in 2001. And with a Cheney/Bush Administration still in power, and with their known predilection for abuse, this simply cannot be allowed.

This is but another callous and cynical play by the Administration to manipulate timing and political posture for craven gain. Cheney, Bush and the GOP enablers are going to parry this against the Democrats during election season and try to fearmonger them into approving it.

In the midst of an election season, the language represents a political challenge of sorts to the administration’s critics. While many Democrats say they are wary of Mr. Bush’s claims to presidential power, they may be even more nervous about casting a vote against a measure that affirms the country’s war against terrorism.
…
Mr. Bush “is trying to stir up again the politics of fear by reminding people of something they haven’t really forgotten: that we are engaged in serious armed conflict with Al Qaeda,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard and legal adviser to Mr. Obama.

Make no mistake, this is yet another critical cog in their efforts to cloud the waters and fog the field so that they cannot be effectively subjected to accountability for the crimes, both moral and statutory, they have perpetrated. I made the same warning about the "seemingly innocuous" extension of the Protect America Act; I make that warning again here. This "seemingly innocuous" reaffirmation of our battle against terrorism is not innocuous at all; it is diabolical and craven. I am not the only one who thinks so.

The language recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001. It authorized the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden.

But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration’s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress.
…
For Bush critics like Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, the answer is simple: do not give the administration the wartime language it seeks.

“I do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever,” Mr. Fein said. “We have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify and indict and convict. They’re not a goliath. Don’t treat them that way.”

Bruce Fein is right. Larry Tribe is right. I am right.

Not now. Not again. Never again. This too cute by a half "little reaffirmation" slipped into the mix during the sturm, drang and heat of presidential election season must not be allowed to slip through and pass into law. People always want to know what they can do post FISA, what are our issues; well, here is one. Make sure that the Cheney/Bush/GOP cabal, and their Hoyer/Pelosi/Blue Dog enablers do not screw the pooch yet again.

Well, the big news of the morning appears to be that John McCain has picked Palin as his running mate. I see this as a brilliant move; one sure to baffle Democrats and lead to victory for the Republicans in November. Palin is a fantastic writer, and his ribald sense of humor will surely offset the growing tendencies of John McCain to be a total angry, old prick. After witnessing the Obama acceptance spectacular last night, it was darn near impossible to envision what the GOP could do to regain some oxygen and momentum.

Boy, was I wrong. Naming Michael Palin, a founding member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, as McCain’s running mate was a stroke of genius that is sure to revive a rotting, dying campaign that….

What??? Oh, wait a minute. I am being corrected; it is not Michael Palin, it is Sarah Palin. Well, who the heck is she? Hmmm, Wiki says:

Born in Idaho and raised in Alaska, Palin played point guard on her high school’s basketball team. She was the 1984 runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, receiving a scholarship that allowed her to attend the University of Idaho, where she received a degree in journalism. After working as a sports reporter at an Anchorage television station, Palin served two terms on the Wasilla, Alaska, City Council from 1992 to 1996, was elected mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470 in 2000) in 1996, and ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor in 2002. She was elected Governor of Alaska in 2006.

NPR’s Linda Wertheimer was asked by the host of their coverage for her thoughts. Paraphrasing, she said:

“I can’t think of a VP candidate on either party’s ticket whose resume is so thin and weak. Given that McCain’s health is what it is, he’s said that his VP pick is perhaps more important than most presidential candidates. Given that, I just don’t get this choice.”

Wow. Palin really does have a pretty thin CV for the party that only yesterday was carping about Obama’s lack of experience. It does, however, set up a fantastic campaign slogan:

"Sarah Palin: She Hasn’t Been Indicted Yet!"

Of course, she is from Alaska, so that could change any second now. At least this is a well thought out, carefully planned, choice for McCain that will help him combat Obama’s energy policy. Wait, hold on, I am getting another call (these breaking news stories are tough I tell ya; hard work, hard work). Ooops, it turns out that Ms. Palin just a couple of weeks ago was profusely praising Obama’s energy platform; but worry not my friends, there has been an emergency purge of that fact from her website, apparently last night, so nobody should ever pick up on that little nugget. Except maybe, say, The Politico:

On August 5, she sent out a press release applauding Obama’s embrace of natural gas and his plan to give $1,000 tax rebates to deal with rising energy costs. The link to the press release isn’t working — it looks like it was removed from the site.

Well, as Michael Palin would say, "It’s only a flesh wound!"

Really, Sarah Palin is a wonderful candidate. Perfect for the position. Since she is not blonde, there is at least a 50:50 chance that McCain won’t be trying to nail her on the Straight Cock Talk Express.

