As Greenwald spells out today, the Justice Department investigation is not pursuing the White House cabal behind the violation of FISA's prohibitions on warrantless eavesdropping of American citizens, but instead those who revealed it. Tamm, whose life has been turned upside-down since the FBI raided his home in August 2007, will likely be subpoenaed to testify what he knows about James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the Times reporters who broke the story in December 2005.

That's the message in a letter sent to Tamm's attorney Paul Kemp by Steve Tyrrell of the DOJ's fraud section. As Greenwald described it:

The letter begins by announcing that the DOJ and FBI are "presently investigating the unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding the Presidentially-authorized NSA program…(hereinafter, 'The Terrorist Surveillance Program')." It then references the Newsweek article and "ask[s] whether [Tamm] is willing to reconsider his prior refusal to speak with agents of the FBI and/or to testify before the Grand Jury regarding his knowledge of and/or participation in the disclosure of TSP-related information to [James] Risen, Mr. Lichtblau and others." It demands an answer from Tamm by January 9 -- 11 days before Obama is to be inaugurated -- and then threateningly warns: "if I do not hear from you by that date, I will assume that Mr. Tamm is not interested in submitting to a voluntary interview or testifying before the Grand Jury": an obvious threat that he may be subpoenaed and compelled to do so.

The implication - that Lichtblau and Risen are in the Justice Department's crosshairs - would represent a conservative dream come true. As I first wrote back in August 2007, many in the Bush administration and its amen corner have been clamoring for the prosecution of the New York Times ever since the President's lawbreaking came to light.

After the revelations about the NSA program by the New York Times on December 16, 2005, President Bush three days later raged about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy". Claiming he didn't order an investigation, Bush added "the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation" At a subsequent press conference that same day, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested the retribution that was to come:

"As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, as the President indicated, this is really hurting national security, this has really hurt our country, and we are concerned that a very valuable tool has been compromised. As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, we'll just have to wait and see."

Leading the charge in the right-wing echo chamber has been Gabriel Schoenfeld, editor of Commentary. On June 6, 2006, Schoenfeld appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to claim that the New York Times violated federal criminal statutes, if not the Espionage Act of 1917 by publishing its delayed story about NSA domestic surveillance. One month later on July 3, he laid out his case in the Weekly Standard, approvingly citing Gonzales' veiled threats towards the New York Times:

"There are some statutes on the books, which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."

After news of the FBI's raid on Tamm's home in the summer of 2007, Schoenfeld again called for the scalps of Risen and Lichtblau:

"With the investigation making progress, the possibility remains that even if the New York Times is not indicted, its reporters - James Risen and Eric Lichtblau - might be called before the grand jury and asked to confirm under oath that Tamm, or some other suspect, was their source. That is what happened to a whole battalion of journalists in the investigation of Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame fiasco.

If Risen and Lichtblau promised their source confidentiality, they might choose not to testify. That would potentially place them, like Judith Miller in the Libby investigation, in contempt of court and even land them in prison."

Ultimately, the story of President Bush's illicit domestic spying is replete with ironies. Ever since it surfaced, the same mouthpieces on the right who vigorously defended Scooter Libby over the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame as payback for husband Joe Wilson's criticism of Bush's bogus Iraq claims have called for the prosecution of Tamm and the New York Times alike. (In the interim, the Times' Risen was subpoenaed in February 2008 over his sources not for the NSA story, but regarding a chapter about the Iranian nuclear program in his subsequent book.) And with time running out on the lame-duck Bush administration, the decision to prosecute Thomas Tamm and the New York Times reporters will fall to Barack Obama.

Beaten and battered, the Republican Party long ago was reduced to an irony-producing machine. But for sheer productivity, Monday's hypocrisy generation by leading lights of the conservative movement was impressive. In the span of 24 hours, would-be RNC chairman and distributor of "Barack the Magic Negro" Chip Saltsman announced his party needed to improve its outreach to minority communities. Meanwhile, John Yoo and John Bolton, two men who helped gut the Geneva Conventions, called for Congress to uphold its role in approving international treaties.

