And I’m not talking about Dick Cheney…

…Well, okay I sorta am. But he’s not the one I deem to be spinning lies.

The Plames are once again outting themselves as a couple of partisan spinsters (or flatout liars) and they have the release of former VP Darth Cheney’s new autobiography to thank for bringing the two back into the spotlight of liberal celebritihood:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This interview was from the end of last month. Nothing quite like a Lawrence O’Donnell interview of a pair of anti-Bush heroes.

Anyone care to defend anything these three had to say?

Darth Cheney has been making the rounds. Here are a few more of his recent appearances:

Dateline:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More NBC stuff, with Matt Lauer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the Lauer interview, in response to his hypothetical regarding an American captive in Iran, one thing I wish Cheney had made note of is that KSM & Co. are non-uniformed combatants not eligible for POW status & protections under Geneva. Did KSM abide by the rules of civilized warfare as set out by the Geneva Conventions when he masterminded the killing of 3,000 innocent civilians on 9/11?

Did Pakistan ever lodge a protest regarding our treatment of KSM? Nope. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence just handed him over to us. Would he have fared better under Pakistan’s humane interrogation practices? *Snicker*

KSM was not tortured. The lives lost and those affected by the loss on 9/11 are the true victims of torture.

The cackling hens at The View were surprising subdued and respectful.

Here’s one from Laura Ingraham:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am still reading Cheney’s book. I am also in the middle of Ali Soufan’s book and Glenn Carle’s.

He acts like he is America. But America didn’t like Dick Cheney. - Maureen Dowd

Ready to promote the release of his new autobiography, former Vice President Darth Cheney is deeply unapologetic over his time spent in serving in the Bush White House and can still give a rat’s ass about popularity over making the hard, adult decisions and doing the right thing:

“It’s important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular, to take the criticism and the hits that go with implementing policies.” “

Tuesday, I went down to Barnes & Noble to pick up former Vice President Dick Cheney’s just released autobiography, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. The cashier who checked me out said she and her coworkers were just talking about the book, wondering how well it would sell.

I’ve read a number of the reviews out- pretty much hostile and scathingly bitter, along with statements by Powell and Rice, reacting to Cheney’s criticism of them in the book. Even some Bush supporters are wincing.

This at HuffPo sums up MSMs reaction as well as any:

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently criticized Cheney’s publicity tour on an episode of “The Last Word,” saying that the American public was wrong to welcome Cheney back into the spotlight so easily.

Hayes — filling in for Lawrence O’Donnell as host of the MSNBC show — said he found the book to be offensive and expressed disgust over Cheney’s “no regrets” stance on waterboarding terror suspects in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

“What’s so troubling is the fact that he has managed to escape not only legal sanction for advocating and overseeing the implementation of the war crime that is torture, but that he has appeared to manage to escape social sanction as well,” Hayes said.

Greenwald, a blogger, also expressed anger, claiming that Cheney was guilty of “among the most serious and egregious crimes committed over the last decade.”

My own opinion? I am an unapologetic admirer of Dick Cheney.

About the first 250 pages encompasses his time before serving as George W. Bush’s vice president. Photos of him hanging out with his grandchildren might be a bit too disarming and uncomfortable to those who wish to perceive and portray him as a Dark Lord of the Sith. For someone supposedly so inhuman and inhumane, he and his wife Lynne certainly have contributed enormously to charities.

What do you suppose your run-of-the-mill Hollywood limousine-learjet liberal would think about the photos? Judging by this:

Alec Baldwin tweeted, “Cover of Cheney’s book looks like he’s manning the velvet rope at the gates of Hell.” And then, “Cover of Cheney’s book looks like he’s maitre’d at the lounge in Hell. Table for how many?”

Probably would “make his head explode”. But as Cheney might shrug: “… the last thing on my mind is whether or not I am irritating Alec…who?”

Although I am getting a certain amount of sneerful satisfaction from liberal heads exploding over the release of Darth Cheney’s memoir.

Incidentally, as a side note, prior to Cheney’s memoir, another recent purchase I made was Glenn Carle’s The Interrogator, mentioned about in a previous post. You can read Ali Soufan’s review here, in the WSJ; Soufan is also set to release a book, I think 9/12. They, of course, are critics of the CIA EIT program, from an informed perspective.

