Henry Kissinger's ideological "daughter": Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland by Wayne Madsen Report

Kissinger's ideological "daughter": Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has held meetings with Donald Trump since his election, will have one of his ideological "daughters," Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland, deeply embedded in the Trump White House as deputy national security adviser.

McFarland worked for Kissinger's National Security Council in the Nixon White House and went on to work in the Reagan administration as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's speechwriter. Although Ronald Reagan did his best to keep Kissinger proteges far away from senior levels of his administration, owing to Reagan's distrust of Kissinger, "eastern elites," and the Trilateral Commission, McFarland was an exception. McFarland was a major force behind crafting Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") propaganda.

McFarland is, so far, the highest-ranking neo-conservative to be named to the Trump administration. In addition to her Kissinger ties, McFarland is also a board member of the Central Intelligence Agency-founded Jamestown Foundation, a creation of CIA director William Casey during the early years of the Reagan administration. Jamestown formulated disastrous anti-Soviet policies, including those that nurtured anti-Soviet Muslim guerrillas, an act that led to the ultimate creation of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

McFarland is also close to the disgraced former CIA director General Petraeus. She has been quietly pushing Petraeus for Secretary of State even though, if chosen, Petraeus would become the fourth general named by Trump to senior posts in his administration, joining retired generals Michael Flynn, James Mattis, and John Kelly.

In 2006, McFarland launched a Senate campaign against New York's then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Her GOP primary campaign self-destructed after her 16-year old daughter Camilla McFarland was arrested after shoplifting $300 worth of string bikinis and a pair of jeans from two boutique shops in Southampton, Long Island. Questions are now being asked how McFarland can be trusted with the nation's highest secrets when she could not prevent her own daughter, then-attending the elite Taft boarding school in Connecticut, from turning into a politically-embarrassing five finger-discount teenager.



Neo-cons, former Henry "Scoop" Jackson Democrats who infiltrated the Reagan administration, handed the president the worst political scandal since Watergate, the Iran-contra affair. History shows that neo-cons are poisonous to any administration that permits them to nest. Neo-cons were responsible for the disastrous U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, a permanent stain on the administration of George W. Bush.

McFarland, Petraeus, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, neo-con policy wonk Frank Gaffney, Bolton's spokesman at the UN Richard Grenell, and others of their ilk only know how to commit mischief in the long-term neo-con goal of confronting China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and other nations that refuse to toe the American line.

Reinventing a War Criminal: Defending the Bush Legacy - by Stephen Lendman

The Bush legacy is based on lies, deceit, crimes of war and against humanity, and complicity in criminal fraud, a disgusting record deserving denunciation and prison, not shameless feting.

Yet his new book, "Decision Points," attempts the impossible, a brazen scheme to reinvent a war criminal, one of history's greatest, his legacy marked by:

-- neocon hellishness;

-- duplicity and public betrayal;

-- a disdain for human rights and civil liberties;

-- lawlessness;

-- racist hatemongering;

-- usurping unconstitutional "Unitary Executive" authority, what Chalmers Johnson called "a ball-faced assertion of presidential supremacy....dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo;"

-- imperial wars called liberating ones;

-- mass murder;

-- extrajudicially establishing coup d'etat "continuity of government" authority to abolish constitutional freedoms unilaterally;

-- color revolutions against democracy;

-- reveling in being a "wartime president;"

-- making torture official US policy;

-- establishing a global torture prison gulag;

-- abolishing the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus protections against using US military forces for domestic law enforcement, except as constitutionally authorized or in cases of internal insurrection;

-- militarizing state and local law enforcement agencies, establishing a martial law apparatus throughout all levels of government without congressional approval;

-- supporting the worst of Israeli crimes;

-- deposing Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide, its first democratic leader since liberation from France in 1803, turning slaves into citizens;

-- staging a failed coup to depose Venezuela's Hugo Chavez;

-- failing to establish a militarized North American Union (NAU) merger of Canada and Mexico with America, headquartered in Washington;

-- transferring unprecedented wealth to the rich, exceeded only by his successor;

-- unabashedly favoring business over beneficial social change;

-- designating everything for privatization, including public education as another commodity;

-- waging war on working Americans;

-- unprecedented levels of secrecy;

-- endangering public welfare and safety by regulatory shredding;

-- creating the grimmest economic conditions since the 1930s;

-- destroying civil liberties;

-- silencing dissent;

-- criminalizing First Amendment activities advocating for environmental and animal rights;

-- institutionalizing illegal spying and police state repression;

-- turning elections into shams;

-- hiring journalist as paid propagandists;

-- failing to privatize Social Security and end Medicare;

-- opposing Net Neutrality;

-- waging war on Muslims, Latinos, and other political targets; persecuting them; denying them due process and judicial fairness; incarcerating and/or deporting them;

-- fostering social decay; and

-- much more, a legacy from hell, a disgusting betrayal of every norm of civilized decency, engendering global contempt and outrage.