Saltsman's jaw-dropper came during a conclave of hopefuls seeking to lead the Republican National Committee, an event hosted by right-wing uber operator Grover Norquist. (Among Norquist's own recent contributions to the inventory of Republican irony was his November charge that Democrats are responsible for the Bush recession.) In December, Saltsman tried to woo RNC decision makers by sending each a CD containing the "Barack the Magic Negro" parody popularized among Republican hatemongers by Rush Limbaugh. But during Monday's pseudo-debate, Saltsman offered this diagnosis of the party's record-breaking failure among minority voters:

"We have done a very poor job in communicating any message from the Republican Party."

Meanwhile, Yoo and Bolton took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to launch a preemptive strike against Barack Obama's commitment to renewed international diplomacy. Hoping to block a new, post-Kyoto global climate change consensus and other international agreements, Yoo and Bolton laughably argued Congress must "restore the Senate's treaty power":

The Constitution's Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama's administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.

Among those presidents, of course, is George W. Bush. His myriad evasions of the Senate's treaty making role includes the recent Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) recently inked with the Maliki government in Baghdad. Ignoring demands from Congressional Democrats that the extended the U.S. force presence in Iraq be subject to approval by the Senate, President Bush by executive agreement unilaterally committed American troops to stay through 2011.

Of course, John Yoo's true specialty is abrogating treaties already signed by the United States. In his role as head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo aggressively supported the Bush administration's January 2002 conclusion that the Geneva Conventions had been "rendered quaint" in the war on terror. As he made clear three years later, Yoo didn’t merely believe the terrorist threat rendered "obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.'' As it turns out, Yoo's unwavering belief in unlimited presidential war powers led him not only to ignore Geneva's prohibitions on torture, but to author his now-infamous standard for treatment of detainees. In the August 2002 Bybee memo he largely wrote, Yoo argued that torture:

"...must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Of course, Yoo believes that the President's powers as commander-in-chief trump any act of Congress, whether an international treaty or domestic legislation. He expressed that extremist view in a controversial September 25, 2001 memo and again in even blunter language on PBS while discussing the President's illegal NSA domestic surveillance program:

"I think that there's a law greater than FISA, which is the Constitution, and part of the Constitution is the president's commander-in-chief power. Congress can't take away the president's powers in running war."

As for John Bolton, the former UN ambassador is no friend of international institutions or American multilateralism of any kind. Bolton, of course, famously joked that removing 10 floors of the UN "wouldn't make a bit of difference." When he isn't advocating that Senate Republicans obstruct Barack Obama's diplomatic initiatives, he's calling for Egypt and Jordan to annex Palestinian territories in Gaza and West Bank or reiterating his endless pleas to attack Iran. (On December 29th, Bolton suggested that the U.S. should use the conflict in Gaza as a pretext for bombing Iran.) And when it comes to Bolton's infidelity to American treaty obligations, his scheming to undermine the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) accord is just one example.

All of which made Monday just another day at the office for the Republican irony machine. While Yoo and Bolton insist Barack Obama must get two thirds of the Senate to bless treaties they would no doubt subsequently advocating flouting anyway, the race-baiting Chip Saltsman chides his party for failed outreach to minorities. But Tuesday isn't over yet; there's still time for President Bush to repeat his statement last month that "while the Israelis and Palestinians have not yet produced an agreement, they have made important progress."

Tamm's public admission comes 18 months after the FBI first raided his home, confiscating personal files and computers. At the very moment the Democratic Congress in August 2007 was voting to codify President Bush's years-long criminal surveillance of American citizens, the net was closing around the man who helped bring it to the nation's attention.

While at the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), Tamm stumbled upon the existence of Bush's program of warrantless eavesdropping on the international phone calls and emails of Americans which began just after the 9/11 attacks. The administration was not merely circumventing the legal requirement for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts, but subsequently laundering the intelligence gathered to "get legitimate FISA warrants - giving the cases a judicial stamp of approval."

In the spring of 2004, a frustrated Tamm finally took action:

When Tamm started asking questions, his supervisors told him to drop the subject. He says one volunteered that "the program" (as it was commonly called within the office) was "probably illegal."

