GOP: Still A Criminal Enterprise

Original Link: http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/blog_mass_destruction/2009/04/07/gop-still-a-criminal-enterprise/ID=4927/

by The Reverend

Nothing really new in the New York Times article today entitled, "Report Outlines Medical Workers' Role in Torture"…..

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.
…..

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.”

According to Dick Cheney, ever a welcome, respected and deeply honored guest of Establishment Media, President Obama's closing of Gitmo and his rejection of torture, thus ending any medical worker's complicity in such crimes, will make America "less safe." Sometimes I wonder whether The Dickster contracted a brain-cell eating virus down in his dark undisclosed location all those years.

Americans have learned bits and pieces of the horrors of the Bush-Cheney criminal regime…..thanks to a few courageous writers in the midst of an ocean of co-conspiratorial KneePad Media. But the entire ugly saga…..which I followed microscopically from 2002 until our national reprieve in 2009…..has yet to be laid out in all it's Satanic Majesty.

Maybe it never will be.

Aided by the ever-helpful Rubber Stamp Republicans in Congress, as well as the Knee Padders from Corporate-Whores-R-Us Media, George and Dick were able to carry out their extensive crime wave, mostly in secrecy, while Americans only heard flattering stories about an oh-so-resolute Leader, the "Commander Guy war president", who spoke of "mushroom clouds", "dirty bombs", "with us or against us" and how "freedom was on the march".

The question of whether Americans will ever be permitted to learn how dastardly the last administration really was…..has surfaced in the last couple of days….

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era.

Reread that sentence to capture it's essence.

Even though the executive branch criminals have left the White House, it seems that Congressional co-conspirators are still having a hard time kicking the criminal habit. The GOP, the no bullsh*t party, the political party of the clear and decisive "up or down" vote (when they're in power)…..is not only refusing a straight "up or down" vote on a number of Obama nominees……..but also blackmailing the President to prevent it.

In effect, Congressional Republican Senators (all 41 of them), have a gun to the heads of Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh, both Obama nominees…..and are planning to pull the trigger if Obama dares to release the now-infamous "torture memoes."

Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public.

A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

Here's what still-criminal Senate GOP'ers don't want Americans to find out about……

On April 2, the Justice Department was expected to make public a set of four memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, long sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations in a pending FOIA litigation. The memos, authored by then-administration officials and now University of California law professor John Yoo, federal appellate judge Jay Bybee and former Justice Department lawyer Stephen Bradbury, apparently grant authority for the brutal treatment of prisoners, including waterboarding, isolated confinement in coffin-like containers, and “head smacking.”

The "coffin-like containers" is especially a nice touch, don't you think? The most creative new torture technique, the one I'm the most fond of, is harnassing your detainee around the neck with a towel and then twirling him around slamming him into walls. Now, that's some torture leadership we can believe in, huh?

It was bad enough, nearly unbearable really, to wade through the criminal sludge of the last administration……but we did it. The last 8 years felt like 20, they moved so slowly. But do we really have to continue to endure the Zombie Dead-ender Republican Gang's ongoing blackmail coverup?

Do we?

Senate Republicans are obstructing justice, as they try to protect the Decider and his Dick from prosecution, and at the same time, they are blackmailing President Obama.

It's painfully obvious…..America needs a Special Prosecutor.