"So, on this one, I've got a little more sympathy for the Press Corp than for Fallows this time." Clearly you missed this part of the post: "What the fake journamalists at the Washington Post clown show do is (i) decide what is going on, (ii) hunt far and wide for a sock puppet who will say what the reporter thinks is going on, (iii) quote the sock puppet, (iv) deny that what the sock puppet says has anything to do with what the reporter thinks, and (v) refuse to talk about why the reporter picked that particular sock puppet." I particularly like that Brad draws attention to (v). It is a good question to pose, explicitly and repeatedly, to the faux-balance journo types. On the other hand, I'm afraid I can guess what their answer will be. Why, because s/he's a representative of one of the two sides in the debate. Isn't it obvious? You're right, though ... perhaps I ought to have included someone from the other side to make the report completely objective....

I'd say that Vietnam/Indochina, 1964-1975, was more extensive and systematic, myself. Iraq was merely far more successful in the short term. But the Vietnam lies were successful until they started to fall apart circa 1967 with some, and not until 1973 or so with others. And the Vietnam lies resulted in millions of Non-American deaths, not in hundreds of thousands, and in tens of thousands of American dead, not thousands. You may be too young for this to be in your lifetime, to be sure. Yeah, I put the qualification in deliberately (was born when VW was just winding down) -- though I'll remain agnostic on the comparison. I wasn't however saying anything about the relative success of the campaign or its ultimate consequences in terms of lives lost, etc. Just about the concentration, degree and coordination of the effort itself.

Thanks lib, take that Victor Hugo. And skepto and KM, if they wanted to, most of the regular posters here could debunk your statements in a New York minute - they just choose not to. And russell, I'm sure he didn't mean you. If you or anyone else wants to take a whack at debunking, please don't be shy.

Their claims, supposedly from intelligence, that Iraq had WMD and that Iraq was connected with Al Qaeda were the results either of complete incompetence or willful lying. Willful lying and jaw-dropping deception on a massive scale. There isn't a sliver of ambiguity on this score. Iraq 2003-3 was the most extensive and systematic focused campaign of political deception that I have witnessed in my lifetime.

You're extraordinarily good at pwning people with class. Indeed.

Ignatius Piazza at Front Sight Blog: I do not believe, as I have seen no CREDIBLE evidence, that there is a CURRENTLY a conspiracy by the Federal Government or the United Nations or anyone else to slow or stop the production and distribution of ammunition in the United States. ... People are afraid the current government is conspiring to eliminate our ability to use guns to defend ourselves by drying up the ammunition supplies. Psst ... people thinking that the Federal Government and the United Nations are plotting to dry up ammunition supplies in the U.S. are, well, irrational.

I don't believe that predicting panic gun buying when a Democratic supermajority in Congress coincides with the Presidency of somebody with Obama's record on the subject of gun control required any particular precience. Um, I didn't say that Neiwert predicted panic gun-buying. I said that it looked to me like evidence of the gathering pace of the sort of conspiratorial far-right grassroots freakshow, characteristic of the Clinton era, that Neiwert has predicted will resurge now that government has suddenly become evil again. Since I myself had had the same insight, I don't even consider that prediction particularly prescient. And if you think that the gun-buying frenzy has nothing to do with conspiracy theories about the new government and its designs on people's weapons and right to bear arms, something that several prominent advocates have themselves acknowledged, then I doubt you're a serious interlocutor.

From digby: Trying to keep up with GOP hypocrisy is difficult even in the best of times, but these days it's so pervasive it will give you a migraine just trying to sort out the most egregious from the merely laughable. The examples are flowing now that their eight year reign is over. I think one of the most interesting is their retreat to states' rights after the greatest expanse of not just Federal, but executive, power in history. ... Would you approve or disapprove of the state that you live in leaving the United States? Approve Disapprove Unsure All 4 82 14 Dem 2 95 3 Rep 9 63 28 Ind 3 83 14 ... And to think it was only a couple of years ago that Ann Coulter was feted on the cover of TIME magazine for her book about liberals called Treason. Again, it's hard to keep up with the inconsistencies, but there you are. The great patriots who draped themselves in the red, white and blue for years are now metaphorically ripping it in tiny little pieces.

Texas, now Georgia; tea parties; panic gun-buying; etc. ... sounds to me like the beginnings of the sort of '90s-style Patriot-inspired freakshow that Dave Neiwert has predicted for the Obama tenure.

Come on. These acrobatics are getting silly. You said: It would be an interesting argument, but I don't see a bar association attacking a fundamental protection for attorneys who rely on the facts provided by the client. That's not about Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury's understanding of the OLC's function (and if a deputy assistant attorney general and two assistant attorney generals (i.e. heads of OLC) don't understand the function of the agency they work for and lead, then I don't know what could possibly qualify for disbarment -- not that ignorance is an excuse in any case). It's about your understanding of OLC's function -- or, most charitably, about the bar association's. And if the latter, unless the association simply considers irrelevant the actual office and function held by the lawyer in question, I just don't see what on earth you're basing such a prediction on.

jrudkis, (1) That was but one example; there are many others. (2) The CIA (Office of Medical Services) may have pointed Bradbury to Horne's study, etc., but Bradbury repeatedly referred to his own investigation of the scientific literature on sleep deprivation and gave arguments based on his reading thereof, nowhere attributing them to the CIA or OMS. See e.g. pp. 36-40 in the Bradbury memo to John Rizzo of 10 May 2005, starting with "We understand from OMS, and from our review of the literature on the physiology of sleep, that even very extended sleep deprivation does not cause physical pain, let alone severe, physical pain." (emphasis added) And so on.

