Barack Obama In America's Story - Part 1

This past week was really hard for me to write about Barack Hussein Obama, Junior. As a student of history it hurts and heals to write about the events as they rolled down like Justice from all the Good and Evil that came before. The Obama Family will stride into the pages of world history forevermore, with possibilities as the American First Family. Their pictures will be so different than all those on the walls of the White House, on official Holiday cards, or upon entering any federal building and seeing Barack Obama's likeness there. Context requires a stinging trip down memory lane's gutters reviewing some of the racial practices and policies describing how it began. It is a small attempt to put context in understanding the truly historical significance of what happened since Jamestown.

One place to begin is with a map made by two ambitious brothers to the New World for travel by sea, rather than overland to acquire bulk Asian goods more easily after the 1453 fall of the Ottoman Empire. Christopher Columbus received the 1492 patronage of Spain's King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Castilian warrior Queen, Isabella, to go forth and conquer as it were with the Santa Maria, La Niña & La Pinta. The Spanish treasury was depleted from the latest round of European Wars. Imperial Empire. Fateful decisions. Columbus forcibly imported Haitian people specimens to show off in Seville upon his 1493 return. His second trip was brutal with killing and the practice of bringing back human chattel for Europeans to purchase for their own amusements.

America's First People called Indians or Native Americans endured many attempts by Europeans to establish a foothold on their land and to convert them to Christianity. The 1607 attempt that made America, started in founding Jamestown. Thanksgiving sprouted as a concept. As a tobacco farm prospered, Matoaka - renamed Pocahontas, was made to marry John Rolfe who issued her the new name, Lady Rebecca. Battles continued between the developers/plantation owners and the Powhatan, ending with the murder of Pocahontas's brother, the Chief, while in custody. No one truly knows her interpretation of events, though many Europeans mythologized her, especially after she died in England.

Slaves became fashionable and necessary to farm huge plantations, especially as indigenous peoples died from disease and famine brought by the usurpers. The Europeans also brought the idea of commerce, representative governments for the aristocratic white men and the horrors of the Middle Passage. America embraced the land grab and purchased a Louisiana package, ratcheting up the need for people and those that would be made to serve the richest of many of them. Slavery, America's original sin and permanent stain.

Our Constitution was written without a resolution to slavery, with the sweat, blood and tears of each slave and slaveholder mixed in all that follows. Thomas Jefferson wrote, he trembled to fear that God was Just. Yet, economic politics held sway. Incorporated by the Founding Fathers, each black man was counted for census purposes as

3/5ths of a person

A potato famine saw an influx of Irish immigrants to the eastern shores of the United States. The only saving grace for them integrating into the American fold was that they were white. Those of Chinese descent working on the American railroads and mining for gold in California suffered other indignities. Mexico suffered a grievous defeat at the hands of Americans in 1848. The loss of land crystallized on this content a harsher vision of eminent domain. Texas considered itself a nation in its own right until the US annexed it in 1845. Harriet Tubman suffered a horrible head injury from an enraged slave master, yet still managed to use the legal system and found the Underground Railroad. White abolitionists took to visceral arguments stirring strong resentment in southern states.

The 16th president, ambivalent, sometimes hostile to the cause of Negroes, issued the sweeping Executive Order to free slaves during the Civil War in one fell swoop pertaining to statuses resulting from war. Abraham Lincoln had no power to free all in every state as the Emancipation Proclamation makes clear. Lincoln sustained a reputation for hard nosed pragmatism, bucked up by his friend Frederick Douglass, The Lion of Anacostia, a free bi-racial ex-slave, inspiring millions of modern Americans with his bicentennial looming as a celebration in 2009. How many will know that Victoria Woodhull was the presidential candidate with Frederick Douglass, her running mate on the Equal Rights Party Ticket?

