Author: Phoenix Woman

One of the more darkly amusing things over the past year has been how, whenever President Obama and Congressional Dems shiv the Democratic base on something, a loud and strangely organized chorus erupts from Obama’s habitual defenders to the effect that it’s not their fault as the poor man and the Dems are just too powerless to influence those big old mean Republicans controlling Congress with a 40- or 41-seat minority.

However, as Jane has documented copiously with health care reform and Bmaz and EW with legal issues, and Glenn Greenwald seconding them both, Obama has profound influence over both parties in Congress, and plenty of power on his own, and isn’t afraid to use it to get what he wants — such as the murder without trial of American citizens.

So let’s sit back here and create a list of the things for which Obama and the Democrats in Congress have really and truly fought for — and against. Time to nip this “Oh, he’s so pitifully powerless!” myth in the bud.

CSA crop share by Mikaela Martin

Dear Firepuppers: I am perched on the horns of a dilemma.

You see, I love farmers’ markets and I love the idea of CSA shares. But with only two people in my household, is it worth it for me to get a share or even a half-share CSA?

Maybe I should back up a bit here, for those folks who haven’t had their coffee yet and think I’m talking about the Confederate States of America. “CSA” is short for “Community Supported Agriculture“. The way it works is that you buy a share in a CSA farm’s growing season — from 12 to 20 or more weeks, depending on where you live and what’s being grown — before the season starts; the share price is typically around $400 to $500 for the season, which averages out to around $35 a week for produce delivered weekly. Considering I can blow $35 on lunches alone in half a week’s time, this is quite the bargain.

But: Will I have to put up with mountains of kale every week? What if I can’t find anyone to split my share? What if the farmer keeps sticking me with weird-ass veggies I have no idea how to prepare? What if, what if, what if?

Anyway: You who CSA already, tell me your stories. Give me your pointers. Help me make a decision. (Oh, and by the way, my husband will let you have all the Brussels sprouts. He can’t stand ‘em.)

It always happens. I tell myself I’m going to take a break from politics and recharge my batteries with a nice cheerful Come Saturday Morning post — and I actually did manage it last week. But, you know what Michael Corleone said:

“Just when I thought I was out — they pull me back in.”

As Marcy points out, look at the sort of people Michael Chertoff, Bush DHS head, thinks are terrorists or at least their fellow travelers: Keith Ellison, Arianna Huffington, and Kos. And, just for grins, Janet Napolitano. Even better: Chertoff was using DHS’ Civil Rights Office and David Horowitz’ smear site DiscoverTheNetworks as the building blocks for finished intelligence reports based on Americans doing nothing more than exercising their right to free speech.

Now, again as Marcy points out, remember the firestorm last year when wingnut groups learned DHS did a report–initiated by the Bush Administration–on right wing extremist groups? Even though quite a few home-grown right-wing terrorists have, unlike Keith Ellison, Arianna Huffington, and Markos Moulitsas, done things a good deal more sinister that merely using their First Amendment rights.

For example, there’s the case of James Cummings. He was a neo-Nazi son of a real estate tycoon; he was getting $10 million a year from daddy’s trust fund, and had been pumping some of that money into building a dirty bomb in his basement, with the intention of detonating it at Obama’s inauguration. But his long-suffering and much-abused wife Amber, fearing he was about to start sexually abusing their daughter, finally gave him some high-velocity trans-cranial lead therapy back in December of 2008.

The wingnuts freak out over Mister Fruit of the Loom Abdulmutallab who probably had no chance of taking down an airplane even if he had managed to properly set off his bomb, yet are silent as the tomb over multimillionaire Nazi James Cummings. Nor will you hear them discussing pipe- and cyanide-bomb maker William Krar, who was mailing his wares to right-wing militia groups across the country until a package intended for a New Jersey militia ended up at the wrong address.

Nor will you hear any of them admit that it’s right-wing hate that’s on the rise in America:

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the US is up 40% since 2000, with nearly 1000 such groups active across the country right now. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America’s loss of world standing, they tell us, the militant right is rising again. You can find groups in every corner of the country, incidents of racist violence are rising; and the traffic on far-right websites is up, too.