Tamm agonized over what to do. He tried to raise the issue with a former colleague working for the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the friend, wary of discussing what sounded like government secrets, shut down their conversation. For weeks, Tamm couldn't sleep. The idea of lawlessness at the Justice Department angered him. Finally, one day during his lunch hour, Tamm ducked into a subway station near the U.S. District Courthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. He headed for a pair of adjoining pay phones partially concealed by large, illuminated Metro maps. Tamm had been eyeing the phone booths on his way to work in the morning. Now, as he slipped through the parade of midday subway riders, his heart was pounding, his body trembling. Tamm felt like a spy. After looking around to make sure nobody was watching, he picked up a phone and called The New York Times.

For its part, the New York Times did not publish the story until December 2005. The authors, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (who claimed to have over a dozen confidential sources for his reporting) finally saw their investigation appear in print despite warnings from President Bush to editor Bill Keller that "there'll be blood on your hands" if another terrorist attack were to occur.

As for Tamm, he is no longer with the Justice Department and remains under a cloud of suspicion and possible indictment. One FBI agent involved in the investigation told one of Tamm's colleagues that a prosecution may hinge on whether the one-time college Young Republican turned 2004 Democratic campaign contributor was "a do-gooder who thinks that something wrong occurred" or "politically motivated by somebody who wants to cause harm." Either way, that decision will ironically fall to the new Obama administration. As Newsweek noted:

Paul Kemp, one of Tamm's lawyers, says he was recently told by the Justice Department prosecutor in charge of Tamm's case that there will be no decision about whether to prosecute until next year - after the Obama administration takes office. The case could present a dilemma for the new leadership at Justice. During the presidential campaign, Obama condemned the warrantless-wiretapping program. So did Eric Holder, Obama's choice to become attorney general. In a tough speech last June, Holder said that Bush had acted "in direct defiance of federal law" by authorizing the NSA program.

As for Obama's opponents, there can be little doubt where they stand. On December 19th, 2005, President Bush raged about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy". Ever since, the same mouthpieces on the right who vigorously defended Scooter Libby over the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame as payback for husband Joe Wilson's criticism of Bush's bogus Iraq claims have called for the prosecution of not just Tamm, but the New York Times itself. Over at Commentary, the Weekly Standard (here and here) and today at Powerline, the drumbeat continues.

Asa Hutchison, the former U.S. attorney in Little Rock and under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who is assisting in Tamm's defense said of him:

"When I looked at this, I was convinced that the action he took was based on his view of a higher responsibility."

Ironically, Hutchison's words about Thomas Tamm appeared the same week President Bush awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Chuck Colson. That would be the same convicted Watergate felon and the "evil genius" behind defaming Daniel Ellsberg and the plot to firebomb the Brookings Institution. Learning the identity of the legendary Watergate whistleblower "Deep Throat" three years ago, the medal-winning Colson scoffed that "Mark Felt could have stopped Watergate," adding, "Instead, he goes out and basically undermines the administration."

With the deaths of three soldiers in a roadside bombing Friday, Canada reached the grim milestone of 100 service personnel killed in Afghanistan. With 2,500 troops stationed in violent Kandahar province, Canadian forces have seen absorbed some of the most brutal attacks of the intensifying conflict. To help reduce the risks of dangerous foot patrols, a new Canadian air wing with additional planes, helicopters and unmanned drones is being dispatched to the theater.

By way of context, Americans currently make up 32,000 of the 53,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. presence is set to jump by 20,000 beginning early next. As of last week, 556 Americans had been killed in the Afghan conflict, including 148 so far this year.

But unlike their American counterparts denied by their government, fallen Canadian soldiers are publicly welcomed home by their grieving countrymen. As NBC News detailed last month for Veteran's Day here (Remembrance Day in Canada), Canadians take to the overpasses of Route 401 - the Highway of Heroes - to honor their dead on their final ride from the airport in Ontario (video here). "Each time a Canadian soldier dies in Afghanistan fighting alongside Americans in the war on terror," noted correspondent Kevin Tibbles, "people simply gather on the bridges out of respect." As he described the scenes he witnessed:

"I noticed a few people on the overpass standing with flags.