Huddled masses yearning to be free greeted millions of immigrants as they processed through Ellis Island, overlooked by France's gift of The Statue of Liberty, having their names anglicized, but moving into culturally similar neighborhoods. years prior, ethnic groups of Dutch, Irish, Polish, German and Scandinavians among indentured servants and others, moved en mass to take advantage of the Homestead Act which displaced many Native Americans from lands they farmed or held for buffalo for centuries. Indians were placed on supposedly sovereign reservations. Immigration became a hot button after the 14th Amendment was interpreted by an 1898 Supreme Court decision to conclude people born on American soil were citizens. At the turn of the century, restrictive laws targeting Asians escalated with the Geary Act. Not repealed until after segregating Japanese in the 48 states in internment camps during the middle of World War II. Japanese immigration to Hawaii

Jim Crow laws took effect following the abysmal reconstruction era presidency of Andrew Johnson. The Ku Klux Klan tried to impose the will of a white superiority mimicked by Europe's Hitler with for an Aryan world. Americans tried to turn inward and isolate itself from the world. The assassination of an Archduke by a Bosnian Serb triggered a terrible war that ended with the 1918 Treaty of Versailles orchestrated by one of the most racist presidents ever, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, who previewed the racist tripe of Birth of a Nation in the White House. Hitler garnered power seeking to impose his white, exclude any one of semitic origin, will on the world, even after Jesse Owens won a gold medal in Germany.

Japanese imperialism made their presence known by bombing the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, a base placed on a multi-cultural US territory after the US triggered the overthrow of Hawaii's Queen. Millions of Americans of all colors and creeds joined to fight for the cause of freedom because the day that lived in infamy inspired all to sacrifice for the war effort. Barack Obama's grandmother riveted and his grandfather marched. They were not alone. Japanese surrender came after Harry S Truman ordered the Enola Gay to drop The Thin Man and Fat Man atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the Negro community, culture prospered while injustices propagated wantonly. Quality of life issues stayed separate and supposedly equal as outlined in the Dredd Scott case before the Civil War. After WWII, the US military was integrated by presidential action. A young civil rights lawyer took civilian cases for the NAACP involving education. In 1953, Brown versus the Board of Education became the law of the land per the Warren Court. A picture of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall hangs in Senator Obama's office on capital Hill.

A young seamstress and Alabama NAACP secretary was tired when she got on a bus and sat where there was an open seat. The white driver told her to get up. She refused. Rosa parks emboldened a 27 year old preacher to lead a year long boycott of a bus company that went darn near broke trying to keep black folks in their place at the back of bus. Separate drinking fountains, lunch counters infuriated young people both black and white and they embarked on Freedom Rides as part of the Children's Crusade. The unifying factor was the call for nonviolence no matter the provocation of fire hoses, snarling German Shepard dogs and the beatings, oh the beatings. Firebombs and Molotov cocktails were launched, Edgar Medgars was shot in his driveway in Mississippi, yet the Civil Rights movement would not stop.

A bundle of joy arrived in Hawai'i. His parents were of Kenyan and Irish American stock. Their baby was born in the the brand new state of Hawaii in 1961. His name was Barack Obama. Two years later, while he was learning to walk and run, that young preacher gave a seminal speech on the steps Of the Lincoln Memorial on while a young President looked on with his brother Bobby. Some how many of the threads in this nation's history wind into an American flag made from the trials and tribulations of so many.

Out of all this, peoples' Hopes, no matter how thin the string, held to believe that the next day would be better than the last in America. Part II coming.

Narrative of the Life of a Slave from Frederick Douglass retains its power. Now in Paperback for less than $5 US.

Obama vs McCain: A Dream Nightmare Contrast

Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway/U.S. Air Force via AP

Place your bets. It's the fifth from the bottom of the class son of an admiral versus the magna cum laude son of a goat herder on the world stage. McCain's March trip to Iraq and Obama's July trip were both classified as CODEL or Congressional Delegation trips. Both men were able to speak and spend alone time with Kings or Presidents this week.

~ Could that sign be ANY clearer? ^

John McCain whines he's not Bush-lite, but he greedily and gratefully accepts anything that smacks of Bush leftovers. John McCain's fundraisers are the last of the Bush Easter Island type people. Two president Bushes branded McCain as their teed off man for staying the golf course. Many of John McCain's staffers come directly from the eighth circle of Bushworld. John McCain's take on the Iraq Debacle is straight talk from the Bush Express De-Tour. In a worthy Bush imitation mangling historical fact and substituting cowboy fantasy, John McCain touted his borrowed Bush Decider creds and said Senator Obama should go to Iraq and get schooled by Bush's favorite general and now McCain's too, General Petraeus, before saying what should happen in Iraq. After all, there was no way for Barack to live up to the forgotten images McCain garnered on his Surge & Splurge spring break to sandy Iraq.