But you won’t hear a word about this on the evening news. They’re too busy freaking out over somebody who castrated himself with explosives, or who was dumb enough to think he could take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches, or a group of hapless noobs who couldn’t even afford shoes yet who were alleged to be this hideously dangerous terror cell set to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Ai-yi-yi.

Meissen Model by Alaskan Dude (flickr)

Over at Balloon Juice, DougJ noticed that an incoherent New York Times thumbsucker on naughty public leaders and institutions had an illustration that showed Tiger Woods, John Edwards, David Paterson, a Toyota logo, and a generic picture of a headless someone raking in bucks behind a “FORECLOSURE” sign.

As DougJ says: “Is it really news that rich men like to have affairs?” But even if we accept the idea that we’re supposed to have national freakout sessions whenever rich men have affairs, why is there a decided double standard? As anticontrarian said: “Where are the pictures of John Ensign? Or David Vitter?”

Where, indeed?

I was chatting the other day with some random dittohead who was blathering on and on about what a creep Edwards was/is when I brought him up short by asking him “why is the media hammering away at a guy who retired from politics two years ago and hasn’t held an office for six years?”

He sputtered something to the effect that well, Edwards wanted to be president and he held himself up as so godly. To which I replied “You mean like Mark Sanford? That guy cheated on his wife too, and he held himself up as so godly — and he’s still considered a viable 2012 GOP candidate by some people. Oh, and he’s still a sitting governor.”

He didn’t have a reply to that.

But going back to issues of trust that are actually our business, and are actually important, DougJ also mentions the absence of Judy Miller’s picture from that Wall of Public Shaming.

You’d think that enabling the ambitions of Ahmad Chalabi — who as we’ve known for years was working hand-in-glove with Iran — to create a war that destroyed one nation, killed untold hundreds of thousands if not millions, and has seriously damaged America’s financial and moral standing, would be a mite worse of a crime than catting around on one’s spouse, even if the adulterer is an evil Democrat as opposed to nice Republican Mark Sanford. But maybe that’s just me.

Tags: ahmad chalabi, David Vitter, Iran, Iraq, John Edwards, Judy Miller, Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods

It’s the first week of March up here at the forty-fifth parallel, and I’m starting some tomato plants from seed. I’ve got them in one of those plastic vented carriers for roast chicken; the lid’s been popped to show you the seedlings, but it went right back on again after this photo was taken.

If all goes well, I’ll transfer the survivors into bigger containers in about a month or so, by which time the weather might have warmed enough to allow them to go outside. I intend to be up to my eyeballs in tomatoes round about August. I’ll keep you posted.

So what unbearably exciting things have you been up to this week?

Gene Lyons is fond of saying that the media follows what he calls “the Clinton Rules” when discussing anything pertaining to our forty-second president. As has been documented repeatedly over the years, the members of the press judge the Clintons by a much harsher set of standards than those they use for Republicans.

But really, the Clinton Rules don’t just apply to the Clintons and their associates, but to the entire Democratic Party; they are always judged by a higher, harsher standard than are Republicans. We’re reminded of this on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis — so much so that it takes something exceptionally blatant to stand out from the constant GOP/Media Complex drone.

Something like this piece by the NYT’s Mark Leibovitch:

Beyond all the hand-wringing about hyper-partisanship that accompanies every discussion here these days, a more subtle — and perhaps pertinent — reality hangs over the much-anticipated Blair House confab: Mr. Obama and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill appear to have no personal chemistry whatsoever.

[…]

Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama have not held a single one-on-one meeting since Mr. Obama’s election, according to Mr. Boehner’s office. Representative Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, has described Mr. Obama to colleagues as “thin-skinned” and quick to bring up Republican criticisms of him.

Oh, go gag a maggot, why don’t cha? Guess what? Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush — you remember him, the guy who finished out his term with approval ratings on a par with the plague? — treated both Republicans and Democrats like ashtrays. It took until the summer of 2006 before he could be bothered to take notice of either.

