How a smearing of Justice Department lawyers as "terrorist sympathizers" traveled from the conservative media to the United States Senate.
“These lawyers were advocating on behalf of our Constitution and our laws. The detention policies of the Bush administration were unconstitutional and illegal, and no higher a legal authority than the Supreme Court of the United States agreed,” says Ken Gude, a human-rights expert with the Center for American Progress, of the recent assault on the Justice Department. “The disgusting logic of these attacks is that the Supreme Court is in league with al-Qaeda.”Will Liz Cheney Attack Rudy Giuliani’s Firm For Representing ‘Terrorist Detainees’?
That would be a very Conservative Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Roberts.
Even former military prosecutors have expressed views similar to those of the “Gitmo Nine.” Col. Morris Davis (retired) served as the former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay military commissions and has since argued that they should be abandoned. But initially, when the commissions were formed, he volunteered to be chief defense counsel. “I thought for the good of our system, they needed zealous representation,” says Davis. He dismissed the charge that having represented a detainee indicated “sympathy” for terrorist goals. “I don’t think that anyone, because they signed up to represent a detainee means they’ve signed up with al-Qaeda.”
“[McCarthy]- ( of the right-wing National Review) was a prosecutor for a number of years, so he knows better than that,” Davis adds. “I think he’s just saying it for the shock value of it.”
It turns out that among the many high-profile lawyers who have represented so-called “terrorist detainees” is a top attorney with Rudy Giuliani’s firm, Bracewell Giuliani, according to court documents examined by TPMmuckraker.Why Do Lynn Cheney and the unhinged conservatives at National Review hate traditional American values.
Karl Rove and his boss Bush 43 are no George Washingtons. They would have cut down the cherry tree, hide the ax, made up twenty different spins on what actually happened and than claimed that cherry tree was evil so any actions they took were justified, Rove Book: No Pushback on Iraq WMD My Bad
But in one area, the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Karl Rove will do what George W. Bush never did: admit a mistake. Sadly, the error Rove confesses is the uniquely Republican sin of not lying more.
As the AP described it, Rove's tall tale can be summarized as "if lying about WMD is wrong, I don't want to be right":
The former White House political adviser blames himself for not pushing back against claims that President George W. Bush had taken the country to war under false pretenses, calling it one of the worst mistakes he made during the Bush presidency. The president, he adds, did not knowingly mislead the American public about the existence of such weapons.
Of course, it's hard to imagine how the Bush administration could have pushed back any harder against charges that the President misled the nation into war. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed the fraud that was Bush's 16-word claim about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, the retribution included the outing of his wife Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The White House initially opposed the creation of the independent Silberman-Robb commission, later agreeing only on the conditions that its report be released after the 2004 elections and exclude any investigation of the uses of pre-war intelligence. Thanks to the obstructionism of Bush ally Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase I report on Iraq war intel played the same game.
