The Quote that May Live in Infamy Tying up a weekend where Seymour Hersh tied in Rumsfeld to the abuses in Abu Ghraib through the black operation "Copper Green", which was confirmed in its essential points by the Washington Post. A weekend where the Boston Globe reported that somehow these "six or seven" bad apples from the stix as conservatives want them to be characterized managed to duplicate the CIA manual on torture, comes the final kicker. Newsweek finds the quote that ties in what we all figured, that ignoring the Geneva Conventions came from the highest level of authority. This little nugget from the hand of White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales:

By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had "requested that you reconsider that decision." Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians." Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

In watching the weekend primal displays of punditry the whores were saying the White House couldn't take another week like the last one. I guess we will see whether they can or not.