Soufan’s book release is apparently being heavily redacted by the CIA and apparently for reasons beyond national security concerns.

In addition to Marc Thiessen’s book, Courting Disaster, in defense of the EIT program, next May will bring an additional voice to the ongoing debate:

A book scheduled for publication next May by José A. Rodriguez Jr., a former senior C.I.A. official, is expected to give a far more laudatory account of the agency’s harsh interrogations than that of Mr. Soufan, as is evident from its tentative title: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”

Rachel Maddow: The device Mr. Cheney received is being worn outside his body, like a sort of bellypack.

~~~

Dr. Stewart: The device is powered by batteries for 6-8 hours outside to be untethered; and he’ll carry a number of battery packs either in a handbag or in a harness which has become quite small and really not visible underneath the clothes; however, at nighttime, he’ll need to be hooked up into a power adapter, into the wall.

Rachel Maddow: Wow…without a pulse.

Mr. Cheney is now ready for that lie detector test…

And essentially made it clear that it was both effective and necessary, telling the CIA interrogators that “You must do this to all the brothers.”

This past Valentine’s Day….

Former VP Cheney’s ABC This Week:

KARL: But you believe they should have had the option of everything up to and including waterboarding?

CHENEY: I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the table. Now, President Obama has taken them off the table. He announced when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than the U.S. Army manual, which doesn’t include those techniques. I think that’s a mistake.

From VP Biden’s appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation:

Schieffer: “Can you Mr. Vice President envision a time where waterboarding can ever be used on anyone?”

Biden: “No, no, it’s not effective”

Schieffer: “It’s not effective?”

Biden: “It’s not effective”

Abu Zubaydah disagrees with Joe Biden. He is living proof that waterboarding worked. Not only that, but he endorsed waterboarding with a personal stamp of approval.

Last April, I posted an excerpt from Ron Kessler’s The Terrorist Watch, regarding the chapter detailing Abu Zubaydah:

Abu Zubaydah mentioned that KSM used the moniker “Mukhtar,” which allowed analysts to comb through previously collected intelligence and develop leads that eventually led to his capture.

Soon after that, Abu Zubaydah stopped cooperating.

When Zubaydah gave up KSM, he did so unwittingly (detailed in my link to the excerpt from Kessler’s book) while in his hospital bed, recovering from injury sustained in his capture. As he regained his health, he grew resistant to questioning.

Propelled by fear that another attack was in the works, the CIA began developing coercive interrogation techniques- water-boarding high value terrorists or subjecting them to ear-splitting music or to icy temperatures and forcing them to stand for hours.

“We weren’t getting very much from him at all,” Grenier says. “And that’s when we began the process of putting together a properly focused interrogation process. It was refined a good deal subsequently, but he was the test.”

Before the interrogation procedures were employed, the Justice Department reviewed them and determined that they were legally permissible. After a few months, the CIA began using some of the techniques on Abu Zubaydah. As the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and other detained terrorists progressed, the agency briefed the chairs, ranking members, and majority and minority staff directors of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the details of the procedures used.

Marc Thiessen has an important new book out, Courting Disaster that clears up some of the mystique and mythologizing about the CIA program that has successfully kept America safe since 9/11. Former CIA Director Hayden writes (thanks Missy!):

I opposed the release of the Office of Legal Council memos on the CIA interrogation program last April. I opposed the release of additional memos and the report of the CIA inspector general on the interrogation program last August. But whatever their release did to reveal American secrets to our enemies, it did inject something into the public debate on this program that had been sorely missing—facts.

Thiessen has taken these documents, as well as his own extensive interviews and research, and created for the first time a public account of a program previously hidden from public view. Prior to this, some opponents of the program could create whatever image they wanted to create to support the argument of the moment. And those who were in government at the time were near powerless to correct the record. No longer.

There will still be those who remain adamantly opposed to the interrogation effort, but now they must be opposed to the program as it was, not as they imagined or feared or—dare I say, for some—expected it to be.

I’m about 300 pages into the book. A book that Thiessen describes as one that he should not have been able to write and we should not have been able to read. Obama’s declassification of internal documents and media leaks have made this book possible, out of the necessity of setting the record straight. Because it isn’t such things as Guantanamo and so-called “torture” that has made America “less safe” and created more terrorists; but rather, the wild, irresponsible distortions and fabrications.