Barack Obama needed to prepare for his trip. That involved getting Air Force O ready for the passengers clamoring to go, the notoriously fickle two-timing DC press corps. Germany received a live telecast as the Obama plane landed. Contrast Obama already flying with his new Change We Can Believe In plane. McCain's ride was still being pimped at the beginning of July. It's just now finishing airsickness rehab for the republican presumptive nominee who kinda got the nod in freaking February. Was Johnny Mac N Cheese unsure or something? In a few weeks it's gotta be repainted when he announces his VP who hopefully can provide better optics.

Next, the campaign week got buffalo butt u-g-l-y.

Then there was the comedic stylings of the aide de camps. Mr. McCain quickly fled from his scheduled photo-op atop an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico because Hurricane Dolly had the right of way and a 12 mile oil slick from a Mississippi tug crash would have so undermined his talk about his newfound joy of offshore drilling and the new sexy technology that made spills improbable. McCain's detoured plans landed him in New Hampshire with a press pool of one watching. Count em, one. From the Gulf on to Bethlehem, Penn., on Wednesday where another mishap made ones eyes bulge with camera(s) in tow to film a riveting McCain in front of the only Dairy King he would meet that day, the royalty of dieters, cottage cheese. John upped the ante by having a commemorative photographs taken in front of the only palaces he's been in a while, a local Ohio brat joint and the Fudge Haus. Brilliant moves to stage McCain and his cocktail wiener buddy Lindsay Graham there. I mean it. Especially, after the unscheduled incident with McCain tailing/stalking a grocery shopper, Renee Gould, in the market, asking her questions about the just cleared tomatoes and being (video of aisle disaster) photogged as his aide, unable to appreciate that it was not at all crowded, tripped and knocked over an applesauce display. Of course, the pictures were iconic and the future stuff of comedic genius on behalf of Team McCain. Obama had other developing issues.

Dr. Condi Rice, the all powerful SoS who can decree stuff and negotiate nothing, forbade State Department federal vassals to get extra pillow sweets, monogrammed hand towels or public transportation for the Obama entourage during the trip. O carried his own gear. So, after a sumptuous repast at a real palace, Obama takes up the gracious offer of a ride to Amman's International airport in a Mercedes Benz SL600 piloted by none other than His Majesty, King Abdullah of Jordan. Talk about passing the Commander in Chief test with flying colors, he gets a smart salute as he exits the Osprey.

But John McCain's fabo town hall in Kirby, Pennsylvania had less than a 1000 in a 1600 seat theater. His fans were there, but did not look as hopeful as say these two looked at future President McDreamy, Barack Obama, in Germany after standing for hours. Neither party has held a convention yet, which affords us all another opportunity to see how they manage or mangle the image narrative. McCain won hands glued to his 5,985th draft of the McSurge memo in the mangling contest. Barack will accept the nomination in a 75,000 seat stadium in a city on a Mile High mountain. John McCain will have a non covered pre-existing anxiety cond

ition (Barack announced he won in June at Target Arena while 15,000 stood outside apart from the 20,000 already inside) as he milks his 2% of the nomination speech in front of another Dairy Delights Aisle with his BFF, Captain Nemesis Teleprompter, egging him on a week after Barack.

Guess which one is happy, called a Hunk in Hebrew and forgot to pay Malia her allowance versus the other who just can't wait for the national nightmare to be over because as it is tough being heard when you've been put on a temper tantrum timeout by the era of the big press... One photogenic Cheneyesque completely subservient Ken doll coming right up as the republican VP nominee!

A partial list of what Obama reads, then and now, and listens to on his iPod...Buy his books for a friend or a former McCain supporter.

Intel Liars Club Gets More Bad Credit

Here it is years after much mud wrestling and partisan parsing is a US Senate Intelligence Committee report baldly stating President Bush & Co-president Cheney oversold, over hyped and overused intelligence to maneuver the USA to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003. Only people with nonworking logic faculties believe Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. And thanks to Scotty McClellan for memorializing in book form the truth of What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception as he left an 1812-style scorched executive mansion in his revelatory wake. It's only because republicans lost control of the US Senate in 2006 that all these years ater is the report being duted off and presented to the public. Most of what's contained in the new credenzaware was held by frightened republicans so as not to taint saint Bush's re-election chances in 2004. This exacerbates the simmering division between the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman, John Rockefeller of West Virginia and the vice chairman, Kit Bond of Missouri of the committee at venal verbal odds.