Remember, it was Bush and his brain Karl Rove that in late 2002 and early 2003 took advantage of the furor over Trent Lott’s remarks on Strom Thurmond to have him removed as Senate Majority Leader and replaced with Bill Frist, who was far more subservient to the Bush White House than was Lott — who though a Republican still insisted on this whole separation of powers thingy. That’s not the act of a president with a nice warm and fuzzy relationship with his Congressional counterparts.

(This was a furor, by the way, that happened only because some of the then-brand-new liberal bloggers like Atrios, who still remembered how the press helped Trent Lott and the GOP demagogue and smear Paul Wellstone’s memorial event five weeks earlier as it was happening, yet were expending far less time and energy on Lott’s Thurmond statements. Just as they hijacked Joe Lieberman’s Department of Homeland Security idea after first opposing it, Rove and Bush used the Lott-Thurmond hoo-ha to cow Senate and Congressional Republicans into submission. But I digress.)

So please, TradMed, stop it with the “ooh ooh Obama doesn’t play nice with Republicans” crapola. Bush treated Congressional and Senate Republicans far worse than Obama has so far.

Tags: BushCo, Congress, Gene Lyons, GOP-Media complex, Media, MSM, Obama

photo: donbuciak via Flickr

Dog bites man. Sun rises in east. Tim Pawlenty plays “kick the starving poor person (who’s probably black anyway) to win the CPAC vote”:

Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.

“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”

Supporters of the federal law would contend that many people go to ERs precisely because they do not have the insurance to pay for a primary care physician.

As usual, my absentee governor, in his bid to win the votes of the evil heartless racist yahoos known as “Republican base voters”, goes the extra mile in terms in venality, stupidity, ignorance and inhumanity.

That Federal law that Governor Gutshot complains about? It already allows emergency rooms to turn away persons with non-emergency health conditions (h/t mcjoan). But he either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care — or quite possibly both — which is funny as hell as he used to run a law practice with his former good buddy Eric Magnuson, who he appointed as Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court two years ago. (I say “former” because Chief Justic Magnuson has himself become disenchanted with his former law partner’s fiscally-hostile attitude towards Minnesota’s justice system.)

If the 2012 Republican presidential primary can be described as a race to the bottom, ethically, morally and intellectually, then Gutshot’s working hard to stake out the Challenger Deep.

Photo by SFB579

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

– William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

This, my friends, is what you get when you push, subtly and not-so-subtly, racism as the unspoken pretext for lowering rich folks’ taxes — aka the Southern Strategy — for the past half century:

When Republican activist Rae Hart Anderson last ran for Minnesota Senate, she ended up conceding the race to Sen. Satveer Chaudhary, the state’s first Hindu legislator, by urging him to convert to Christianity. Four years later, she’s again facing off with Chaudhary. But while she’ll be bringing the same religious fervor — both pro-Christian and anti-Muslim — to the table, she’s adding a noteworthy new belief: the insistence that President Barack Obama isn’t the legitimate president of the United States.

Deeply involved in GOP politics, Anderson is currently the precinct chair for the Republican Party in Fridley. She also ran for the deputy chair position in the Republican Party of Minnesota in 2007, losing to incumbent Dorothy Fleming. In her 2006 Senate challenge to Chaudhary, she was endorsed by the GOP.

In a post on her campaign site titled “The United States Preambles are Christian,” Anderson questions Obama’s citizenship by calling him Barry Saetoro, a name commonly found in “birther” discussions.

And that’s only the start of the bigotry-fueled craziness, people. You really have to read Andy Birkey’s superb piece on Anderson for it all to sink in.