America’s image abroad wasn’t damaged by President Bush, but by his political opponents.

By Thiessen’s account,

the first terrorist to be subjected to enhanced techniques, Zubaydah, told his interrogators something stunning. According to the Justice Department memos released by the Obama administration, Zubaydah explained that “brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship.” In other words, the terrorists are called by their religious ideology to resist as far as they can — and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know.

Several senior officials told me that, after undergoing waterboarding, Zubaydah actually thanked his interrogators and said, “You must do this for all the brothers.” The enhanced interrogation techniques were a relief for Zubaydah, they said, because they lifted a moral burden from his shoulders — the responsibility to continue resisting.

The importance of this revelation cannot be overstated: Zubaydah had given the CIA the secret code for breaking al-Qaeda detainees. CIA officials now understood that the job of the interrogator was to give the captured terrorist something to resist, so he could do his duty to Allah and then feel liberated to speak. So they developed techniques that would allow terrorists to resist safely, without any lasting harm. Indeed, they specifically designed techniques to give the terrorists the false perception that what they were enduring was far worse than what was actually taking place.

Much of the power of waterboarding and the other approved enhanced interrogation techniques was psychological. Such as the belief that drowning was taking place, as was the case of waterboarding; or that one was getting shoved hard (“walling”) by hitting a flexible, false wall that made a loud sound to give the illusion that what was happening was worse than it actually was. As Thiessen puts it in an interview he did on the Dennis Prager Show, “Most of the techniques are psychological tricks, for the most part. They didn’t depend upon physical pain to get the people to cooperate.” They were like mentalist/magic tricks whose effectiveness, once revealed, loses their power.

This is why, since President Obama (selectively) released the OLC “torture” memos (more properly identified as “how not to torture” memos) last April, a couple of things have occurred:

1)It’s basically provided al Qaeda with valuable intell information. Now they know what to train specifically against (were the CIA program still in operation).

2)It’s made the enhanced interrogation techniques described in detail in the declassified documents obsolete.

Waterboarding (performed on only 3 terrorists in the program) is now pretty much useless as a psychological tool; making Obama’s EO banning its use rather redundant (especially since waterboarding had been suspended already, under the Bush Administration). It’s just gratuitous PR that “Obama banned torture” (Bush and Cheney were against torture, too). What he did was ban the tools that provided the CIA with valuable intell that would not have been gained through standard interrogation procedures. KSM, especially, was described by one official as “superhuman” in his resistance to traditional interrogation. It was clear that he had received extensive training in counter-interrogation. And he was smart: He figured out exactly how long his interrogators were allowed to pour the water shortly after only being waterboarded a few times, and would count off on his hand the number of seconds that would elapse, “1…2….3…”

Under the Obama Administration, the business of intelligence-gathering has taken a back seat in favor of prosecuting terrorists or simply killing them rather than capturing.

Thiessen’s entire Prager interview is excellent, and you can listen to it here:

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer writes on the White House blog in response to Cheney’s criticism:

I think we all agree that there should be honest debate about these issues, but it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers.

What is telling, is how it took 4 days for the Administration to figure out how to address the recent terror plot, and only hours to confront Cheney.

In the next paragraph, Pfeiffer does as all good Obamadsmen do: Blame the previous administration for where we are at today:

First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: for seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq – a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion – Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years.

It is a lie that Iraq had “no al Qaeda presence” prior to invasion. It also misunderstands the nature of the war we find ourselves in, which is not limited to just al Qaeda, but a network of Islamic terror groups, many of which are affiliated with al Qaeda. (Interestingly, Pfeiffer’s post even mentions it’s not just al Qaeda who mean to do us harm, without seeing the contradiction he makes, here). Note that Osama bin Laden and his terror group wasn’t the only signatory to his 1998 fatwa, but was one of five. All can be said to fall under the umbrella moniker, “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders”. We are at war with an Islamic (Jihad) Terror Movement. Not just one terror group directly responsible for 9/11, but an entire network of religious nuts who cooperate and collaborate, and have shared ideology and goals.