On the next bridge, same thing.

Then there was a bridge with a fire truck on it, and more flags, and more people. Essentially I had driven, I dunno...50 or 60 miles...and there were people gathered on every single bridge.

Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, pickups, sedans...moms, dads, the elderly, kids."

The Canadian role in Afghanistan remains controversial in Ottawa. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaigned on bringing his country's troops home in 2011, a date extended by Parliament in March.

Whether Harper's pledge comes to fruition remains to be seen. But while all eyes focus on the evolving American strategy in Afghanistan under the new Obama administration and whether the Harper government even survives an apparently inevitable no-confidence vote, the Canadian sacrifice will quietly continue.

In the waning days of his failed presidency, George W. Bush has launched a quixotic reclamation project to salvage his irreparably tarnished reputation. Sadly, that effort stumbled out of the gate earlier this week when the President and Karl Rove couldn't get their stories straight as to whether Bush would have launched his war on Iraq had he known with certainty that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. But when it comes to his repeated use of a nonexistent link between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks to sell the Iraq conflict to the American public, Bush insisted today, there is no need for a "redo."

In an address today to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC, President Bush argued that the truth should not be the lens through which his decision to invade Iraq should be viewed. Whether Saddam had actual connections to Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the September 11 calamity, he proclaimed, was virtually irrelevant:

"It is true, as I have said many times, that Saddam Hussein was not connected to the 9/11 attacks. But the decision to remove Saddam from power cannot be viewed in isolation from 9/11. In a world where terrorists armed with box cutters had just killed nearly 3,000 people, America had to decide whether we could tolerate a sworn enemy that acted belligerently, that supported terror, and that intelligence agencies around the world believed had weapons of mass destruction. It was clear to me, to members of both political parties, and to many leaders around the world that after 9/11, this was a risk we could not afford to take."

Of course, as ThinkProgress detailed, President Bush and Vice President Cheney throughout 2002 and 2003 warned of the mythical alliance between Saddam and Bin Laden. For example, on October 14, 2002, Bush announced that "We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." On the eve of the war, the President told Americans that Iraq "has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda." And as hostilities commenced, Cheney on March 21, 2003 decried Iraq as the "geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

As I documented back in June 2005, President Bush continued to nurture the false Iraq connection to 9/11 long after he grudgingly admitted on September 17, 2004 that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

As it turns out, for George W. Bush the "risk we could not afford to take" was not averting war with Iraq, but the absence of a compelling sales pitch for it. And to be sure, Bush was in that regard quite successful. As an October 2003 PIPA survey showed, even after the invasion of Iraq, majorities of Americans continued to believe Bush administration claims about Saddam (Iraq role in 9/11, an alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Saddam's WMD) all long since proven false. (Unsurprisingly, viewers of Fox News were the most delusional.) And as late as July 2006, fully 50% of Americans still believed the discredited claim that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In his revisionist history of the Iraq war today, George W. Bush would only acknowledge "the fight in Iraq has been longer and more costly than expected." As for the lies and deceptions that made his Iraq disaster possible, Bush remains unencumbered by the truth. As he struggles to shape his legacy, Bush's hopes history will share his belief that nothing succeeds like failure.

The nine-member Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (web site here) offered its grim assessment (PDF here) that the United States and its allies must act quickly to avert the disaster of an attack carried out with biological, nuclear or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world. The six month study, mandated by Congress to address a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, opens with both a dark forecast and a call to action:

The Commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.

While the Graham panel concluded "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon," nuclear weapons programs in countries such as Iran and North Korea and the growing risk poorly secured biological pathogens suggest, as the New York Times put it, "unconventional threats are fast outpacing the defenses arrayed to confront them." And at the very time "America’s margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," the panel warned, an increasingly unstable Pakistan will be at the center of Obama administration policymakers' nightmares:

Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan. It has nuclear weapons and a history of unstable governments, and parts of its territory are currently a safe haven for al Qaeda and other terrorists. Moreover, given Pakistan's tense relationship with India, its buildup of nuclear weapons is exacerbating the prospect of a dangerous nuclear arms race in South Asia that could lead to a nuclear conflict...