Yet there he was discussing his record publicly on the hustings, promoting his new book, 477 pages of ghostwritten rubbish - fiction, not fact.

The writer: Christopher Michel, aged 28, a fellow Yale graduate, working with Bush preparing it since January 2009. The Daily Beast's Bryan Curtis said, in 2003, he was an unpaid intern, then rose to become deputy assistant to the president and deputy speechwriting director. Both positions involved close regular contact, including traveling the world on Air Force One.

Treating his former boss reverentially, he said Bush was fully in charge, "writ(ing) a first draft of a lot of things, (then) email(ing it) to" him. "My role (was) to help put together different scenes. (He wrote) the scenes, and (I) stitch(ed) things together." Or so he claimed, wanting Bush to get full credit, a man who couldn't complete a full sentence, got through Yale and Harvard Business School on his pedigree, not intellect, and likely didn't write his own term papers, let alone a book.

Curtis concluded saying "the best way to read the Bush memoir is as the elusive piece de resistance of the most loyal Bush scrivener. In (a) 2009 email to friends, Michel wrote, 'I owe more than I can repay to the 43rd president of the United States, a man of courage who will fare well in history.' " Perhaps what's taught in Texas schools or featured in "managed news." Never by legitimate chroniclers, exposing one of history's greatest war criminals, a mass murderer, a contemptible human being, so far unaccountable.

Feting a World Class Rogue

Bombastically back on the world stage, Bush began a whirlwind tour on prime time NBC TV, promoting his book, defending his illegal wars, rationalizing his abandonment of New Orleans post-Katrina, and more, trying to reinvent himself.

Soft media hosts, including Matt Lauer, Oprah Winfrey, Rush Limbaugh and three Fox News regulars (Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Susteren in that order) provided venues. Print interviews will follow, one announced with AARP The Magazine. More interviews as well on CBS Sunday Morning, prime time CNN, The Tonight Show, and other programs, part of the carefully planned scheme to rewrite history, reinvent the man, and sell books, corporate media hosts always cooperative.

New York Times writer Brian Stelter called it part of a well-orchestrated campaign, NBC getting first crack having outbid other network proposals. One reason perhaps is because Bush's daughter, Jena, is a part-time Today show correspondent.

In his November 7 article titled, "With Book, Bush Is Back in Spotlight," Stelter said:

Late last month, NBC taped the interview "over the course of two days in Texas," calling it "a major coup." But anyone expecting "to see a televised confrontation over issues like the Iraq war may come away disappointed. The tone of the prime-time special (and other scheduled interviews) is conversational, not prosecutorial, and for that reason, 'Lauer/Bush' is not likely to join 'Frost/Nixon' in the public imagination."

Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino said tone was an important consideration for the tour, a combination image-building/book-selling effort, already a non-fiction best seller.

Without trying to embarrass or pressure Bush, Lauer asked, "Let's talk about waterboarding." He flatly denied it was torture because he legal staff said so. In fact, they followed orders, devising legal opinions to justify lawlessness, what they clearly understood.

Yet with no substantiating evidence, Bush claimed it "saved lives" by providing advance warning. In fact, experts know that that torture is both ineffective and counterproductive, accomplishing nothing but vengeance.

One of many torture techniques used, waterboarding inflicts severe pain from 40-second applications in two hour sessions, multiple ones daily, forcing water in detainees' mouths and noses for 12 minutes, repeated daily, sometimes for weeks.

Merriam Webster online calls it "an interrogation technique in which water is forced into a detainee's mouth and nose so as to induce the sensation of drowning."

Wikipedia calls it:

"a form of torture that consists of immobilizing the subject on his/her back with the head inclined downwards; water is then poured over the face into breathing passages, thus triggering (a sensation) of drowning. In contrast to submerging the head face-forward in water, waterboarding precipitates an almost immediate gag reflex (causing) extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to (the) lungs (and) brain....from oxygen deprivation (as well as) other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage or, if uninterrupted, death."

By any standard, it's barbaric torture, omitted from media interviews. They focused mainly on Bush's book, reinvented history, airbrushed truth, the same "managed news" featured daily in corporate media reports, censoring or sanitizing hard topics too sensitive to discuss.