It is why from the get-go, President Bush said our focus will not be limited to just al-Qaeda:

“Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
-President Bush in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, United States Capitol, Washington D.C., September 20, 2001.

As far as Iraq, it became the central front of the GWoT from 2003-2008. Zawahiri regarded it with great importance. As Lawrence Wright, author of the definitive geneology on al Qaeda- The Looming Tower- said on national radio, it was al Qaeda that became bogged down by Iraq. Iraq became their Vietnam. And it is thanks to the war in Iraq that al Qaeda was exposed for the human aberration that they are, losing legitimacy in the eyes of many in the Islamic world- amongst both moderates and radicals, alike (they never had legitimacy in the eyes of peaceful Muslims- and yes, they do exist).

President Bush kept us safe since 9/11. And for the president who campaigned on reaching across the aisle, bipartisanship, and being a new kind of politician, he’d live up to that ideal if he would be gracious enough to acknowledge that and quit scapegoating the last administration for today’s current event difficulties. But president Obama can’t help but be who he is: A divisive, petty, all-about-me-and-my-legacy partisan, blame-handing, far-to-the-left politician. A divider, not a uniter.

Ah…but Pfeiffer’s distortions haven’t stopped spinning yet:

It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al Qaeda – more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan, and building partnerships to target al Qaeda’s safe-havens in Yemen and Somalia. And in less than one year, we have already seen many al Qaeda leaders taken out, our alliances strengthened, and the pressure on al Qaeda increased worldwide.

President Obama is merely riding out the coattails of the decisions made before he ever came into office, including the signing of the SoFA. The war as it currently stands in Iraq today was “already winding down” with troop withdrawal planned before his watch even began. But he takes credit for success there, conveniently forgetting he opposed the decision that helped bring about that success.

It’s beyond humor to see that in September of ’08, presidential candidate Barack Obama was criticizing President Bush for lack of urgency, as 43 mounted a “quiet surge” into Afghanistan in response to dealing with ever-changing circumstances on the ground. The need for an increase of troop strength for a counterinsurgency strategy was part of a 2008 strategy review. Meanwhile 44, in his continued criticism, seems to have not only adopted “lack of urgency” in dealing with Afghanistan, but made “dithering” one of the memorable words/phrases of 2009 (along with “teachable moment”).

Let’s be clear: President Obama is an inheritor and beneficiary of many of the tools and policy-decisions he will need to continue keeping America safe. This includes the “partnership building”. The notion that Bush only engaged in cowboy diplomacy and did not build alliances and cooperation with other nations is ludicrous and false. A lot of the GWoT was waged “behind the scenes”. But somehow “shock and awe” military aggression has come to define the Bush approach. This ignores the truly multi-pronged effort President Bush did take in engaging the Islamic terror network. Not only were they decimated on the field of battle, but much of their financing choked off and bank assets frozen due to Bush being engaged on the diplomatic front, resulting in law enforcement and intelligence gathering and sharing. The constant usage of the phrase “military alone can’t solve this” is strawman nonsense to fuel the false premise that the Bush Administration only pursued military use of force in combating Islamic terror.

To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action.

Try “dithering”. Where was his action when it came to supporting the people of Iran? When it came to Afghanistan?

And he has used “bellicose rhetoric”. On the campaign trail in regards to how to handle Pakistan and Iran. And against political opposition (remember “get in their faces”?).

Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country.

The “bellicose rhetoric” did not happen for 7 years. It only happened on the heels of 9/11, then toned down (rather unfortunately in some cases, imo).

And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.

How about being “off-key” in spending so much time attacking what a former VP (who left office as deeply unpopular in opinion polls as the president, as noted by Mark Hemmingway) has to say, than in attacking those who wish to kill us:

the White House is still in campaign mode, worried about what a private citizen — who left office remarkably unpopular! — thinks of them.

What is laughable is the absurdity of the Administration to wax so indignant and Obama supporters and liberals to be so outraged that “How dare you! How dare former VP Cheney speak out against the sitting president!”