“The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement accompanying the 171-page report.

The committee’s report cited some instances in which public statements by senior administration officials were not supported by the intelligence available at the time, such as suggestions that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda were operating in a kind of partnership, that the Baghdad regime had provided the terrorist network with weapons training, and that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had met an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague in 2001.

A second committee report, also made public on Thursday, detailed a series of clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranian dissidents in Rome and Paris in 2001 and 2003. It accused Steven Hadley, now the national security advisor, and Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary, of failing to properly inform the intelligence agencies and the State Department about the meetings.

The biggest underpinning for national security is intelligence. Intelligence should be an depoliticized commodity for the president and national security apparatus's consumption. The biggest users of intelligence is the military. Except in fuzzy bushworld, they distorted the truth to fit the fiction they served up to the world to facilitate a neocon's fantasy of gunboat democracy in Mesopotamia. To further aggravate those lies, the intentional outing of a covert spy was done partially to intimidate others who dared to say they were making the crap up just like an ad agency on 5th Avenue in New York. It went alongside other misuses of intelligence gathering and public distortion of a few facts by the Bush misadministration's strong arming of the big telco companies to turn over information based on their illegal warrantless wiretapping abuses that allow them t collect information on the innocent to use as they saw fit with out benefit of FISA court approved warrants later while running around saying the al qaeda bogeyman was the principal target of the intel gathering. More lies.

Democrats have not been proud models of leadership in the congress by autorizing Bush's ill begotten actions in Iraq based on intel lies and then not holding anyone accountable for the resulting Iraq debacle. It needs presidential leadership not hobbled by someone who's approval ratings proudly dwell in and dark dank basement. Intelligence was at the core of the dark arts portfolio that Bush beknighted Darth Cheney with to use as he wished and look how it all turned out. The CIA is in charge of HUMINT or human intelligence agents that bring information to the agency. The Agency remained the last bastion not under Cheney's incompetent control. Cheney was heart attack desperate that the yellow cake Niger stories from the Italian forgeries saying what he needed them to say so as not to be proved part of the superglue web of lies as written about in the jaw dropping book, The Italian Letter.

Bestselling national security author Richard Clarke, brings the truth on intelligence matters into stark relief for the interested reader in Your Government Failed You: Breaking The Cycle of National Security Disasters. Later this year, the film made from his excellent nonfiction historical account in 2004 book will be in movie theatres from no less a personage directing it than Robert Redford. It is Against All Enemies which aptly describes the beginning of oath a president takes to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies - foreign and domestic.

The United States of Torture

John Yoo has much to be despised for, but the history books are yet to be written cataloging the US's sweeping powers on who could be outside US law, remain a citizen and torture the Hell out of whom they chose. Bybee is the signatory name on the March 14, 2003 doc, but the 81 page memo magically appeared the day after his exit from the DOJ from Yoo. The first drafts of history are replete with the twisted sadistic thinking of someone who is teaching Berkeley law students today while giving the Torturer-in-Chief sweeping powers to launch those tactics against people suspected - not proven - to be Enemies of the American state.

Former aides to John Ashcroft say the then-attorney general privately dubbed Yoo "Dr. Yes" for being so closely aligned with lawyers at the White House.

From one misbegotten masochistic memo, we have senior Bush bums in the administration acting as if they had a Divine legalistic right to torture, based on their personal game of being judge, jury and torturer - that accidentally executed a few folks, guilty or not. The Rule of Law was captured and taken to Guantanamo Bay never to be seen again by Americans until the grumpy clown that is the US head of State, is out of office.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum is the latest document to illuminate the legal foundation that Bush administration lawyers used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to give the White House broad powers to capture, detain and interrogate suspects around the globe.

Some legal scholars said Tuesday that they were amazed at the scope of the memorandum.

“This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and the Washington College of Law at American University. “It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.”