Instead, soft-ball hosts doted on Bush calling the world "better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million (Iraqis) who now have a chance to live in freedom." The millions dead, suffering, and immiserated perhaps feel otherwise. Their country (like Afghanistan) is occupied, destroyed, corrupted, tryannized, and contaminated, the undiscussed Bush legacy Obama continues seamlessly, his memoirs ahead in a future volume, no less disgusting than "Decision Points."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

What is Waterboarding? It’s a War Crime, Former President Bush

No Matter What Bush Says, Torture Did Not "Foil" Any London Terror Plots

From former President George W. Bush’s Decision Points book tour, one would think there was nothing wrong with waterboarding. In fact, one might conclude in order to be a strong leader, one has to have the “courage” or “guts” to request a terror suspect be waterboarded or else face the possibility of appearing weak. But, what waterboarding really happens to be is a war crime.

In Bush’s recently released memoir, he writes about the “choice between security and values” being real. He writes about consulting with “CIA experts” on “interrogation techniques.” A legal review was conducted and an “enhanced interrogation program” that “complied with the Constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture” was created. The technique of waterboarding was deemed by the CIA to do “no lasting harm.”

Matt Lauer, a host on "The Today Show," recently interviewed Bush and asked why he thought waterboarding was legal. Bush answered, “Because the lawyer said it was legal…He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer. But you gotta trust the judgment of people around you, and I do."

The lawyers around Bush --- people like David S. Addington, John Ashcroft, Jay Bybee, Steven G. Bradbury, Douglas J. Feith, Timothy E. Flanigan, William J. Haynes II, and John Yoo --- did tell Bush it was legal. They specifically crafted a legal justification for torture so the Bush Administration could get away with committing war crimes. As reported by Jason Leopold, Bush’s lawyers “hastily drafted” legal opinions after one prisoner had already been subjected to waterboarding and “violated ethical standards by collaborating with senior White House officials to create legal cover for violating anti-torture and other federal statutes after the fact, rather than providing objective advice for future actions.

Georgetown University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who has appeared on MSNBC shows like "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" wrote a column in May of 2009 that discussed the case for prosecuting war crimes committed by the Bush Administration. He outlined how the “status of waterboarding as torture was established by the United States.” Maj. Edwin F. Glenn, who used waterboarding in the Philippines in 1898, argued waterboarding was “justified under the necessities” but those arguments were rejected. Maj. Glenn was “court-martialed and convicted of the crime of torture.”

Turley also outlines how “torture is a war crime.” It is a crime under Torture Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2340. Torture is expressly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a “binding law” that President Reagan signed.

Bush and lawyers who were involved in granting permission for torture of detainees like Abu Zubaydah would like Americans to believe the country could have been attacked if waterboarding had not been ordered. The Washington Post reported in March of 2009 the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah “foiled no plots."

They’d also like Americans to believe that plots at Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London were “foiled” thanks to waterboarding. But, a former British intelligence chairman told BBC Radio 4 Today that he doubted torture “actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition.”

In his book, Bush claims the U.S. was able to capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed because Zubaydah was waterboarded. Yet, if that’s really true, why do so many military and defense experts claim torture doesn’t work?

It’s less likely that Zubaydah gave the military any new information and much more likely that interrogators asked something like, “Is Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan? Is he?” And, when he wanted the waterboarding to stop, he nodded “yes” and the interrogators determined that was a good enough confirmation that intelligence tips they had were correct and then forces moved in and captured Mohammed.

And, Bush’s answer of “damn right” to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, when he asked if he had permission to use waterboarding on Mohammed, is just another bitter indication that Bush did not think his Administration needed to adhere to international law.

Fortunately for Bush, Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, despite being briefed on the use of waterboarding in 2002, did not think the Administration needed to be pressed on its committing of war crimes. In fact, the briefing’s only objection was reportedly that some members wondered if the torture technique had been “harsh enough.”

The Obama Administration has effectively decriminalized waterboarding, torture, or war crimes by refusing to have the Department of Justice investigate or prosecute former Bush Administration officials who now boast openly about their involvement in committing war crimes. Advocacy groups have tried to have the lawyers involved in creating legal justification for torture disbarred but, given the lack of interest in following the country’s obligation to investigate and prosecute war crimes, the groups have been unsuccessful (perhaps, having their attempt to defend the rule of law labeled "left wing" by publications like the New York Times has something to do with their lack of success).

This is not "24." War crimes were determined long ago to be actions that should lead to punishment. Bush himself said when he was president, "War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’"

So, in that case, Attorney General Eric Holder, there is work to be done --- work that will hopefully restore the integrity and moral standing of America.