Well, maybe he wouldn’t feel so inclined to speak out if the current administration would have more class and dignity than to make political swipes at the previous administration in rationalizing their every decision in how they are dealing with the current state of affairs.

Maybe when you quit blaming Bush for your own inadequacies in how you’re handling today’s problems, then maybe Bush’s hatchet man will quit chopping you down a notch or two, Mr. President.

A perfect description of the Obama administration from Dick Cheney:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation—the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.

Why should he try to portray the United States as at war when he believes, as most leftists do, that our enemy has a valid reason to hate us and to make war on us?

You gotta love this paragraph towards the end of the article from Politico:

Foreshadowing the party’s strategy for next year’s midterm congressional elections, GOP officeholders have eschewed the customary partisan restraint following a terrorist incident, and have baldly portrayed Democrats as weak on security.

Really? So the Democrats showed “partisan restraint” against Bush after a terrorist incident?

Puhlease…

The arrests of the young men in Miami on terror related charges is the Bush regime’s most clumsy attempt yet to gin up the fear that has allowed them to pose as the protectors of the nation and the world since the collapse of the World Trade Towers.

It’s Chrismas Eve, and instead of sugar plums dancing in my head, I can’t get Wordsmith’s post about Obama’s latest Executive Order out of my mind. It is like a kid getting his first jigzaw puzzle… my mind twists and turns with the repercussions.

I’ve been pondering the implications… since pondering and speculation is all we can do at the moment. I’ve also been searching codification docs, old EOs, wondering if this is business as “usual” or what. I am also seeing many blogs are misinformed, thinking INTERPOL is a newly added organization to the immunity list of IOIA. Not true. So let me fill you in on a few basics.

Granting immunities under the International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945 since EO 9698 in 1946, plus various subsequent EOs adding designated organizations to that list isn’t unusual. It lies within POTUS power to alter any varying degree of that immunity under that Act. We are not talking about an infringement on the Constitutional powers by the Executive Office here. That argument should fly right out of the window.

The IOIA, from what I understand, differs from the blanket immunities granted to sovereign nations under the FSIA (Foreign Sovereignty Immunities Act) by granting immunities to the designated int’l organizations in two distinct classes: international organizations as one class, and their property and assets as the other.

Reagan’s original EO 12425 added INTERPOL… but included many limitations in the second property/asset classes – some specificially as it related to search and seizure of property, customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes.

Clinton amended Reagan’s original EO, granting additional immunity not originally included for INTERPOL’s property/assets with his EO 12971 on Sept 15, 1995.

From what I can see, Obama has pretty much made it a clean sweep with his current EO, granting what constitutes absolute immunity for all INTERPOL property and assets. What this final extension of immunity does provide is a lockbox on all INTERPOL property, assets and files… well out of the reach of our country’s FOIA. This becomes even more bizarre coming from a POTUS who prefers to import enemy combatants, thereby bestowing Constitutional rights the moment they set foot on our borders, and thereby allowing courts almost unfettered access to classified intel.

So if you’re Obama, why open one door to Constitutional rights access, and slam the other Constitutional rights door shut? Or better illustrated, using McCarthy’s question… why does INTERPOL need that additional immunity?

The simple answer is… they don’t. But Obama does.

Fact is, INTERPOL’s increased immunity mitigates a great deal of Obama’s responsibility in some key areas of pesky campaign promises.

I will somewhat agree with ThreatsWatch’s Steve Schippert that this could conceivably extend to INTERPOL arrest of Americans on our soil. But if SCOTUS could conjure up Constitutional rights for those who were captured and held on foreign soils, nor were subjects of extradition, it’s going to be extremely tough for them to figure out a way to deny Constitutional rights to an American citizen, arrested on US soil by an int’l police organization.

SCOTUS examination is always a case by case examination of specific events as they relate to law. But INTERPOLs increased immunities extend to protecting them and *their* assets from search and seizures. It does not not allow them to do unConstitutional search and seizures upon American citizens solo. The stroke of an EO pen cannot usurp that unmistaken able Constitutional right… at least as it stands today.

But Schippert may have lead me to the Obama benefits as a motive when he elaborates on Obama’s lukewarm opines on the Int’l Criminal Court. Clinton signed us on, Bush removed us. Obama’s been hesitant, saying it’s “premature”. Schippert makes a good case for Obama’s delays not being related to sovereignty concerns, but “image”… a subject that this arrogant WH occupant remains consumed with daily.

