It has become popular in some circles to expand the term "op-ed" as "opinion-editorial," an incorrect guess at the term's origin. "Op-ed" actually refers to the page opposite the one containing editorials. On the two-page 'flat,' the op-ed would be separated from editorial by the fold of the newspaper.

Some people often incorrectly use the term "Op-ed" to identify any opinion regardless of the medium. For example, Web pages containing opinion articles are sometimes labeled "op-ed," ignoring the correct meaning of the term. Other people often use the term "Editorial" in a similar fashion, unaware that the term applies only to the opinions written by the publication's own editorial board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial

I'm not hiding. I'm right here, just as I was when I interjected a comment into your dishonest comment to William.

How William took the comment is up to him, you entered only to attack and slime and ride his coat-tails. Shame on you, little one.

I have yet to read William's response to my follow up and yet you want to play war for him. You are a liar.

As I wrote in my next comment following the comment regarding your dishonesty about William, I hadn't seen his comment before posting mine.

But enough of this. Replying to you has been, once again, a waste of time.

As I wrote in my next comment following the comment regarding your dishonesty about William, I hadn't seen his comment before posting mine.

But enough of this. Replying to you has been, once again, a waste of time.

Well Kitt you fool, what did you expect when you called me a liar over a matter of interpretation going on between two adults? William asked me to engage, and I agreed. Any mis-interpretation of his position on my part is up to him to correct. He will do so; he is not afraid to state his position be it popular or unpopular.

You, came only to attack and try to ruin the conversation. Shame on you.

http://amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/53

or just click my signature:

Call a spade a spade. I thought this post was dead!

Now I gotta click more. okay. Then I go to jail? I hope not!

First I've got to dispose of a dead groundhog in my back yard.

sysprog! Flies and maggot larvae are beginning to swarm.

Please research for me an appropriate prayer. thanks.

_____

sysprog responds within mini seconds:

_____

Who wants to dig a hole with a spade? A spade is a spade-huh? okay, sysprog will dig and we'll click sysprog's name.

sysprog gently lays a slimy groundhog in a hole he dug.

the insects will form 'round man, women, and beast. peace.

I (sysprog-pray) prays the groundhog may stop to stink.

The bush's gang is a clown, carnival, and funeral joke.

amen.

Well Kitt you fool, what did you expect when you called me a liar over a matter of interpretation going on between two adults? William asked me to engage, and I agreed. Any mis-interpretation of his position on my part is up to him to correct. He will do so; he is not afraid to state his position be it popular or unpopular.

You, came only to attack and try to ruin the conversation. Shame on you.

You may not speak here unless you agree with bucky1. Admittedly, an odd position for a self-described "libertarian anarchist" to take. That will teach you to disagree with him.

Contry-Style Groundhog

1. 1 groundhog
2. 1/2 c. flour
3. 1/4 tsp. salt
4. 1/4 tsp. pepper
5. 1/4 tsp. soda
6. 1/4 c. cooking oil
7. 1/2 tsp. sugar

NOTE:Clean and skin as soon as possible. Remove all sent glands. Cut off head, feet and tail. Cure in cool place by suspending from hook approximately 4 days. When ready to cook, lard accordingto recipe.

Dress groundhog as for rabbit, removing the small sacs in the back and under the forearm. Soak groundhog overnight in salted water to remove wild flavor. Combine flour, salt, pepper and sada; rub into groundhog pieces. Brown grounhog in hot oil in skillet; sprinkle with sugar. Reduce heat; add 1/2 cup water. Cover; simmer for about 30 minutes or until tender. Remove cover; cook for 10 minutes longer.

or was he just taking dictation from Addington and Cheney?

http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4916741.html

June 25, 2007
Dick Cheney's team shaped interrogation guidelines

By BARTON GELLMAN and JO BECKER

WASHINGTON — Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from the CIA arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby.

The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees' " if interrogators confined themselves to humane treatment allowed by the Geneva Conventions.

From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, the vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives of lower-ranking officials.

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress — both for Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."

But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view.

The vice president's unseen victories attest to thoroughgoing secrecy, persistence of focus, tactical flexibility in service of fixed aims and close knowledge of the power map of government. On critical decisions for more than six years, Cheney has often controlled the pivot points — tipping the outcome when he could, engineering a stalemate when he could not and reopening debates that rivals thought were resolved.

"Once he's taken a position, I think that's it," said James A. Baker III, who has shared a hunting tent with Cheney more than once and worked with him under three presidents. "He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power."

David Addington, Cheney's general counsel, set the new legal agenda in a blunt memorandum shortly after the CIA delegation's visit. Geneva's "strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners," he wrote on Jan. 25, 2002, hobbled efforts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions.

In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, "We don't torture." What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to avoid a ban on cruelty — the imposition of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

He added: "Torture is an extreme version of cruelty."

[ . . . ] The Justice Department delivered a classified opinion Aug. 1, 2002, stating that the U.S. law against torture "prohibits only the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and therefore permits many others. The opinion narrowed the definition of "torture" to mean only suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure ... or even death."

When news accounts unearthed that opinion nearly two years later, the White House repudiated its contents. Administration officials attributed authorship to Yoo, who had come to serve in the Office of Legal Counsel.

But the "torture memo," as it became widely known, was not Yoo's work alone. In an interview, Yoo said Addington, as well as Gonzales and deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan, contributed to the analysis.

The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief [ . . . ]

[ . . . ] Yoo said for the first time in an interview that he verbally warned lawyers for the president, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it would be dangerous as a matter of policy to permit military interrogators to use the harshest techniques because the armed services, vastly larger than the CIA, could overuse the tools or exceed the limits."I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at DOD felt differently," Yoo said. [ . . . ]

Even dangerous extremist Yoo says that Cheney is a dangerous extremist. If the U.S. Senate had 17 sane and decent Republicans, Cheney would be impeachable.