Leader Of The Baby Party

On top of the petulance, he's factually wrong.

When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.

MoveOn.org doesn't have any bloggers. They don't have a blog, you cultural illiterate.

The President of the United States has been reduced to whining. Stomping his little feet like a kid with her parents who wants to go home from the mall. The comments from earlier in the day were even worse, whining that the Senate needs to confirm Waterboard Mukasey and that they're being all mean and stuff asking him questions:

I then remind the audience that a key member of the national security team -- a key member of the team that works to protect the American people is the Attorney General. I've submitted a highly competent, smart, independent nominee in Judge Mukasey to the Senate. I am disappointed that the process is taking so long to get his name to the floor.

I believe that the questions he's been asked are unfair; he's not been read into a program -- he has been asked to give opinions of a program or techniques of a program on which he has not been briefed. I will make the case -- and I strongly believe this is true -- that Judge Mukasey is not being treated fairly. He's made the rounds on Capitol Hill, he's answered questions, he's been to hearings. I do thank the Senate for setting up what I hope will be a opportunity to move him out of Judiciary Committee to the floor on Tuesday. It is time to get his nomination to the floor so the Senate can vote him up or down [...]

Q Judge Mukasey is experienced in terrorism trials, he's been around. Why is it wrong for him -- or why will you not let him say whether he thinks that waterboarding is illegal torture?

THE PRESIDENT: He has not been read in -- first of all, let me put this in perspective. The Congress did pass a law, the Detainee Detention Act [sic]*, that I signed into law. The techniques we use informed that law and members of the Senate and House -- select members of the Senate and House, both parties, have been briefed on the law.

Secondly, he doesn't know whether we use that technique or not. And thirdly, it doesn't make any sense to tell an enemy what we're doing. One of the fundamental questions that the American people have got to know is that in order to protect America, if we capture somebody who may have data about whether or not he's going to -- he is ordering an attack or there's an impending attack or there's a threat, we need to know that.
And the techniques we use by highly trained professionals are within the law. That's what's important for America to know.

If he doesn't know what you use, tell him. Furthermore, you can give him a bunch of articles which clearly show that waterboarding has been practiced by the US government. But it's irrelevant to why Mukasey can't answer the question; waterboarding is a centuries-old method, used in the Spanish Inquisition, and its illegality doesn't depend upon whether or not the US does it. Except, of course, it does, because this is all about keeping Bush's ass out of jail.

In adamantly refusing to declare waterboarding illegal, Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, is steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits against Central Intelligence Agency officers who used the harsh interrogation practice and those who authorized it, legal experts said Wednesday.

The biggest problem for Mr. Mukasey remains his refusal to take a clear legal position on the interrogation technique. Fear of opening the door to criminal or civil liability for torture or abuse, whether in an American court or in courts overseas, appeared to loom large in Mr. Mukasey’s calculations as he parried questions from the committee this week. Some legal experts suggested that liability could go all the way to President Bush if he explicitly authorized waterboarding [...]

Jack L. Goldsmith, who served in the Justice Department in 2003 and 2004, wrote in his recent memoir, “The Terror Presidency,” that the possibility of future prosecution for aggressive actions against terrorism was a constant worry inside the Bush administration.

“I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators, acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment, would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls,” Mr. Goldsmith wrote.

President Pissypants needs an Attorney General who will look the other way on his lawbreaking. That's the end of the story.

These guys can't prosecute a terror case to save their lives, are reconstructing other terror cases because all the evidence is inadmissable, and is only prosecuting them to begin with to try and save their party's fortunes in 2008. How dare Bush claim that the DEMOCRATS are the ones politicizing terror. They're both politicizing it, and using it.

UPDATE: In a typically thorough post, emptywheel notes that what's more troubling is Mukasey's answers on contempt of Congress, also designed to protect Bush Administration officials from prosecution, but for the US Attorney purge.