Even if Obama did sign the Rome Statute, ratification by Congress is still required to cement that relationship as legal and prosecutable to the fullest treaty extent. Obama is fast running out of charisma chips with the public. His best chance for any successful ratification would be with/through the current Congress… who’s make up after 2010 is in no way guaranteed to be as acquiescent to his demands.

I also have to assume that Obama’s calculated move is not meant to be an alternative supporting intel arm of the now-defunct “war on terror”. In fact, it makes such info more removed, and more difficult to use in a military tribunal. Thus I chip away at the more obvious “no gain” motives.

But there are two possible motives gleaned after reading Curtis Bradley’s May 2002 article in The American Society of Int’l Law. This was shortly after the Bush admin had announced it’s intent not to ratify the ICC treaty. The below paragraph is what set my mind a’whirl:

Nevertheless, there may be at least two ways in which the Administration’s announcement will have legal significance. First, Article 86 of the Rome Statute provides that parties to the treaty shall “cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court,” and other articles in the treaty provide that the Court may formally request even nonparties to provide assistance to the Court and to surrender suspects to the Court.

One possible effect of the Administration’s announcement will be to preclude an argument that the United States would be violating its duty not to defeat the object and purpose of the treaty if, in some future case, it rejects a request for assistance by the Court. In fact, the same day that the Bush Administration made its announcement, Pierre-Richard Prosper, the State Department’s ambassador for war crimes, stated that the Court should not expect assistance from the United States.

Another possible effect of the Administration’s announcement concerns the Court’s jurisdiction. Article 12 of the treaty allows the Court to exercise jurisdiction over the nationals of non-party countries if the crime is committed in the territory of a party country. The Administration’s announcement might remove any basis for parties to the treaty to argue that the United States, by signing the treaty, has waived objection to the trial of US citizens in this situation.

This posits two very specific avenues of benefits for a hands-off INTERPOL, and even a possible re’signatory status – even if not ratified – on the ICC treaty. The first allows this POTUS to cooperate with this int’l court system by sending Americans accused of war crimes elsewhere to stand trial, while effectively telling the nation that his hands are “tied”.

What better way for Obama to accomplish his promise to seek “justice” upon the prior administration – from President Bush to any defense department personnel in his sights – to appease his far left base, and still do the traditional Pontius Pilate washing of hands of guilt?

The second is this just may be a great dumping ground for future enemy combatants… alleviating this POTUS of the repercussions of an unsuccessful and controversial prosecution in the US federal justice system.

Both potential “int’l law” scenarios are a win win for the Obama extreme left base – a group feeling they’ve been abandoned by a “central” Obama. To this day, they thirst for Bush’s blood, and those in his administration. Obama can use the int’l court system and regulations to virtually hand them Bush’s head. Voila… a surprise campaign promise fulfilled.

As for Gitmo, for a POTUS who’s greatest skill is voting “present” and passing the buck of responsibility to others, Obama would be grateful not to fill up the cell blocks of a new “Gitmo” located on US soil if he could simply pass them off to the ICC. He again washes his hands of any ill-treatment in the hands of international authorities. If this is the case, there will be some new ROE following soon.

Time will perhaps reveal more what the Obama admin has planned with this subterfuge. Until then, were I the former admin members, I’d be keeping a watchful eye over my shoulder. But what I am most sure about is this Executive Order is not to benefit INTERPOL – who has functioned for decades without these immunities. Executive Order #13524 is all about the power of “appearing powerless” in the court of public opinion.

Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran’s nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we’ll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let’s hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn’t take as long.

As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime’s ambitions.

The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama’s revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom.

SO, if diplomacy has failed, and has no reasonable chance (hell, there’s NO chance) of stopping the Iranian nuke problem…what’s next? The answer is simple: Israel attacks Iran or the US attacks Iran, and Obama lacks the political courage to even think about the latter option.

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