In all seriousness, this is a joke. There were only two paths that the Republicans could take to actually try to win the election. They could either try to balance the ticket with some business acumen with Mitt Romney, hoping to lock up Michigan and the Mormon vote in the process, or they could go with the David Broder bipartisan wet dream of McCain-Lieberman and try to make a play for all the centrists on both sides of the party divide. Anything else just is not a credible effort. But with Palin, the GOP doesn’t tarnish any of their alleged leading figures with the potential humiliating disaster brewing for November, and they give some street cred for the future to what they view as their best female rising star. Palin is too young and off the radar to be hurt by even a drubbing in November; if it turns out more positive, or McCain pulls a victory rabbit out of his hat, so much the better.

One thing is for sure; this was not McCain’s pick. Anybody who has watched and known McCain over the years knows that he is an old school boys club type. There is no way in the world McCain, left to his own devices, would pick Sarah Palin. No way. Nope, this is a desperation play and tactical move for the future. The real plan is Petraeus in 2012. That is where the braintrust, such that it may be, is for the Republicans right now.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this strong argument for the strength of Sarah Palin’s bonafides. Heard this on NPR while driving earlier in the morning. I believe (not positive) the discussion point at that moment was how Palin would stack up considering that Obama had named Joe Biden as his VP nominee; the GOP "strategist" fired back to the effect that:

Palin will do great! She was voted Miss Congeniality you know!

That would have been in the 1984 Miss Wasilla contest. Hey! She played the flute too!

In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, Palin finished second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant which won her a scholarship to help pay her way through college. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.

John McCain – Country First. Uh huh. More like the Geezer and the Tweezer.

We are now on the third day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). I have watched most all of the major prime time speeches, thanks to the straight up coverage of CSPAN. That would correspondingly be of no thanks to the broadcast and cable networks, who cover so little of the convention itself that you wonder why they are there at all. The answer, of course, is that they are there because they think, in fact are convinced, that they are the story. The pompous, insipid and mindless babbling is simply pathetic beyond belief. It is torture to listen to.

My wife was, uncharacteristically, sitting with me watching most of Monday night’s festivities, and part of Tuesday’s including Hillary’s video tribute and speech. Her comment when asked to give her reaction on the convention was that whoever programmed the music for the event, and specifically for the intro and exit of the different speakers, should be taken out and flogged. Considering that horrid Muzak version of "You’re Still The One" that was played on either side of Ted Kennedy’s inspirational appearance, not to mention most other canned music I have heard, I agree. For the most part, it has been worse than I would expect from the Republicans, much less the Democrats. It is torture to listen to.

Sadly, that is, save for a fleeting reference by Dennis Kucinich, pretty much as close to the issue of torture as has been achieved at the DNC. The torture regime that has been instituted as the unabashed official policy of the United States is perhaps the single biggest and best example, part and parcel with the Iraq War, of the criminality and moral hell the Bush/Cheney Administration has plunged us into. It is what the rest of the world knows and sees, and what we must pull ourselves up from and rise above. Apparently it is just a little too uncomfortable for our elected leaders, party delegates and the Obama campaign to discuss though. "Change" for this crowd clearly does not include openly discussing the singularly important topic of US torture policy, the one thing that must be changed for the US to recover any global credibility.

There is another convention going on this week though, and it happens to be right here in Arizona. It is the annual convention of the American Legion. You know, the organization of veterans of the United States armed forces who served in wartime. And lo and behold they had Richard Bruce Cheney in front of them today, and had the temerity to bring up that which the folks at the DNC do not. The veterans that have fought, and lost their own doing so, for this country were hot under the collar about torture. From a CNN report:

Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration’s record on prisoner interrogations, telling a veterans’ group that its use of "alternative" techniques against suspects was legal and proper.

The local newspaper, the Arizona Republic, had this report:

The vice president prefaced his speech with a promise to avoid talk of the ongoing presidential campaign, though he reminded the group they had heard from “one of your own” the day before, GOP nominee-in-waiting Sen. John McCain.

Cheney used his remarks to the packed convention hall to review the Bush administration’s work on defense and foreign policy and to defend the president for some of his actions in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The war on terror is not a figure of speech,” Cheney said. “The only way to win is to go on the offensive and that is exactly what we are doing.”

He acknowledged mistakes, most notably the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib early in the Iraqi offensive. The people found responsible for those abuses were prosecuted, but “the misdeeds of the few should never be used to slander” those who did not break the law, he said.

Cheney also defended the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques, which critics say pushed and often broke through the boundaries of torture. The techniques were “entirely legal and proper and carefully reviewed by the Department of Justice,” Cheney said. “No nation in the world takes human rights more seriously than the United States.”

He voiced support for veterans’ issues, including a new GI Bill that offers education benefits similar to those given following World War II. Although Bush signed the bill, he had opposed it and threatened to veto the measure until it passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities.

In remarks following Cheney’s, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., noted that McCain and other Republicans had characterized the new benefits as too generous.