– We Are All War Criminals -

Dahlia Wasfi

By Guest Post • Nov 25th, 2009 at 13:20 • Category: Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Features, Newswire, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War

Our nation is still recovering from the November 5, 2009, shootings at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas. We are waiting for some sense of normalcy to return after such a shocking event. How unbelievable it is for this tragedy to occur; after all, our occupations had been going so well until this point. Just ask the Iraqi people. Wait, scratch that. Ok, ask the Afghan people. Nevermind. Just ask U.S. veterans. Oh boy. If we ask the people who are living the horrors, then maybe what happened at Ft. Hood isn’t so shocking at all. What is surprising is that we haven’t seen more of the same.

In the first ten months of 2009, ten soldiers based at Ft. Hood killed themselves; that was the second-highest for the nation, behind the sixteen suicides at Kentucky’s Ft. Campbell. In January 2009 alone, twenty-four soldiers across the country killed themselves. "This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on." Well, let me help you out, random Army official. When you issue illegal orders for people to go commit atrocities overseas (because that’s the best word to sum up what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan), and they fail to refuse said orders in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, you end up with people in trouble, people with PTSD. Some of them turn their trauma inward, self-destructing and committing suicide. Some of them express their trauma outward, committing homicide. One report documents Former Pfc. Johnathon Klinker, 22, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing his 7-week-old daughter, Nicolette, in October 2006. Another report tells of the murder spree by three Iraq veterans at Ft. Carson, which included the death of a 19-year-old nursing student who was stabbed six times after the trio ran her over with their car in October 2007. And now, you have Major Nidal Hasan, who may have been experiencing secondary PTSD (not to mention degradation by his brothers-in-arms for his ethnicity and religion). THAT is what is going on; it’s all connected to our illegal occupations.

We hear reports now that the military is not taking care of its soldiers. According to allegations from clinical psychiatrist Dr. Kernan Manion—who believes he was dismissed for his complaints—Marines at Camp Lejeune are getting poor care for their PTSD. And it’s not much better in the Army, according to veteran, Sgt. Chuck Luther, who was discharged after twelve years of service with a “personality disorder” instead of being diagnosed with and receiving benefits for PTSD. Here’s what I want to know: WHY ARE WE SURPRISED? Do we not know how this story ends, with a quarter of the homeless population on America’s streets comprised of veterans? Do we not recognize the brutality and dehumanization—of recruits and the “enemy” (whatever the flavor of the month is)—that is the foundation of basic training? Do we really think the military and government are going to one day take care of the US armed forces, when they send them overseas to die for corporate profit? I wouldn’t put my dog’s welfare in the hands of an Army drill sergeant; Americans are handing over their flesh and blood to them. Yes, there is a recession and jobs are scarce, but the military is made up of less than 1% of the U.S. population. There are a whole lot of people who are struggling economically and not choosing to enlist. We are in some serious denial here.

But the denial isn’t just a civilian disorder. As Luther describes on his website, he “was deployed to Taji, Iraq from October 2006 to July 2007. SGT Luther unknowingly suffered PTSD after living in the combat environment.” He was “living” in the combat environment. How innocent that sounds. Under further probing, Luther describes “Violence breeds violence. I was trained to be very violent in combat as a scout … we killed or detained Iraqis before anyone else got there.” Before there could be any witnesses to your crimes. From the Bible, Galatians VI (King James Version), “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Yes, Luther is suffering now. And only he and his fellow scouts know the misery and pain they brought to who knows how many families who did nothing to us. If you break into someone’s home, it is not “self-defense” to attack the people who live there. It is assault and battery. It is terrorism. It is murder. Power of pride? I don’t think so.

And because these crimes are committed in all of our names, we are all the war criminals. We load the weapons; the soldiers and Marines do our dirty work. November 5, 2009, was sort of a “take your family to work” day at Ft. Hood. Military families got to see first-hand the environment where their loved ones earn a paycheck. All of us had a brief glimpse into the horrors that we visit on Iraqi and Afghani families everyday.

But we were lucky, for it wasn’t quite the same. The victims weren’t raped before they were murdered; their bodies were not set on fire after their last breaths were taken. The victims’ children were not tied up while their fathers were detained before they were shot. Ft. Hood soldiers were not stacked into naked pyramids and tortured to death, nor were their families killed in their homes by airstrikes. That is the reality of occupation, and none of us are without blood on our hands—civilian or military. American soldiers and Marines are not guiltier than the rest of us, but they sure as hell aren’t any more innocent. If we want the madness to stop, we all must stop the madness.

Dahlia Wasfi is an activist and speaker, currently working on a book. She supports the rapid redeployment of all overseas American military personnel back to the U.S., specifically to the offices of Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the Federal Reserve, where they should remain until they receive the benefits they were promised. Her website is www.liberatethis.com.