I hope the emails still exist, but have my doubts. Well, they existed at least since late 2004 and 2005 -- recently enough, that is, for the OPR inquiry to have relied on them heavily in drafting their report and recommendations.

The couching of the opinion only on the "facts" provided by the CIA is calculated specifically to prevent that. And yet the memos did on several occasions rely on, and grossly distort (or cherry-pick), external (as well as internal), independent analyses as factual "corroboration" for a number of arguments -- e.g. whether 11 days of continuous sleep deprivation produced physical harm/damage. That aside from Sebastian Dangerfield's point about the OLC's actual legal role/duty.

Dear McKinney, Thanks for the diagnosis and for your resume. Perhaps I should learn never to opine on anything quite so empyrean as matters legal. Now let's talk specifics. (1) IANAL, lowly me, but I'm going to venture a claim about legal analyses. They depend on facts of the matter. This entails that the quality of an armchair legal analysis depends not only on the extent of knowledge of and experience with the law, cases and precedents, and legal reasoning, but also on the extent of knowledge of the facts of the case being analysed. The same is true, of course, for your self-ascribed ability "to predict outcomes". Let me give you an analogy. hilzoy is a philosopher. Philosophers and logicians are typically experts on the validity of arguments. But they have no more automatic qualification re: the truth or falsity of the premises of arguments than any other person. And to evaluate an argument's conclusions correctly you need to know both. I said: IANAL [fatal admission! -- invitation to sermons and the brandishing of resumes], but the circumstantial evidence that the legal opinion was knowingly "fixed around" the action being proposed is already pretty darn powerful. And if broader access to the e-mails is obtained, I'm betting heavily that the evidence will no longer be simply circumstantial. In your sanctimonious response, I saw no direct reply of any kind to these points. I'm not surprised. Because that would require, you know, actually knowing something about what evidence exists in the public domain about OLC's "legal opinions" re: torture under the Bush Admin. Now of course there was one assumption I was making about the law, and it is possible that it was mistaken. That assumption was that if it could be demonstrated that Yoo et al. were not providing a genuine, independent, "good-faith" (gosh, how I hate that phrase) legal opinion on the case in question, but had instead in fact drafted their opinion and its content for the sole purpose of providing "legal" cover for past actions and prospective actions the client was clearly determined to engage in anyway, then this would warrant disbarment, reprimand, and any other lesser punishments. It's worth noting that your own statement about the standard in these cases -- "The usual standard for when a lawyer crosses the line is hardly clear--an attorney acts within the bounds of the profession when he/she advocates for any position that falls within a good faith modification, extension or reversal of existing law" -- sounds fairly close to my starting assumption. And I contend that on the basis of what's already in the public domain, the circumstantial evidence that this standard was violated is very strong. Now this does require knowing what does and does not constitute "circumstantial evidence" in this kind of a case. So I might well be wrong about some of it. Nevertheless, I'm fairly convinced that a good lawyer could use some of that evidence to make a fairly damning case about intent, etc. Would that case win? I don't know -- as I clearly emphasised in my first post. But legal expert or no, I'm pretty darn confident, given what I know about the issue, that (if my aforementioned assumption about disbarment is correct) the assertion that "the likelihood ... is so close to zero as not to matter" is itself unlikely in the extreme. And are you really going to argue that it's impossible that there is evidence in the e-mails conclusively establishing intent, "bad faith", etc.? (2) The only actual substantive point you make against any assertion I made in the post is the following: Contrary to your view, lawyers are hired as much or more to avoid legal problems in the future as they are to unscrew past screw-ups. My mistake for saying "most". My point -- and it seems to me fairly obvious in any case -- was that you were conflating cases where defence lawyers were presenting arguments about past acts in court with cases where lawyers were providing legal advice to clients before acting, and illegitimately eliding the distinction to suggest that the fact that defence lawyers try all kinds of ridiculous arguments on behalf of their prosecuted clients somehow meant that a disbarment of Yoo, etc. would create an absurd precedent for future defence lawyers. In your words: The same principles that will be applied retrospectively to Yoo et al will be applied prospectively to death row inmate attorneys, the William Kuntsler's of the world, etc. And, as you probably well know, those two examples -- the only ones you give -- are not what we are talking about here. So perhaps the lousy quality of your analogies isn't just my "issue".

Sure there's a strong component of "motiveless malignancy" (and it's not just confined to Cheney within his ex-administration). But there is plenty of "motive", too. Few people have noted how absolutely central the tightly-linked triangle of torture, intelligence and secrecy has been to the Cheney administration. Torture was a vital political instrument for the ex-Admin. It was central to its propaganda, its self-justification, its mobilisation of action, its ruthless emasculation of dissent, its incitement of self-censorship among would-be critics. It was absolutely central to the envisaged revolution of the executive branch. Torture produced intelligence. Intelligence and national security are associated with, and justify, classification and secrecy. Torture and intelligence produced essentially unfalsifiable public "facts" and "truths". This public unfalsifiability, inscrutability and irrefutability was crucial to the Admin's scorched-earth war against all opposition, and to its attempts to provide blanket justifications for just about any action whatsoever (no matter how taboo). Here's a link to an incisive comment made by Michael Pollak on the subject: And it's not just production of specific "truths". For the very production of those "truths" serves to shore up the technique that produced them in the first place. Torture, for instance, recursively justifies itself by creating evidence that confirms the very need for torture.