.Before congressional committees, Casey falsely testified that the CIA was unaware of the shipment o

[rodeodance]

www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/11/01/mukasey/
>
> ............Before congressional committees, Casey falsely testified that the CIA was unaware of the shipment of missiles to Iran. His perjury was exactly the same as that of then National Security Advisor John Poindexter, on the same question, and it is likely he would have been indicted, faced trial and been convicted, like Poindexter. Casey's then deputy, Robert Gates, now secretary of defense, said, "Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in." Adm. Bobby Inman, who preceded Gates as deputy, had resigned because, he said, "I caught him lying to me in a number of cases." Inman's immediate successor as deputy, John McMahon, quit after opposing the Iranian arms deal. After a week of mumbling appearances before Congress, Casey collapsed from a cancerous brain tumor and died.
>
> Casey's closest aides -- including the Lawless Group -- scattered. Cheney promptly hired Addington. As his counsel, Addington attacked the investigation, defended the administration and covered up his own involvement in the Casey operation. One former prominent Democratic Senate staff member who had directed the probe told me that the Democrats were unaware of Addington's link to Casey. If they had been they would have raised it as a dangerous conflict of interest and demanded that he be removed. "Addington never should have been permitted to work on the committee," he said. "But no one paid attention to his background. It wasn't important."
>
> Cheney's defense of Casey's actions as written by Addington in the minority report became the core of the Bush doctrine: The president as commander in chief can do whatever he wants regardless of Congress. There must be no checks and balances, no accountability. There must be no disclosure to other branches of government, whether legislative or judicial. Oral findings, or, if necessary, secret memos, make the illegal legal merely by saying they are legal in the name of presidential authority. The operational need to know determines who knows.
>
> Now Mukasey, who was supposed to restore credibility to the Justice Department, has been transformed overnight into a cog in the machine, another servant to his masters, Addington's apologist. His brief tragedy is just one small outcome of a long history. The almost instantaneous tainting of his reputation should have been understood from the start as inevitable.



www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/11/01/mukasey/
The sad decline of Michael Mukasey

His reputation for integrity was meant to restore credibility to the Justice Department. Instead, his remarks on waterboarding show that he, like Alberto Gonzales, has let the White House call the shots.

By Sidney Blumenthal

[rodeodance]

1. How did Chuck Schumer miss all of this?

[Solly Mack]

2. I hope anyone entertaining the notion that Mukasey is somehow

better or different than Gonzales reads this

Mukasey is just another obedient tool