In the last hours these two stories have appeared in the NYTimes:
"Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data" and:
"Court Bars Info Request on NSA Wiretapping"

So, the engineer behind the systematic destruction of our liberties is outraged that the media might inform us of the fact, and in a related case our courts have once again ruled on the side of the rogue executive. Even the third branch of our government is paralyzed to resist these authoritarian depredations, fearing the accusation of being soft on terrorism (the new McCarthyism) while ignoring the terrorism at the top.

Wednesday evening we were privileged to attend a magnificent performance of Heinar Kipphardt's 1968 play, "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer" at the Connelly Theatre in the East Village. In the drama, which is based on actual transcripts from a 1954 hearing, Oppenhiemer has been summoned before a committee of the Atomic Energy Commission charged with determining whether his security clearance will be reinstated. In the first act he responds to one of the lawyers arguing against his case,

"There are people who are willing to protect freedom until there is nothing left of it".

Can anyone say the phrase, "police state"? Or are we going to wait until we are totally forbidden to do so?

[image from Micah Wright]

no hanging garden, this [a section of the Green Zone perimeter]

I'm tired of the media's [continuing] misleading descriptions of last week's flight by Bush to Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone. If I thought it was just a question of semantics, I'd leave it alone, but words are important, especially when they are instruments of propaganda and they are going unexamined.

He didn't "visit Iraq".

He didn't "visit Baghdad".

He visited a god-damned super-bunker sheltering people who call him sir.

Even at that our heroic conqueror's departure for his five-hour stop-off inside a fortified headquarters ("the Ultimate Gated Community") shared by his victorious army of pacification and a more-or-less client local government had to be kept secret from his own staff. Also, what does it say about this stunt that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister and Bush's host, didn't know the President of the United States was coming until virtually the moment he showed up at the door?

[image from Rich Galen's Mullings]

no, unfortunately this image is very real, and not Trompe l'oeil [the Yahoo! News caption for the picture begins: Leg irons and hand cuffs hang on a board at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2004.]

*
So reads the headline on the lead story on the BBC at the moment. The attribution for the description of the deaths of three prisoners in our Cuban concentration camp is the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy [my italics].

Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.

We're expected to listen to our "public diplomat" explain their deaths as a bad career move, but we aren't allowed to know who any of these folks are?

[news tip from Barry; image, credited "AFP/Pool/File/Mark Wilson", from Yahoo! News]

Now we're finding out he wasn't killed by the 500 lb bombs we dropped. He had to be dispatched afterwards, more or less manually.

We sure wouldn't have wanted him to be able to talk. Somebody might actually have learned something. But then he might have been able to incriminate members of the government. Oh, of course I'm only referring to our security zone Baghdad allies; who else?