shoulda, woulda, coulda

s'funny how what sounded impossible a coupl'a years ago sounds like a slam-dunk today ...

nader:	what about the more serious violations of habeas corpus. you know after 9-11 bush rounded up thousands of them, americans, many of them muslim americans or arabic americans and they were thrown in jail without charges, they didn't have lawyers, some of them were pretty mistreated in new york city. you know they were all released eventually.
napolitano:	correct.
nader:	is that what you mean also about throwing people in jail without charges violating habeas corpus?
napolitano:	well that is so obviously a violation of the natural law, the natural right to be brought before a neutral arbiter within moments of the government taking your freedom away from you. and the constitution itself, as the supreme court in the boumediene case pretty much said, wherever the government goes, the constitution goes with it and wherever the constitution goes are the rights of the constitution as a guarantee and habeas corpus cannot be suspended by the president ever. it can only be suspended by the congress in times of rebellion which in read milligan says meaning rebellion of such magnitude that judges can't get into their court houses. that has not happened in american history. so what president bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of guantanamo bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal.
nader:	what's the sanction for president bush and vice president cheney?
napolitano:	there's been no sanction except what history will say about them.
nader:	what should be the sanctions?
napolitano:	they should have been indicted. they absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. i'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. at least not an indictable crime. it's a moral crime.
nader:	so you think george w. bush and dick cheney should even though they've left office, they haven't escaped the criminal laws, they should be indicted and prosecuted?
napolitano:	the evidence in this book and in others, our colleague the great vincent bugliosi has amassed an incredible amount of evidence. the purpose of this book was not to amass that evidence but i do discuss it, is overwhelming when you compare it to the level of evidence required for a normal indictment that george w. bush as president and dick cheney as vice president participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings.

(hat tip to crooks and liars)

deep thought

we have to keep them in guantanamo 'cause we can't hold them legally.

how to talk about torture

and no, it has nothing to do with nancy pelosi or hillary clinton ...

hasselback:	what is your mind — i know your mind is, ah, pretty made up about waterboarding, correct? you were waterboarded part of, part of your navy seal training, correct?
ventura:	no, it wasn't part of navy seal training; it was part of what they call SERE school: survival, escape, resistance, evasion. it's, it's a school that they required you to go to prior to the combat zone in vietnam. and yes, we were all waterboarded there, and yes, it is torture.
hasselback:	what do you think about nancy pelosi in terms of what she has been claiming with the cia lying to and misleading congress ... ?
ventura:	i, i, what's worse is this: the fact that it happened. if, if we hadn't waterboarded to begin with, none of this would be a controversy, would it?
hasselback:	if we hadn't waterboarded ...
ventura:	and torture, wait — torture is torture. if you're going to be a country that follows the rule of law, which we are, torture is illegal.
hasselback:	but these were specifically approved techniques with ksm, okay ... ?
ventura:	approved by who ... ?
hasselback:	khalid sheik mohammed, the information we extracted from him before waterboarding was zip. afterward, he released the information ...
unidentifed:	no ...
ventura:	no, we got all of that before waterboarding.
unidentifed:	yes.
hasselback:	this was the case that was used three times ...
ventura:	the question is this: alright, wait a minute — if waterboarding is okay, then —
hasselback:	[to unidentified] do you want me to put you in a triple nelson?
ventura:	wait, wait, if waterboarding's okay, then why don't we let our police do it to suspects so that they can learn what they know?
	[applause]
hasselback:	i understand that question, i understand that question ...
ventura:	if waterboarding's okay, why didn't we waterboard mcveigh and nichols, the oklahoma city bombers, to find out if there were more people involved?
behar:	well, what's your answer to that? why didn't we? why didn't we?
ventura:	well, i don't know, but we only seem to waterboard muslims.
goldberg:	hmm ...
audience:	oohh ...
	[crosstalk]
ventura:	haa-ha, ha-ha! have we waterboarded anyone else? name me someone else we've waterboarded!
behar:	well, one of the things that's coming out now is that they were waterboarding them to get a connection between iraq and al qaeda. and that the reason they waterboarded was to get information out so they could justify the invasion of iraq.
hasselback:	what do you think is gonna happen now —
behar:	so how does that work into your theory of how great it is?
hasselback:	look, i'm not saying it's great. i'm not saying, okay everybody, let's all go next door and get waterboarded. i'm, i'm concerned right now about nancy pelosi, who was supposedly briefed on this thing —
goldberg:	she lied —
ventura:	okay, they want her out now, right? because she lied? well, why didn't they ask for bush, bush and cheney to go out when they lied about why we went into iraq?
	[applause]
hasselback:	senator clinton! senator clinton, hillary clinton was right there with them, as were many democrats ...
ventura:	the point is, nothing is gonna happen cause they're all involved. the dems and repubs are both involved. that's why president obama's backing off from it, and they're not gonna do it now. it's a good thing i'm not the president. i'm an independent. because i would prosecute the people who did it, i would prosecute the people who ordered it, and they would all go to jail.
	[applause]
hasselback:	well, wouldn't they prosecute president obama in the future going backwards when he ordered the killing of the somali pirates? i mean, you have to think about —
ventura:	no, because the somali pirates —
goldberg:	there's a lot of differences ...
ventura:	that's apples and oranges. you're not talking about someone in custody who is supposedly under — okay, how would we feel, look how outraged we were when waterboarding was done to our vets in vietnam. where do you think we learned that? and we created the hanoi hilton right in guantanamo. that's our hanoi hilton. people have died there, people are tortured there — i'm ashamed of my country.
hasselback:	people aren't basing all those, extremists are not basing their behaviors on us, i can guarantee that, they are —
ventura:	because — should we stoop to their level?
hasselback:	look, we have —
ventura:	no. we should be above that.
hasselback:	absolutely —
ventura:	torture is wrong.
	[applause]
hasselback:	torture is wrong, but enhanced interrogation is —
ventura:	"enhanced interrogation" is dick cheney changing a word. dick cheney comes up with a new word to cover his ass.
	[crosstalk]
goldberg:	new question! new question!
ventura:	i've said it before: you give me a waterboard, one hour and dick cheney and i'll have him confessing to the sharon tate murders.
unidentified:	yeah baby!
	[applause]

smith:

our chief fox report correspondent jonathan hunt is live with us. johnathan, republicans seemed to keep the pressure on the speaker throughout the weekend and certainly continuing into today.

hunt:

yes, absolutely, this is the political gift that keeps on giving for the republicans. instead of this debate being about national security, what is and isn’t torture, what the bush administration should and shouldn’t have allowed and whether anybody in that administration should now be prosecuted, they are, they, the republicans are now able to frame this debate as to whether nancy pelosi is fit to continue as speaker. so shep, they are not about to let their foot off the gas in any way, shape, or form right now.

what dick said

and, more importantly, what he didn't say ...

---

*mid-atlantic shredding services
  (see also: zelikow memo)

quote of the day

gonzalo boye, spanish human rights lawyer and co-plaintiff filing torture and war crimes charges against the bush white house:

if they are innocent, they shouldn’t be afraid.

and now the legacy begins

an example of the kind of books inspired when one is no longer able to explain his wars ...