...Pakistan is an ally, but there is a grave danger it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the United States - possibly with weapons of mass destruction.

The nonpartisan Hart-Rudman panel delivered its Phase III report, "Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change," in February 2001. Months before the September 11th attacks, the Commission presciently warned of a mass casualty terror attack on the United States homeland:

The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine U.S. global leadership...

...The stakes are high. We of this Commission believe that many thousands of American lives, U.S. leadership among the community of nations, and the fate of U.S. national security itself are at risk unless the President and the Congress join together to implement the recommendations set forth in this report.

Sadly, as I wrote in March 2004 ("Cognitive Dissonance, Terrorism and 9/11"), the American national security establishment in general and the Bush administration in particular viewed threats to the U.S. from the prism of the Cold War and were simply incapable of processing, filtering and understanding the signals of the growing terror threat to the homeland. Perhaps no episode better summed up this cognitive dissonance than then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's jaw-dropping statement on May 16, 2002:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

(Of course, as former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke testified to the 9/11 Commission, the U.S. had worried about planes-as-missiles dating back to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Then again, it was Rice who glibly responded to Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste regarding the now famous August 6, 2001 presidential daily brief, "I believe the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'")

The Hart-Rudman commission and its unheeded warnings are ancient history. But while the Bush administration was gripped by what the 9/11 panel chairman Tom Keane deemed a "failure of imagination," there is cause for hope that the incoming Obama team will do better. For openers, as Marc Ambinder noted, many of the new Commissions members, including Wendy Sherman, Graham Allison and Tim Roemer, have advised Obama on national security issues. (Allison's book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, was widely praised as a blueprint for countering the threat of nuclear proliferation and terrorism by Iran and other states and their potential terror clients.) As Ambinder suggests, "don't be surprised if, to Obama, the threats of failed states and WMD proliferation are indelibly linked."

None of which is to suggest that 2008 is a replay of 2001. The seeming failure of the United States under President Bush to heed Senators Hart and Rudman seven and a half years ago by no means implies the U.S. necessarily faces an imminent and devastating WMD strike as the Graham-Talent commission now worries. In the aftermath of the tragic 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington and with a seemingly more sober administration about to come to power, Americans should hope their government is better prepared.

Just one week after John McCain stunned Americans with his sneering contempt for the "health of the mother" needing an abortion, his running mate Sarah Palin refused to condemn anti-abortion terrorists as terrorists. By giving a pass to convicted killers like Eric Rudolph and James Kopp, Palin is just the latest in a long line of leading conservatives to provide the kindling for far right domestic terrorism. As recent history shows, when it comes to abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement to right-wing terror is a very short one.

Palin's alarming position surfaced during her joint appearance with McCain in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams. Training her fire on Bill Ayers, Palin refused to similarly brand violent right-wing radicals as the terrorists:

WILLIAMS: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist, under this definition, governor?

PALIN: (Sigh). There's no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There's no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that uh, it would be unacceptable. I don't know if you're going to use the word terrorist there.

Palin's casual disregard for the safety of Americans is sadly the natural extension of both Republican policies and her own personal story. The McCain-Palin ticket, after all, is running on a GOP platform which calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest. John McCain himself has not only opposed legislation to protect family planning clinics, but in 1993 addressed the radical anti-abortion group Oregon Citizens Alliance. (One of its members, Shelley Shannon was convicted for shooting and wounding a doctor, an act for which the judge branded her "a terrorist.") And back in the 1990's, Sarah Palin herself was among those protesting outside women's health clinics.

The logical leap from Sarah Palin to the legions of anti-abortion extremists is a short one. No doubt, Palin's unrepentant terrorists including Shannon, Atlanta Olympics and family planning clinic bomber Eric Rudolph and James Kopp, killer of doctor Bernard Slepien, would applaud these Republican leaders. To paraphrase Tony Perkins, "It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility" the conservative movement foments towards reproductive rights advocates and the violence of 2007 would-be Austin, Texas clinic terrorist Paul Ross Evans.