The memorandum gave the military broad latitude to use harsh interrogation methods. It reasoned that federal laws prohibiting assault were not applicable to military interrogators dealing with members of Al Qaeda because of White House authority during wartime. It also argued that many American and international laws would not apply to interrogations overseas.

“Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context,” it reads.

Bottom line is John Yoo and all of the people that used that legal abomination of a memo as a thin sheet of coverup for their nefarious activities, became what they sought to protect Americans from, terrorists. In order to become a More Perfect Union, a nation cannot turn into what it despises and holds in contempt. It took over nine months before the Department of Defense legal beagles thought to rescind the memo - not the practices. The Bush administration used bad karma, mental midget judo, and how-low-can-you-go legal limbo to justify its squalid behavior as being more Noble than the terrorist activity being hatched by a stupendously wealthy terrorist with a turban, salt and pepper beard, hiding out in a first century cave in Tora Bora that was never apprehended for his self-righteous schemes and ponzi Death crimes against the world's people either.

This (mis)administration still cannot speak clearly with one united voice about keeping to the decades old Geneva Conventions, nor define torture without a long drawn out explanation about how the US does not torture but reserves the right to use certain "enhanced" interrogation techniques against enemy combatants who have no habeas corpus rights because the US said so. Logically, if US trained Iraqis captured an American and cut off their fingers without going through the benefit of the Rule of law, its in the same nebulous ballpark.

While the military has banned the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods considered by some rights advocates to be torture, the U.S. Intelligence community has not. Bush authorized the CIA to use waterboarding after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 but has repeatedly insisted that the United States does not torture prisoners.

The loss of humanity within the folks who pen or follow these anti-freedom legal screeds that inhabited this malevolent administration muck below the River Styx to places deep in a murky underworld to guide their actions, will have lasting ramifications, known as blowback, for US international relationships. How does the US in its wheezing asthmatic moral condition advocate from a position of authority for Human Rights elsewhere, when the Monopoly House is full of mold, mildew and rotting legal memos collecting 200 prisoners and jumps straight into penthouse Hell?

In the Office of Legal Council, OLC, there was someone who disagreed with the memo from Hell. Bush's US tax payer paid lackeys/torture, two time failed Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & five deferments from military service Dick Cheney oversaw the application of the John Yoo memo into formal US policy and brooked no interference. No senior people were ever indicted in Abu Gharib or the secret US renditions that picked up innocents that were sent to nations where America outsourced its torture. Read all about the legal wars in side the ironic Department of Justice in Jack Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.

Bush & Phone Companies DEMAND Immunity

In a political reality game show of Big Brother Survivor, Teleco's or phone companies, AT&T, Verizon et al, are pleading with President Bush to find the immunity trinket for them buried somewhere inside the Bernini bedecked halls of Congress. It was part of the government branch troika Bush kept bamboozled until about a month or so ago, despite the 2006 elections. Behemoth telecoms and phone companies were blindly dispensing your information to the US government on demand without a FISA court warrant. The House marked up its own wiretap bill, without the Bush immunity clause that has telecoms terrified, um vomit inducing worried, about their dastardly gained cha-ching billions lost from lawsuits brought on by class action suits from their American customers/hostages who want their rights and expectations to privacy back.

A whiny president trilled and trolled that national security is at stake and al Qaeda has an advantage without his law - they do. Bush gave it to them by invading Iraq and failing to read his super secret presidential newspaper published by the CIA on August 6, 2001, that told him exactly what was happening with Osama bin Laden - except al Qaeda was annoyingly interrupting his Crawford, Texas vacation at the former pig farm again. Bush tried to kick sand on the Joint Forces Command findings from the Pentagon report outlining al Qaeda not in Iraq when Saddam was in power because it reinforces the era of incompetence under Bush.

President Bush vowed to veto the House Democrats' version of the terrorist surveillance bill, saying it would undermine the nation's security.

House leaders said they would vote on the bill Friday, just before taking a two-week recess. The bill would then have to be approved by the Senate.

