David Corn from Mother Jones magazine also isn't in favor of prosecutions. Here's a snippet from him when he appeared on Chris Matthews show last week:

CORN:

Right. I—I think, before you get to the question of prosecution, you have to engage in fact-finding. And I think it is best for Congress, inspector-generals in various agencies, CIA, Justice Department, wherever, to look at it.

We already have one investigation into the destruction of the water-boarding tapes at the CIA that Justice is pursuing. But I think—but, as you know, as we learned from Patrick Fitzgerald with the Scooter Libby investigation, that, if a prosecutor investigates, at the end of the day, he doesn‘t bring to bear the information he has found. It stays private, unless he uses it in a prosecution. If Congress investigates, if I.G.s investigate, that investigation might somehow become of use to a prosecution down the road. But it certainly goes to the public and gets to the point you made about lessons learned. I think lessons learned is probably more important, ultimately, and keeping things honest, than in prosecutions.

If you find egregious examples of what might—which are clear cases that could be prosecutable, then maybe you can make a decision to go ahead with that. But I think talking about prosecutions is getting way ahead of the game, while I wouldn‘t mind, though, seeing these investigations...

link in sig

Look at the threatening tone that Frank Gaffney uses about the idea of torture prosecutions for Bush officials during the same David Corn/Chris Matthews conversation.

MATTHEWS: Should we study what happened under the last eight years?

GAFFNEY: Studying, lessons learned, all that‘s fine. What I think he really has in mind is some sort of witch hunt...

MATTHEWS: A show trial.

GAFFNEY: ... some sort of—yes, inquisition.

MATTHEWS: But why would a show trial or witch-hunt be bad?

GAFFNEY: Well, I think it would reduce us to sort of banana republic territory, and it would almost certainly be the end of the Barack Obama honeymoon, at the very least, if not of the administration.

MATTHEWS: Well, should the innocent fear anything by this? Why should the innocent fear?

GAFFNEY: Well, I think—I think what you don‘t want to do, if you‘re serious about these kinds of policy matters, is to have courts deciding what are, in fact, policy matters.

You want them to be deliberated, because you may well find you can‘t successfully prosecute these people, which could throw into a cocked hat again lot of the thinking that David and some of his friends have made about water-boarding as torture and the like. So, I wouldn‘t go there if I were these guys. But they might.

Link to Hardball transcript in sig

All of the snippets I've just posted came from either Hardball or the Chris Matthews show. If you get a chance I would encourage you to read the entire transcript from the Harball show with David Corn and Frank Gaffney because there were a lot of memorable quotes in it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28857366/#storyContinued

Health Care Models

I think whatever plan is set up should offer both. Let the people choose whether they want insurance through insurance companies or through the government.

Has anyone seen this right-wing Guantanamo site?

http://www.insidegitmo.com/

Evidently it's run by a retired Green Beret.

In Glenn's previous post I added a comment about Frank Gaffney's appearance on Hardball last week. When I went to this right-wing website I found this from Mr. Gaffney. He's talking about the person who runs this website.

"Inside Gitmo is a book of incalculable importance. It lays bare the myths and the stakes involved in the campaign to shut down a facility that any objective reader must conclude is vital to our national security. Every policy-maker in Washington and every citizen across America should study this books brilliant first-hand reporting and its alarming findings." — Frank Gaffney, Jr, President, Center for Security Policy and author of War Footing

Look who else likes this guys book -

"Gordon Cucullu has written a lively work of history that fulfills its promise to explode 'the myths of Guantanamo Bay.' Anyone who wants to speak authoritatively about the Bush administration's detainee policies has to read this book." — Douglas J. Feith, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and author of War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

These guys are so creepy.

Link in sig

The right-wing Gitmo website also has a blog. My guess is that a lot of what will appear on this website will magically appear in the MSM. What do want to bet?

http://insidegitmo.wordpress.com/

The kicker of course, is that [Daschle's firm] Alston and Bird did work lobbying on immunity for telecoms on FISA [they were AT&T's FISA lobbyist - .pdf], even serving as a recruitment bed for the McCain campaign.</>

Yeah, that is the kicker. It makes me so angry when I'm reminded of this stuff.

I just sent an email to the White house expressing my disgust with the DOJ's decision to continue with this outrageous use of the "state secrets" privilege. I'm also in the process of calling them. Anyone else?

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