For its part, the Justice Department made clear just how seriously it took these terror threats. In 1999, Army of God member James Kopp joined Osama Bin Laden on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. And when Rudolph was arrested in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft used the "T" word:

"This sends a clear message that we will never cease in our efforts to hunt down all terrorists, foreign or domestic, and stop them from harming the innocent."

(Unsurprisingly, by 2005 the Bush Department of Homeland Security only considered leftist radicals to be domestic terror threats.)

But curtailing reproductive rights for American women isn't the only case where now mainstream Republican rhetoric fans the flames of right-wing terror.

The not-too-thinly veiled threats to American judges offer a particularly telling example. In June 2007, Judge Reggie Walton was only the latest to receive threatening calls and letters, just days after he handed down his sentence in the Scooter Libby case.

Sadly, many of the leading lights in the Republican Party have it made clear that judicial intimidation is now an acceptable part of conservative discourse and political strategy. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), himself a former Texas Supreme Court Justice, has been at the forefront of GOP advocacy of violence towards members of the bench whose rulings part ways with conservative orthodoxy.

Back in 2005, Cornyn was one of the GOP standard bearers in the conservative fight against so-called "judicial activism" in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair. On April 4th, Cornyn took to the Senate floor to issue a not-too-thinly veiled threat to judges opposing his reactionary agenda. Just days after the murders of judges in Chicago and Atlanta, Cornyn offered his endorsement of judicial intimidation:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country...And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

As it turns out, Cornyn was merely echoing the words of the soon-to-be indicted House Majority Leader Tom Delay. On March 31st, Delay issued a statement regarding the consistent rulings in favor of Michael Schiavo by all federal and state court judges involved:

"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."

The impact of tacit conservative endorsement of violence against judges cannot be dismissed. After all, it extends to members of the Supreme Court of the United States. In March 2006, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed that she and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor were the targets of death threats. On February 28th, 2005, the marshal of the Court informed O'Connor and Ginsburg of an Internet posting citing their references to international law in Court decisions (a frequent whipping boy of the right) as requiring their assassination:

"This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom...If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Neither O'Connor nor Ginsburg are shy about making the connection between Republican rhetoric of judicial intimidation and the upswing in threats and actual violence against judges. Ginsburg noted that they "fuel the irrational fringe" O'Connor blamed Cornyn and his fellow travelers for "creating a culture" in which violence towards judges is merely another political tactic:

"It gets worse. It doesn't help when a high-profile senator suggests a 'cause-and-effect connection' [between controversial rulings and subsequent acts of violence.]"

When anthrax spores were mailed to the Supreme Court in 2001, it did not require a leap of imagination to speculate on the ideological persuasion of the culprit. Aided by best-selling conservative author and media personality Ann Coulter, who joked in January 2006, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," the right-wing endorsement of retribution against judges increasingly permeates the culture.

Judges, of course, aren't the only target of conservative venom. [The GOP crusade against gay Americans is a strategic centerpiece of 21st century Republican political strategy. Despite the seemingly endless parade of Mark Foley, Jim West, Ted Haggard, Ed Shrock, Larry Craig and a host of other once-closeted conservatives, the demonization of gay Americans and their supposed "homosexual agenda" by the Republican leadership and its radical right allies like Tony Perkins remains the reddest of red meat for so called "values voters."

The tactics and rhetoric of the gay-bashing are right are tied at the hip. In 2004, same-sex marriage ban ballot measures in key battleground states helped bring Karl Rove's four million new evangelical voters to the polls, ensuring President Bush's reelection. (Ironically, the same tactic failed the GOP during the 2006 mid-terms in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal.) Congressional Republicans uniformly opposed the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which last month passed the House 235-184 despite GOP maneuvers to bury the bill. President Bush, of course, has vowed to veto the bill protecting the workplace rights of gay Americans, on the spurious grounds that it threatens "the sanctity of marriage."

Then, of course, there are the words of the Republican leadership and its echo chamber. Ex-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and his one-time Texas colleague John Cornyn equate same-sex marriage to polygamy and bestiality, with "man-on-dog" and "man-on-box turtle" analogies. Columnist Ann Coulter, a Mitt Romney supporter and fixture on right-wing media, calls John Edwards a "faggot" and Al Gore a "total fag."