Again, Anderson wouldn’t be a viable candidate for dogcatcher if it weren’t for the “Southern Strategy,” the conscious decision made half a century ago by the Republican Party’s big-business bankrollers to spit on Abe Lincoln’s grave and embrace racism as a means of cutting corporate taxes. The effectiveness of it lies in the Republicans’ making sure that the bigots whose votes they want understand that cutting taxes = cutting government programs that help nonwhites. This way, a Republican courting the bigot vote need not be so crude as to use the N-word — instead, simply talking up tax cuts and talking down government as evil will suffice for the right people to get the message, without allowing those pesky liberals to be able to call you a racist and make it stick. As the guy who helped Ronald Reagan get elected explained nearly thirty years ago:

‘You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Ni–er, ni–er, ni–er.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘ni–er’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

The election of Barack Obama, setting aside what he’s actually done or not done as president, was a serious blow to the Southern Strategy, that hideous bit of politics that is leading to what Eli describes as Bathtub America. But, as should be obvious by now, it didn’t come close to killing off that strategy — or the racism that sustains it. There is still enough energy left in the wounded serpent that is the Southern Strategy to lash out in a furious flowering of poison to corrode our moral fiber. The question is whether the corporate interests that back this strategy in order to keep their taxes low (or non-existent) will finally forsake the oncological, selfish model of capitalism for the more civic-minded one that prevails in Europe and elsewhere.

Here is what Scott Brown, the Naked Senator That Dared Not Speak His Party Affiliation Until After He Was Elected, had to say last month about the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Underpants Bomber who tried to blow up a plane and only managed to torch his own crotch before he was easily subdued and who is now singing like a canary for the Feds without any sort of torture being used on him during the interrogations:

State Senator Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for US Senate, endorsed yesterday the use of enhanced interrogation techniques – including the practice of simulated drowning known as waterboarding – in questioning terror suspects.

[…]

Brown, in response to a question, told reporters that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, should be treated as an enemy combatant, taken to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, interrogated “pursuant to our rules of engagement and laws of war,’’ and not be treated as a civilian criminal suspect. Brown asserted that waterboarding does not constitute torture, but he did not specifically say Abdulmutallab should be subjected to waterboarding.

Here is what Scott Brown said about Joseph Stack, the Texas man who torched his house and then flew his plane into a building that contains several agencies of the Federal government, killing at least two people besides himself, after having left a blisteringly anti-government manifesto online on his website for all to read:

… I don’t know if it’s related, but I can just sense not only in my election, but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated. They want transparency, they want their elected officials to be accountable and open and talk about the things that are affecting their daily lives. So I’m not sure that there’s a connection, I certainly hope not. But we need to do things better.

Cavuto: Um, you know invariably people are going to look at this and say, well, that’s where some of this populist rage gets you. [At this point, footage of the building IRS building in Austin appears on the right of the screen.] Isn’t that a bit extreme?

Brown: Well, yeah, of course it’s extreme. You don’t know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues, certainly. No one likes paying taxes, obviously. But the way we’re trying to deal with things and have been in the past, at least until I got here is, there’s such a logjam in Washington. And people want us to do better. They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way.

[Here, the display zooms back to just Cavuto and Brown.]

And I think we, I’m hopeful that we can do that, with a lot of the things that are coming forward. At least what I’m hearing through, and speaking with my colleagues this seems to be a diff feel there’s kind of a message that was sent with my election, the fact that I was elected by a substantial margin taking the former Ted Kennedy’s seat. They want difference up here and I’m hopeful that’s going to happen.

Notice the difference here? It would seem that it comes down to skin color:

White skin = valid motive = “frustrated” citizen (per Scott Brown).
Dark skin = no valid motive = waterboard the guy (per Scott Brown).

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, FOX News doesn’t think this is terrorism, either. Not when white guys do it, apparently.

Hey, pups — Phoenix here, subbing for Lisa tonight.

I’m not even close to being as hip and au courant as she is, so I’m not gonna try — but I hope you like this anyway.

Our first video selection features a bunch of Sixties-era cuties dancing to “Liar, Liar” by those one-hit wonders from the Twin Cities, the Castaways:

Our next selection is a bit more recent, though the hair and makeup choices are rather haunting (to me at least) throwbacks to the go-go era:

Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”:

And with that, the floor is yours.

I was puzzled by the idea that Sarah Palin thought saying she hoped Obama would declare war on Iran would be a good way to appeal to the large anti-war isolationist libertarian contingent that has been attracted to the tea party movement — a movement whose leaders cast it as drastically different from the mainstream GOP. But then, I was reminded that the folks leading the tea party organization are just plain old movement Republicans looking to con voters into thinking they’re not really Republicans (h/t DDay and Digby):

The announcement came with an official platform that could help define what the multi-faceted tea party movement stands for and expects from the candidates it supports. The group’s leaders plan to support candidates who stand for a set of “First Principles.”