Now, granted, it may have been an opportunity for Cheney to cluck his self serving rationalization, but the discussion was being had. And Jim Webb was there to discuss further and counter Cheney. The issue was broached and discussion had. Something that ought to be going on at the Democratic National Convention; but, to date, has not in any substantive fashion. The Democrats should be leading the discussion on torture, not shying away from it.

In case anybody here has forgotten that the issue roils on in the real world, here are a few recent reminders:

Judge fears secret Gitmo habeas hearings. –

A federal judge overseeing cases against dozens of Guantánamo Bay detainees said Wednesday that he fears the public — and the detainees themselves — will be locked out of the courtroom when evidence in the case is scrutinized for the first time.

Poland to investigate claims of secret CIA prisons.

Poland’s prime minister has requested an investigation into allegations there were secret prisons in the country used by the CIA to hold and question terror suspects between 2001 and 2004.

Algerian captive claims water torture at Guantanamo base.

An Algerian prisoner at Guantánamo Bay has accused his guards of using a form of waterboarding on him, his lawyer said Friday, marking the first allegation that the harsh interrogation technique was used at the U.S. military base.
…
Ameziane, who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo since February 2002 without being charged with crimes, told his lawyer Wells Dixon that guards at the base placed a water hose between his nose and mouth and ran it for several minutes. Ameziane said they repeated the procedure several times, nearly suffocating him.

”I had the impression that my head was sinking in water,” Ameziane, 41, wrote his lawyer in a letter. “I still have psychological injuries, up to this day. Simply thinking of it gives me the chills.”

According to Ameziane’s account, during the same alleged incident the guards applied pepper spray all over his body, hosed him down and left him shackled and shivering in wet clothes in front of an air conditioner in an interrogation room.

The biggest news from a blogger chat with Patrick Leahy at the DNC today came in response to a question I threw out as we adjourned–about whether or not he was convinced with the FBI’s case in the anthrax case. We had this exchange:

emptywheel: Do you think Ivins acted alone? Are you convinced Ivins sent the anthrax letters?

Leahy: No, I’m not satisfied. I think someone was involved either before or after. I’m not satisfied with the answers I’ve gotten.

I suggested that he had seen significantly more evidence than the public had seen–he gave me a funny look; I’m not sure what that meant.  

He said SJC will do a hearing with Mueller in mid-September. Leahy expects some hard questions from both Democrats and Republicans.

Well, here comes a new entry in the Captain Renault "I am shocked, shocked to hear of this" file. It turns out that Jose Rodriquez and the CIA are not the only ones that Cheney and Bush have ordered to destroy critical material evidence the subject of investigations into international terror cases. Nope; of course not. They have put their grubby little thumbs to the screws on the Swiss as well. From the startling new reporting in today’s New York Times:

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.
…
The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.
…
Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program.

So the prosecution and trial of the Tinner group, and related avenues into the depths of the spiderweb of influence and dealings of AQ Khan is lost. Good thing that our good allies against terror, the Pakistanis, have their thumbs on AQ Khan and are getting to the bottom of how Khan’s "rogue" network was able to operate. Eh, not so much. Now, we know that in the Bush Administration, all policy and interaction with Pakistan begins and ends with Dick Cheney. Kind of makes you wonder whether the Cheney Administration is behind the curious deal to let AQ Khan run free in life without even so much as having ever been debriefed as to what all he and his network had done to proliferate nuclear weapons and technology.

Go figure; the US and the long dark arm of Cheney looks to be leveraging the spring of AQ Khan too. From Gareth Porter via CommonDreams:

But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet’s memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan’s operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.

The following January and early February, Khan’s house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan’s activities.

That whole scenario had been “carefully orchestrated with Musharraf”, Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.

But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al Qaeda officials — and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported Jul. 15, 2004 that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27 or 28 July.” Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.

The military source added, “If we don’t find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole.”

Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry’s acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al Qaeda leader.

Wow. Yet another Captain Renault moment presents itself. Jeebus, is there any significant terror plot or network in the world that we are not either some type of clandestine part of or, alternatively, haven’t botched the prosecution of through torture, rendition and other immoral/illegal behavior? It is a rhetorical question. Donald Rumsfeld once famously mused about whether we even have the metrics to know whether we are preempting more than is being created when it comes to terrorism. I don’t know what kind of metrics and optics Rummy views through, but it is damn hard to contemplate any set that would yield a positive answer.

The masterminds behind 9/11 and al Qaida, bin Laden and Zawahiri, run free, the purveyors of nukes to Iran, Libya, North Korea, possibly Syria and who knows what other states and/or entities, AQ Khan and the Tinners, run free. You have to question whether the US, through the Cheney/Bush Administration, really wants to curtail these modalities of terror as opposed to merely reaping the giant whirlwind of profit from the constant chase. The Europeans have some questions too. Again, from the NYT article:

But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.

The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.

“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.

