they must be prosecuted for war crimes

* billmon:

"Chandrasekaran's article is taken from his new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which is definitely a great title as well as a great gag ("This doesn't look like Kansas, Toto!") I wish I'd thought of it. The book appears to be part of a trend on the part of the Washington Post and its reporters to tell the paper's readers all the things they badly needed to know three years ago about the conduct of the Iraq War.

At least in Chandrasekaran's case the story he's telling now doesn't contradict the story he told back then:

Most CPA hiring was done by the White House and Pentagon personnel offices, with posts going to people with connections to the Bush administration or the Republican Party. The job of reorganizing Baghdad's stock exchange, which has not reopened, was given in September to a 24-year-old who had sought a job at the White House. "It was loyalty over experience," a senior CPA official said.

But it wasn't the Washington Post or the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or any of the other corporate media that originally broke the story. It was the blogosphere's own Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen (of War and Piece) and Colin Soloway, writing for the Washington Monthly, in December 2003. That was almost three years ago. And now -- only now -- it's showing up on the front page of a major national newspaper."

Gee - indy reporting is showing up everywhere these days.

* LeeB:

"Up until the election of 2000, I had always been a 'responsible citizen' in that I kept up with current events and tried to vote intelligently. I was surprised at how personally I took this blatant, in-broad-daylight theft of the U.S. government. Any faith I ever had that elections were run fairly, for the most part, and that electoral fraud was mostly a thing of the past was destroyed.

They not only stole the presidential election in 2000, they moved on to stealing several key Congressional (and who knows how many state and local) seats in 2002, perfecting their methods as they went in the run up to 2004, with more tweaking during the occasional special elections here and there along the way (most recently in the Busby/Bilbray race in CA-50).

Their methods range from insane voter suppression schemes* and accommodating partisan Secretaries of State in the mold of Katherine Harris, to the more traditional ballot stuffing and shifting techniques, updated to make use of the computerized voting machines and tabulators - all controlled by Republican donors.
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Then came Ohio. And electronic ballot stuffing in other states. And other strongly Republican districts - to try to make it appear that THIS time, regardless of what finally surfaced in Ohio, it would appear that bu$hCheney 'won' a popular majority. The statistical studies referenced by Damien above, and the one by Paul Lehto and his co-author focusing on Snohomish County in Washington State, support these conclusions.

Lehto was successful in forcing Snohomish County to dump the touch screen machines and now it has joined 33 (or more?) of the other 39 Washington State counties in going 100% vote by mail. King County, where I live, is on track to be 100% mail, leaving maybe three or four counties in the unknown-target-date column for now. Since Oregon went to 100% vote-by-mail elections several years ago, they have had NO problems with election fraud.

We're not home free yet, however, because we still have Diebold doing the tabulating and new touch screen machines in King County for the interim, PLUS, regardless of how careful individual states are about election integrity, all it takes is a Florida, Ohio, or others, to be targeted by these jerks for rigging to essentially neuter the will of the majority, no matter the State of residency.

The average 8-year-old knows if you cheat during the game, you forfeit the prize. I guess that is only true in school and in ordinary life. If you're stealing an entire country, then the deadline for swearing in the selected 'winner' ends the game with no recourse for the aggrieved parties.

Bastards! Hell is too good for them."

* rawstory:

"Georgetown University Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley joined Keith Olbermann for a discussion on why the president was in such a hurry to get the (torture) legislation passed "his way."

Turley agreed with Olbermann that Bush's primary motive might be in "covering his own backside."

Turley noted that the 14 high level detainees recently transferred to Guantanamo Bay are due to be interviewed by the Red Cross, and that "most people believe that they will reveal that they were subject to water boarding - held under water until you think that you are going to drown - that is undeniably torture under the international standard."

"I think that the Administration senses that there is a lot of trouble coming down the mountain," said Turley."

* sullivan:

"There is already clarity in the law, the Geneva Convention, and the McCain Amendment. What the Bush administration wants is to introduce vagueness to get away with exactly the same barabarism they have deploying illegally for the past five years. They must be stopped. And eventually, they must be prosecuted for war crimes."

shrill

* via Raw:

"The controversial British film Death of a President, which depicts the assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush, has won the international critics' prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Noel Mitrani accepts the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday. (Aaron Harris/Canadian Press)

Death of a President, directed by Gabriel Range, was chosen "for the audacity with which it distorts reality, to reveal a larger truth," said a statement released by the festival."