25 June 2007

Cheesy Summer Reading




















Some highly recommended picks...


AUTHOR: SEYMOUR HERSH
GENRE: HORROR

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance
about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what
happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else
asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point,
Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee
lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an
interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and
said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was
quiet.”


AUTHORS: BARTON GELLMAN & JO BECKER
GENRE: SCI-FI / FANTASY

Across the board, the vice president's office goes
to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney
declines to disclose the names or even the size of
his staff, generally releases no public calendar
and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his
visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that
"the vice presidency is a unique office that is
neither a part of the executive branch nor a part
of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt
from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to
observe an executive order on the handling of
national security secrets, and he proposed to
abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing
his compliance.


AUTHOR: SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL
GENRE: TRUE CRIME

Few, if any, presidents have ever been the subject
of such a devastating legal decision. While
presidential actions have been ruled illegal or
unconstitutional in the past, they were individual
acts. But in the case of Bush, the al-Marri decision
not only discredits Bush's position but denies his
idea of his presidential legitimacy in the American
tradition. The decision also declares that Bush's
idea is a mortal threat to the Constitution. And this
ruling was issued by the most conservative court
in the land.