Bush opposes it in part because it doesn't provide full, retroactive legal protection to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

FISA oversight, sorry - lack of oversight, must be legislated his way no matter what and you had better listen Congress because then he's going to stomp his Stride-rites and hold his breath or something. Congress has two basic legal questions for the president - why circumvent the judicial system granting an industry blanket immunity and what are they immunizing with out knowing? To quell the incessant executive branch tantrum, and Congress' detractors, like me, for their repeated bowing and scraping to the imperial president in capitulation after but kissing on this issue, the House of Representatives is invoking the closed door session rule for the first time in 25 years to discuss whether they should give away retroactive immunity to telecom corporations. This time there is something new. Over 60 lame senators, wingnut Republicans and a fair few wussy Democrats voted to give Bush what he wanted down to the hearts on the i in FISA, eviscerating the rule of law and America's best hopes for preservation of civil liberties.

While the House bill would not grant immunity, it would allow phone companies to present their defense in a closed-door U.S. district court, with the judge given access to confidential documents about the surveillance program.

"I think that is the proper way to decide whether they should have immunity or not -- not members of Congress' voting on it," Pelosi said.

Republican leaders "believe they have information relevant to the debate on FISA that cannot be publicly discussed," said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer.

The House bill would revamp the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government receive secret-court approval to conduct electronic surveillance on foreign targets in the United States.

The House and Madame Speaker did not immediately go along, shocking the Bush White House. Immediately, the al Qaeda bogeyman was duly trotted out in two Bush radio addresses and a press briefing by the lame duck that nobody remembers.

For real details on how much was missed by the 9/11 Commissions, read the book from the reporter who spent years covering the commission and got eleven members and more staffers to speak on the record. The book goes to show how much information of everyones down to the keystroke is picked up by Carnivore and other programs run by the stealthy techno-spy-gadget NSA. The 9/11 Commission received an unprecedented historic opportunity to go through the massive data at the NSA that holds a treasure trove of intelligence. Guess what happened. Read Philip Shenon's jaw dropping The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.

The Dark Arts of Professional Waterboarding

Under oath and with intense questions, the Giant Head of US's spy central, uniformed 4 star General Michael C. Hayden, comes clean with an admission that Bush the Lesser approved express lane waterboarding for three, courtesy of the Geneva Convention signing United Sadists States of America. What a stain on America as the US decried waterboarding US POW's under the Japanese in WWII leading to a treaty, a global accord, an international pact among civilized nations and dictatorships, not to engage in torture. But the Bush Administration and the US Attorney General still cannot define the "special techniques" of torture under Oath to Congress. So, in capturing terrorist tormentors, the US acted like barbarians, but wants to be thought of as the good folks wearing ten gallon white cowboy hats while saving people and puppies.

Our whole goal was not to be like terrorists - but Bush and his farm of cronies mightily begs to differ with that stratagem. He went to the evil dark place by confirming that the US reserves the right to use the drowning practice in the future - during the final year of his cesspool presidency. Gitmo has many prisoners who may shed light on US techniques that the Bush humanoids would rather not discuss since many have never had the right or writ of habeas corpus to tell their side.

The practice, a staple of brutal interrogations from the Spanish Inquistion to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, usually consists of strapping down a captive, covering their face with a cloth, and pouring water onto the cloth.

Fratto underlined that the tactic -- which experts liken to controlled drowning -- is not currently permitted, but left the door wide open to resuming its use.

"The president will listen to the considered judgment of the professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique," he said.

His comments came one day after CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly that the agency had used waterboarding, to question three top Al-Qaeda detainees after the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.

An admission of torture comes amidst Congress's laborious dithering and OCD hand wringing on how to manhandle the issue with a stubborn and petulant Bush White House. Hayden's civilian boss, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) or Head Spook Mike McConnell, was giving Congress his gussied up version of the National Threat Assessment. Let's see, the 3 Guests who tested out the new waterboard features are all well known Al Qaeda operatives from the same kingdom, Saudi Arabia, who Bush just pitifully begged King Abdullah for more oil to feed America's energy habit. Th UN, Human Rights groups stage protests but that is to high minded to sway the hardened. Hayden was busy for years at the NSA serving the Pentagon with all the spy techno stuff floating in Orbit that listens to our calls and logs keystrokes before heading from Fort Meade to Langley to clean up the human side of the US spyworld - cough, still wearing military garb.



California scholar and author, Mark Danner, participates in full measure in debates about torture in a terrifying mesmerizing fashion both verbally and in the written word. His book, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Gharib and the War on Terror with the arresting and defining image of torture from Iraq grabs your attention from the cover to the index.