There is a continuum of hate that runs from the fringe of the conservative movement directly to the Republican leadership; the distance from Fred Phelps to the Republican National Committee is also a short one. As you'll recall, Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, organizes virulent anti-gay protests at U.S. military funerals, complete with signs such as "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for IEDs," deaths it deems divine punishment for America's tolerance of gay lifestyles. Though Phelps later lost an $11 million lawsuit brought by a grieving father, the GOP's amen corner shares responsibility for giving the likes of Phelps aid and comfort.

And so it goes. As the 2008 election winds down, Republican leaders including John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mel Martinez, Virgil Goode, Robin Hayes, Michele Bachmann, Randy Kuhl, Nancy Pfotenhauer and a host of others extol supposed "real Americans." The Party of Hate's sinister speech spurs hatred and division, and in some cases violence. But as would-be Vice President Sarah Palin insists, just don't call them terrorists.

Back in April, John McCain taunted Barack Obama as the choice of Hamas in the wake of remarks by a spokesman for that organization. Now with the news that Al Qaeda web sites are seemingly backing McCain for President, the Republican might want to reconsider that line of attack. And to be sure, John McCain should steer clear of touting "Osama the Terrorist" at his rallies.

As the Washington Post detailed Wednesday, Al Qaeda cadres see a McCain as the best bet to perpetuate the policies of President Bush they see bankrupting the United States and the West:

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush...

...It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

As Adam Raisman, a senior analyst for the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist Web pages, put it, "The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful 'son of Bush' -- someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk." He added, "They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain."

Of course, the notion that John McCain somehow enjoys the backing of Al Qaeda is a slander that deserves no place in American politics. (That said, the ironies abound for the man who said "I know how" to get Osama Bin Laden and would follow him to "the gates of hell.") But as the recent history shows, slanders have become the centerpiece of the McCain campaign.

"Actually, we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle.

We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America."

Almost instantaneously, the McCain campaign sent a fundraising email titled "Hamas Weighs In On U.S. Presidential Election." Then on April 25, McCain himself blasted Obama:

"I think it is very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States...I think that the people should understand that I will be Hamas' worst nightmare.

"I never expect for the leader of Hamas...to say that he wants me as president of the United States. I think it is very clear...why they would not want me to be president of the United States, so if Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Now with America's mortal enemy announcing its support for the McCain-Palin ticket, Mr. Straight Talk might want to reconsider that invitation. Judge not, the saying goes, lest ye be judged.

UPDATE: The McCain camp held a conference call to declare, amng other things, that Al Qaeda's statements of support for McCain constitute reverse psychology intended to damage his prospects.

Back in December 2005, Texas Senator John Cornyn pioneered what became the Republican Party's "give me death" defense of President Bush's program of illegal NSA domestic surveillance. "None of your civil liberties matter much," Cornyn announced, "after you're dead." As ABC revealed in its shocking expose of NSA personnel monitoring the private phone calls of Americans abroad, your civil liberties don't matter much while you're living, either.

Despite President Bush's repeated assurances that "I'm mindful of your civil liberties," NSA operators "hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home." According to two NSA staffers featured by ABC, the so-called "terrorist surveillance program" was used to listen in on the calls of American soldiers and aid workers overseas:

[Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator's computer...

"We knew they were working for these aid organizations," [former Army Reserves Arab linguist Adrienne] Kinne told ABC News. "They were identified in our systems as 'belongs to the International Red Cross' and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them," she told ABC News.

For his part, Senator Cornyn was far from alone in propagating the Republican's unconscionable justification of Bush's FISA lawlessness. (Lawless, that is, until August 2007, when the Democratic Congress codified President Bush's regime of domestic surveillance.)

On February 3rd, 2006 Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who infamously stonewalled the Phase II investigation into the misuses of pre-Iraq war intelligence, similarly claimed:

"You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Three days later, the Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions regurgitated the same talking point during a break in Senate testimony by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."