Those principles are: fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less government, states’ rights and national security. Prospective political candidates will be expected to support the Republican National Committee platform. If a particular candidate meets the proposed criteria he or she would be eligible for fundraising and grassroots support.

Wonder how many of the persons who got sucked into the movement don’t yet realize that it’s just another wing of the GOP?

This also explains why Palin, the mother of a Down’s Syndrome child who was so quick to take umbrage against Rahm Emanuel for his “f—ing retards” comments, has essentially — after a brief few hours where it looked like she might have been willing to do what no Republican has ever done and stand by a criticism of Rush Limbaugh — given El Rushbo permission to use that language as he will. If she really was a maverick of the sort that the Tea Party rank-and-file favor, she’d be willing to take on the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

Ah, Michele Bachmann. If anyone needs proof of the validity of the Daily Kos poll where movement Republicans boast of what callous, heartless, bigoted and delusional folk they are, just know this: Michele Bachmann is one of their biggest heroes right now. In fact, no less a conservative celebrity than George Will says that she’s “an authentic representative of the Republican base”. Just when it seemed that the Hill was getting less crazy with the forced retirement of the unspeakable Katherine Harris, Our Miss Michele pushes the insanity factor up to eleven.

Is there a stupid and/or crazy stance out there that she hasn’t taken yet? Or wacky kowtowing to an equally-wacky base she hasn’t done yet? There’s her palling around at CPAC with absentee governor and would-be president Smilin’ Tim Pawlenty, each competing to outdo the other in terms of proposals detrimental to the people yet pleasing to the crazy GOP base. Then there’s her vote to protect the bonuses of AIG executives — wow, how fiscally prudent of her. Not. And there’s her ladycrush on Sarah Palin, no slouch herself in the batshit-crazy department: “There is absolutely no one more in tune with the hearts and minds of everyday Americans than Governor Palin, and I’m excited to welcome her back to our beautiful state this spring.”

Lists of her bons mots abound, though I must say that my own personal favorite example of her craziness is her rabid hatred of the US Census, a stance so bizarre it even freaks out Glenn Beck, allegedly because it’s a supposed violation of privacy. Ironically enough, her telling Minnesotans not to fill out the census might be her undoing, because Minnesota is on the verge of losing a Congressional District if it has a poor census showing — and the district that vanishes may well be hers. Even more ironically, if you give money to her ACU Strikeforce pals, your name and contact info are given out to lots of other conservative groups eager to shake you down for more cash. What was that about privacy concerns again, Michele?

Geez. No wonder her staff has such high turnover.

Of course, if the residents of the Sixth District ever decide that they want representation and not a comedy act, they could dump Bachmann for somebody like this lady, Tarryl Clark. She’s nowhere near as funny as Bachmann — at least not unintentionally so — but she actually cares about governance, which would be a welcome novelty for the Seasick Sixth.

(photo: genibee)

Much commotion has been kicked up over the report that, in contradiction to years of previous research and data, there has finally been an abstinence-only study that shows that it can work under some circumstances if it’s taught properly.

The major problem: What the study describes isn’t abstinence-only sex ed.

Here are the key paragraphs of the WaPo story on the study:

Several critics of an abstinence-only approach said that the curriculum tested did not represent most abstinence programs. It did not take a moralistic tone, as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until married; did not portray sex outside marriage as never appropriate; and did not disparage condoms.

“There is no data in this study to support the ‘abstain until marriage’ programs, which research proved ineffective during the Bush administration,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

Wagoner is absolutely right here. Furthermore, if what the study calls “abstinence-only” sex ed were to actually be taught in schools, it wouldn’t be eligible for abstinence-only funding — because it would be considered to promote (because it doesn’t condemn) condom usage and/or birth control, as well as sex outside of marriage!

