When I read John's comment, I saw it only as a comment on war and not about Bop. I fully agree with what you said about Bop.

And Nancy Pelosi, running unopposed within her party, receives every Democrat's vote in being re-named Speaker of the House in the 111th Congress, whereupon she utters this Term's version of "impeachment is off the table" -- without even crediting Monty Python or George Bush:

"We will look forward, not backward; we will join hands, not point fingers." Let's not bicker and argue over 'oo killed 'oo.

Nancy may just be remembering the gradeschool admonition that "when you point your finger at someone else, you are also pointing three fingers back at yourself." Either that, or she is just feeling utterly vindicated in her spineless abdication of constitutional responsibility over the past Term and has no incentive to clean up her act.

More of the same, anyone?

...and, on the whole, it has truly become a place where 'up is down', 'good is bad', and where the 'truth is a lie'.

Like the self-induced drug addict, it appears America will have to hit rock-bottom before it will see the necessity to quit its blind 'we are the best country in the world' habit.

Excellent article.

About those fingers ...

I'd say it's checkmate. With respect to Glenn's column, and Bob Fertik's question,

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor — ideally Patrick Fitzgerald — to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

reasonably, I don't see how a special prosecutor (or "truth comission") could investigate without uncovering Democratic complicity. Pelosi has every reason in the world to advocate looking forward, and keep her hands tightly clenched in her pockets, or folded in her lap.

Unless Obama is willing to toss the deck into the air and let all 52 cards plus jokers fall where they may, politically, he has every reason to look forward and keep his hands in his pockets, too.

This quote, captured from Sullivan's site, doesn't suggest much optimism for a genuine truth commission, investigation, or prosecution:

The African in him is the one who is making him ask, 'What is the consensus?' That’s the African way at its best. The good leader in Africa is the leader who keeps quiet and lets others speak and then says at the end, 'I have heard you all, and this is our mind,' - Desmond Tutu on Obama.

I'm not confused as to what the consensus of The Village is; they've told us often enough. Whether Obama truly wants to support Change We Can Believe IN™ remains to be seen. I don't much like the odds on that bet, however. For Obama to do otherwise would elevate Profiles in Courage to a whole 'nother level.

Most excellent, Mr. Greenwald ... thank you.

Like much of what the bush administration has done, the warrantless spying program is illegal and unnecessary.

Tamm tried to do the right thing and is being punished for not going along to get along.

Congress has been complicit in the travesty from the start. That democrats in leadership positions didn't stand up for what's right shouldn't surprise anyone. They were covering their asses to ensure they stayed in their positions - a letter wanting verification that the president authorized the program? A letter of protest filed in a drawer. Gutless wonders.

BTW, Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor? Really? So you liked the way he handled the Plame affair? All that time and money to get scooter for obstructing the investigation. But hey, he IS all over blagojevich!

Just to address your earlier post:

“Masoud was no fool.”

Massoud was a survivor, a poet and a warrior. Personally I liked him and the way he took care of his people.

“One of the reasons the CIA "favoured" Hekmatyar was that they bowed to ISI wishes. Rabbani was also on the favoured list.”

It was my experience while there that not only the Agency but the ISI had serious problems motivating the various groups. Many of them became fat and content to wait out the war in the comfort of their compounds in Peshawar. Hekmatyar and the Hezbi were the most ruthless and motivated, but even they were not cut of the same rabid cloth that I saw in some of the foreign fighters that were there.

“I don't seen how you can call that anything else than acquiescence (even if the CIA did do some small stuff, unauthorised, through back channels).”

“Sounds about right. As I said, we let the ISI run the show.”

See, here’s where we disagree the most. No one has been a bigger critic of the ISI than I have. But at the start of the Afghans resistance against the Soviets there were no other serious options to Pakistan and the ISI. The US was not about to deploy forces, the Agency was stretched thin with their SAD elements, the very elements that you propose to eliminate altogether, there was not much political will to become very involved in any of this affair. So what was the realistic alternative, that is if one thought we should’ve been there at all. There are a lot of 20/20 hindsight pundits that are saying that the US spawned Al Qaeda and others through it’s support in Afghanistan. That’s way off the mark and over simplistic in my view. The ISI has had it’s own agenda almost from it’s inception and the recent attack in Mumbai clearly demonstrates that it will have to be dealt with seriously by the new US administration.

“I didn't say they should. I've laid out the "argument" for such, but I don't subscribe to that, in part because the CIA has been so incompetent in its covert operations for so long that I don't see the utility of covert ops (particularly of the militaristic kind as opposed to cloak'n'dagger skulking). As Weiner recounts, over the decades (even in the heady Helms/Colby years), the vast majority of CA agents (not officers, but some there too) have simply been caught and killed (in part, thanks to double agents and moles, but, for instance in China insertions, simply through incompetence).

The debate over the value of covert ops has been a long and storied one and there is certainly more documented history of it’s failures than it successes, which makes it difficult to make an accurate judgment of what actually worked and what didn’t. Although it is undisputable that the Agency has had some spectacular failures, there are also a number of amazing successes that have never been revealed. Even at a much less secured level, I mentioned to you earlier about USAF planes flying into Kandahar during the Soviet occupation. To my knowledge that has never been reported anywhere in the world’s press. My point is this, that these were relatively low level ops that have never ever seen the light of day, then how much do we really know. Were you aware of them?