We are still pressing forward with an investigation to dispel reports of killing civilians. Until our investigation is complete, we will not be able to provide any further information. However, we have and are still currently diligently investigating these claims."

In other words, the "investigation" is not to find out what happened but to "dispel reports of killing civilians."

Quite right. This is another one of those inadvertent admissions that they conduct cover-ups and campaigns of lying propaganda as a matter of policy. There are hundreds of examples. We can add this one to the collection.

As usual, if you just give them the opportunity, the radical right openly confesses to their criminality, and not always when they think nobody is looking.

Which makes it all the more amazing that these neocons have any credibility at all, and all the more amazing that they haven't been shipped off to a dungeon in The Hague.

Governments are usually corrupt because that is the nature of politics, although normally the corruption is hidden and, however serious, does not deeply threaten society. All presidencies, good and bad, have had their corruption scandals. However deplored, a certain amount of corruption can be seen as normal but not necessarily dangerous to the country.

Not so with the Bush administration.

The neoconservative Bush administration takes corruption to a whole new level. Unlike their predecessors, Bushites aren't just on the take or making the usual slimy deals. They've come out of the closet with corruption and have made overt greedy corporatist criminality the purpose of the presidency.

Such a grossly criminal administration could not have persisted in power without the corruption and coercion of the 'opposition' party as well. Any real opposition is systematically marginalized, and repressed and brutalized if necessary. Impeachment and removal from office is the very least that justice should expect, because Bushites are high-order war criminals as well and guilty of what was the Supreme Crime at Nuremberg.

If what they have done doesn't merit impeachment and prosecution, nothing does, and they can lie, cheat, steal, rape, maim, and kill with near impunity. So they do. Don't think of it as a 'presidency'. Think of it as the ultimate organized crime syndicate, industrialized and institutionalized.

It gets worse the more you look at it. We can have no idea how many victims they have in a secret number of secret prison camps or how much they have stolen or what their plans are to make good on their crimes. All the corruption we can actually see can only be what the corrupt can't prevent from overflowing past the walls of their secrecy.

The ongoing journalistic scandal at the New York Times

They should have canned Michael Gordon and a few others when they canned Judith Miller. Miller was just the Fall Person for the hawks who run the newsroom. Pinch hires libruls once in a while just to make it look good, and a lot of his rich friends are neocons.

LWM, by the way, is a paid shill. Don't feed the trolls.

The NYT is out to sell papers. Wars sell papers. So do controversies. It gives editors something to do with all that space between the ads. Yellow Journalism sells papers, and the Grey Lady can be pretty tabloid that way.

Don't expect to get The Truth from the NYT or the rest of the MSM. Just be happy they accidentally publish it once in a while when they're feeling generous.

As of yet I am only an amateur but I would turn pro if you can meet my salary requirements . . .

You're getting paid what you're worth, which makes you a very badly paid shill.

Thanks for the confession, by the way.

. . . don't require me to lie or compromise my integrity.

You manage that well enough without coaxing.

We go strictly by what you post, and if that comes across as lies and a lack of integrity you have only yourself to blame.

We do.

Miers is a pub. Pubs all get Acquired Alzheimer's Forgetfulness Syndrome the minute somebody starts asking them questions they don't want to answer. It's called The Stupid Defense.

1. "I don't recall."

2. "That is not my recollection."

3. "Delegated it to my staff and they took care of it."

4. "The report never got to me."

5. "The sun was in my eyes. The wind took it. The dog ate my homework. Honest!"

And so forth.

Reagan started it. It's possible he wasn't just faking it, though, since they had to install servo mechanisms a year into his second term so he could be operated by remote control.

Congressional questioning is no way to get answers out of a pub. Instead they should send her to one of those Places Which Must Not Be Named in Romania or Libya and let them perform An Extraction. Stress positions. Waterboarding. Everything short of 'major organ failure' meets with the approval of all the Bushites, so, as a Bushite, she's agreed to it in advance.

Besides, it'll cure her Alzheimer's. She'll take you for it later. She'll be a finer person for the experience.