Darth Vader Cheney's Mission Accomplished

Cheney's Mission Accomplished

Dick Cheney: "I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do...."

What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?

An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney's war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.

It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.

Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney's war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.

In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.

Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.

$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can't even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.

Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.

The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government's bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.

The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.

Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy-- given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran's influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens' lives better.

The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.

World War III Is Going To Be Hilarious - Your president giggled and grinned while discussing World War III today.

by Bob Cesca

"But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding [grinning] World War III [end grinning], it seems like you [begin giggling] ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge [end giggling] necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Hahahaha! Yeah! Zinger! That's funny shit. For the record, here's his expression while saying the words "World War Three":


To the rest of the known world, however, World War III a scary thing. It's just below abortion and above rape on the list of the all time unfunniest topics.

Let's break it down.

1. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, and if they ever developed one, they'd be smart enough to know (despite how we caricaturize Ahmadinejad) that using it would invite their own destruction a thousand times over. Thus, there is no Iranian nuclear threat.

2. Yet the administration is drawing up plans to illegally and preemptively attack anyway, based on the lie that Iran is a nuclear threat.

3. Congress, despite the president's 24-percent approval rating, won't stop the White House because of, 1) The Fear, and 2) because Congress has allowed the president and vice president to seize unprecedented power which almost entirely circumvents Article I of the Constitution (among other things).

4. Meanwhile, if we do attack, it appears as if Pooty-Poot might bring Russia in on the Iranian side.

5. And there you go. Knee slapping boners all around. Milk just came out of my nose.

They're marketing Iran with more psychotic voracity than Michelle Malkin attacking an injured baby -- and no one can stop them.

As near as I can tell, there doesn't appear to be a governing body or citizen group who can stop them from carrying this out. Congress won't and, honestly, they can't. Last night's Frontline episode, "Cheney's Law," underscored what we've all been worried about: Congress has been rendered ineffectual against the current power madness of the executive.

For example, has Congress clamped down on the president's rampant use of torture? Sure. (Torture is number five on the unfunny syllabus.) The Republican controlled Congress did this, but the president rendered the law pointless with a signing statement.

Ah yes. Torture. Not to digress too far into this thing, but you know how the president can look us in the eye and say, "we don't torture," as he did in today's press conference? He can say this with impunity because the administration has authored its own definition of torture which is so narrow that anything else -- anything you and I would consider to be torture -- isn't.

If it don't cause organ failure, it ain't torture, Stretchy McStretch-o-rama-funny-pants. In a sense, the president isn't lying when he says "we don't torture." It depends on what your definition of torture is.

This excuse, of course, is the same excuse future enemies will use when they torture... us.

Republican cowards who demand security at the expense of liberty/honor/law have facilitated the Bush executive branch with extraordinary power. Now we're trapped in the shadow of the White House's unprecedented strength, and there doesn't appear to be any conceivable way to stop these people. If Cheney wrangles the military hardware to attack Iran, the air strikes will commence with lightning zealotry. Bet on it. Congress can try to stop him, but they don't have the power any more. According to the Bush administration, Article II is Article II and the Commander in Chief rules.

It's as simple as that. Just try telling him he's wrong on this. You could be the most conservative wingnut ever and you'd lose that debate -- not for a lack of rational arguments either.

Is it any wonder why we occasionally succumb to outrage fatigue: that deflated, windless sense of numbing futility we feel when confronted with the illogical and the absurd? We've only begun to dig into the upper strata of lawlessness this regime has perpetrated over the last seven years. And now, in this desperate dying twilight of their existence -- now that they're gravely unpopular and on their way out the door -- reckless and without anything to lose -- why shouldn't they do all the crazy shit they've talked about? Bomb Tehran? Yeah, that'll be awesome and hilarious. More war means more war powers. If you thought the administration's war powers were crazy huge, just imagine their World War powers. Score!

The president always says that history will vindicate him. 15 months from now, he'll be done. Pretending to be a cowboy down there -- raising melanomas in the harsh Crawford sunshine, laughing at the third hilarious war he started all by himself.

Once he's done, by his twisted reasoning, it's someone else's problem. By "someone else" he naturally means "everyone else."

Just like so many powerful men, he appears to be able to switch off his conscience (if one exists in the first place). It's the same switch that allows him to say "we don't torture," or to smirk and laugh while discussing Iraq casualties and World War III. "Everyone else" won't include him because he'll always be safe. He'll always have Crawford and the twins; his fake accent and his delusional view of history; his nicknames and his eh-eh-eh laugh.

The rest of us -- unless we can find a way to stop this Iran drumbeat -- won't be laughing so much.