The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.

Oh, wait, there is one more little part of this sordid story that is relevant to the denizens of this blog, and the expertise of the headmistress. So, what exactly were the Tinner clan doing in relation to the CIA? Well, one of the things involved the clandestine counterproliferation of nuclear weapons:

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated.
…
After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.

An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”

Well, that sounds suspiciously like "Operation Merlin" doesn’t it? In case you don’t recall Operation Merlin, Marcy wrote a wonderful piece about it and a fellow with a curious history known as Jerry Doe. The full background on Merlin is described in James Risen’s book "State of War", excerpted at length here in the Guardian.

One last parting shot, because I know you are already honing in on this question. Yep, it sure is amazing, isn’t it, that the Cheney/Bush Administration is willing to go to such extreme lengths to protect covert CIA assets that they will scuttle the Swiss, European and IAEA investigation of the biggest nuclear proliferation ring in the world, yet they blithely, and with no remorse whatsoever, out Valerie Plame and burn Brewster-Jennings and it’s assets and contacts? Shocking. But true. I’ll hazard a guess that Marcy will be stopping by to ante in on this story. Oh, and make sure you click the links and read both the NYT and CommonDreams pieces in full, they are worthy of a full read.

For so long now we have been eagerly awaiting the results on the DOJ IG/OPR investigation into the curious and unprecedented firing of nine US Attorneys by the Bush Administration. Heh, but will it ever really arrive? Will Karl Rove and Harriet Miers ever have to testify? Eh, I don’t know, you have to wonder after a while. One thing is clear though, just about all of the original explanations given by the Bush Administration have been discounted, if not disproved.

Much discussed are the cases of David Iglesias, Bud Cummins, Carol Lam and John McKay. But right now, I am more interested in three of the lesser discussed of the sacked USAs. Margaret Chiara, Tom Heffelfinger and Paul Charlton.

There have been many discussions, both here and across the blogosphere dissecting why these particular US Attorneys were fired. There have been many theories, and the bottom line is that there is probably no one grand unifying theory other than that the Bush Administration was manipulating the DOJ and the USA offices for various political hit jobs; i.e. multiple motivations. One of the ones we have gone into here is the interplay with Native American issues. And Chiara, Heffelfinger and Charlton were all, due to the nature of their physical jurisdictions, highly involved in Native American issues. Marcy has done recent posts calling into question the legitimacy of the stated basis for firing Chiara.

Over a year and a half has passed since Margaret Chiara was fired with a bunch of other US Attorneys–and we still have no good explanation why she was targeted. The apparent reason, though, is a rumor that she was having a gay relationship with an AUSA in her office, traveled with her on the government dime, and gave her preferential bonuses.

But today’s Monica Goodling report includes a denial from Chiara and the AUSA–Leslie Hagen–that they were in a relationship.

So, if the stated rationale for Chiara’s firing is in doubt, maybe we ought to give renewed consideration to the Native American aspects and implications. Marcy was on this early and hard with Native Americans And The USA Purge, Part I and Part II. Don’t hesitate to take a look back at those posts, they are pretty interesting.

The reason I come back to this area is that today’s Washington Post has a nice little article that similarly undercuts the stated rationale for the firing of Paul Charlton.

Justice Department officials have reversed course and approved a plea deal in a controversial death penalty case that may have prompted the firing of a U.S. attorney in Arizona nearly two years ago, according to court records and interviews.
…
Charlton had argued that the case was short on forensic evidence and was not suitable for what he called "the ultimate penalty." But officials in Washington overruled him in fall 2006, and he later became one of nine top prosecutors who were fired en masse that year. In congressional testimony last year, then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Charlton’s reluctance to support the administration’s position on capital punishment in the case amounted to "poor judgment" and attracted criticism in the department’s political ranks.

It never made sense that Charlton was fired over one death penalty case up on the remote reservation. Charlton had never himself made any public issue of the case. And now the very acts of the Department of Justice give the lie to that as a basis for the firing of Paul Charlton. This plea deal would have been cut and the case over two years ago if Paul Charlton had not have been jerked around and then fired. The exact same factors mitigating against demand for the death penalty existed then as exist now. This plea deal in US v. Jose Rios Rico, was clearly the decision by the DOJ Main, who, when it was desired to fire Paul Charlton, had said something quite different:

In congressional testimony last year, then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Charlton’s reluctance to support the administration’s position on capital punishment in the case amounted to "poor judgment" and attracted criticism in the department’s political ranks.

So he was fired according to Alberto Gonzales. Or, as has always been suspected, and as we have confirmed today by the WaPo’s reporting of the plea deal, not. So, why was Paul Charlton, not to mention the others, fired? It certainly was not the reasons testified to by Gonzales, Mercer, Sampson et. al testified to; will there be any repercussions for their false testimony? Where exactly is the IG/OPR Report anyway?