I kid thee not:

At first, program guidance issued by MCH allowed grant recipients some flexibility in how they spent the funds. For instance, MCH did not require states and their sub-grantees to emphasize all eight elements of the definition equally, even though grantees could not provide information that contradicted any of the eight points. Beginning in FY2005, however, when the Bush administration moved the funding to another division within the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), grant announcements eliminated this flexibility, asking states instead to “develop programs that place equal emphasis on each element of the abstinence education definition.”

By 2007, grant announcements stated that “each element of A through H should be meaningfully represented in all grantees’ federally funded abstinence education curricula.” The latest grant announcement also required states to provide assurance that funded programs and curricula “do not promote contraception and/or condom use.” In addition, in an effort to ensure that funds would not be spent on pre-adolescents, the targeted population was redefined as “adolescents and/or adults within the 12 through 29-year-old age range.” The newest age definition also included “other adults such as parents or professionals that desire training in how to support decisions to delay sexual activity until marriage.” “Focal populations” under this newer definition included: students at local universities, colleges, or technical schools; single adults involved in a local community or community-based organization; and single parents in their 20s.

This tightening of program requirements, including the new directive to target adults, has contributed to an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education. States have now turned down millions of dollars in federal grants. The number of states that refused Title V abstinence-only funding has grown from one (California) in the first year to eight in FY2007 (California, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin).

Abstinence-only funding to the states was first administered by MCH. However in 2004, the Bush administration transferred oversight of the program to the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families (ACF), a more ideologically driven division within HHS. ACF has also assumed jurisdiction over Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), a more restrictive funding stream for abstinence-only education.

So, to sum up:

– It’s a scheme that only exists in the laboratory, not in the wild

– It isn’t really about abstinence programs as they’ve been designed by religious anti-sex groups, as it doesn’t depict condoms and birth control as evil and ineffective — yet it’s being used to sell the same old ineffective total-abstinence bullcrap that we’ve known for years doesn’t work.

– It is so unlike what’s actually being taught — and what will continue to be taught — as abstinence-based sex ed that it isn’t eligible for federal funding!

So what’s the point of it? It’s a cutout, a bait-and-switch, a shield to protect the millions of dollars in faith-based taxpayer-funded pork for the religious right-winger groups that back the GOP. (The timing — right after the unveiling of Obama’s new budget, which defunds abstinence-only programs — could not be more suggestive.)

The hundreds of millions of dollars that’s pumped through abstinence-only projects each year are, at best, subject only to very limited Congressional oversight over either the content of the curriculum (which is based on bogosities) or where the money actually goes. That means there’s nothing to keep it from being used to fund right-wing organizational infrastructure and serve as an indirect payoff for get-out-the-vote operations that just happen to benefit Republican candidates. Oh, and it looks like Bush was helping them get into the Federally-funded faith-based “drug treatment program” racket, too. Despite the fact that this doesn’t work, either, except as a way to funnel tax dollars to politically-conservative religious groups.

Remember how the neocons and torture lovers were trying to justify waterboarding by saying that it saved lives because it got a high-level icky terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, to provide “actionable intelligence”? Just like they’d claimed with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

We already knew it was horsepucky in Mohammed’s case, but now it’s been confirmed well beyond any reasonable doubt in Zubaydah’s — and by the very man, John Kiriakou, who had made the initial, much-trumpeted claim to ABC News that it worked on Zubaydah:

Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about.

[…]

On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.

“What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts,” he writes. “I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence.”

But never mind, he says now.

“I wasn’t there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.”

In a word, it was hearsay, water-cooler talk.

“Now we know,” Kiriakou goes on, “that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.”

Indeed we do now know that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times — and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times — in the space of a single month, thanks to a certain Marcy Wheeler. In both cases, the “need” to endlessly repeat the torture raised questions about its effectiveness in providing genuinely accurate, much less useful, information; as US Navy veteran Jesse Ventura, who underwent the procedure as part of his SEAL training, said on Larry King Live: “You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.” But I digress:

… Kiriakou adds that he didn’t have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn’t. And he claims that the disinformation he helped spread was a CIA dirty trick: “In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own.”

And an equally valuable lesson in how the conservative media operates.