During his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney perpetuated the sham. Completing a candidate questionnaire in December 2007, Romney argued for an unlimited expansion of presidential powers, including this stunning response:

1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

Intelligence and surveillance have proven to be some of the most effective national security tools we have to protect our nation. Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive and the President should not hesitate to use every legal tool at his disposal to keep America safe.

As it turns out, of course, President Bush's surveillance regime was not legal. And as his water carriers like Cornyn, Sessions, Roberts and Romney show, the Republican Party doesn't worry too much about civil liberties, whether for the living or the dead.

On Saturday night Sarah Palin once again put John McCain in a tough spot, this time on the subject of Pakistan. Just hours after McCain blasted Barack Obama for saying "out loud" that the U.S. should - if necessary - unilaterally strike at Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's western border, Palin in essence agreed with the Illinois Democrat. Of course, McCain himself never followed his rule that you don't announce possible American military action "ahead of time." As it turns out, John McCain in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks said early and often that Iraq should be an American target.

ZAHN: And as you know, Senator, the U.S. and Great Britain notified the U.N. Security Council yesterday that they reserve the right to strike against other countries in this campaign. What countries are we looking at?

MCCAIN: Well, I think very obviously Iraq is the first country, but there are others -- Syria, Iran, the Sudan, who have continued to harbor terrorist organizations and actually assist them.

In case there was any lingering confusion about McCain's intentions, he erased all doubt on January 2, 2002. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt over a year before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McCain yelled to a crowd of sailors and airmen:

"Next up, Baghdad!"

And to be sure, John McCain wasn't shy about to trying to manufacture a pretext for the assault against Saddam he repeatedly advertised. In the wake of the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in the fall of 2001, McCain was quick to suggest Iraq might be behind them. Appearing on the David Letterman show on October 18, 2001, McCain suggested that the anthrax incidents augured a "second phase" in the war on terror, this time against Baghdad:

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine...I think we'll do fine. The second phase - if I could just make one, very quickly - the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may - and I emphasize may - have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

McCain has been firing salvos at Barack Obama for months over Obama's August 1, 2007 declaration that "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." Sadly for McCain, that approach became the policy of the United States government by January 2008, as the Bush administration stepped up strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan using unmanned Predator drones. Worse still for McCain, the Pentagon's top commanders, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen and commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, concurred with Obama's assessment both that more troops were needed there and that they could only come from Iraq.

Neither his past statements on Iraq nor the reality on the ground in Afghanistan prevented McCain from launching his same tired broadside during the debate on Friday:

"Now, you don't do that. You don't say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government...

...I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I'm going to attack them."

For his part, Barack Obama on Friday made clear that "nobody talked about attacking Pakistan" and that ''if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out."

Sadly for John McCain, on Saturday Sarah Palin agreed with Obama about the Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens ensconced within the territory of America's problematic ally, Pakistan:

"If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should."

In response today, John McCain recanted Palin's words for her during an appearance on ABC This Week with George Stephanopolous. After first claiming that "sticking a microphone" in Sarah Palin's face did not produce "definitive policy statement" by her, McCain announced:

"[Palin] understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest, and we are not going to, quote, 'announce it ahead of time.'"

Unless, of course, the country is Iraq and you're John McCain.

UPDATE 1: On Monday, September 29, McCain told Katie Couric during a joint interview with Sarah Palin, "Gov. Palin and I agree that you don't announce that you're going to attack another country."

UPDATE 2: Iran, too, has been an object of John McCain's premature emancipation. In October 2007, John McCain told a GOP debate audience that the prospect of U.S. strikes against Tehran "is a possibility that is maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight." At an event that April, McCain jokingly sang "bomb bomb Iran." Then this July, he kidded about cigarettes as "a way of killing them." Still, none of those statements prevented McCain from airing an ad in June proclaiming, "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war." Even in jest, John McCain's decidedly unpresidential temperament makes him unfit for command.

Emerging Thursday from her undisclosed location for her first encounter with the press, John McCain's stealth running mate displayed a shocking ignorance of American foreign policy 101. During her initial softball interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin seemed blissfully unaware of the Bush Doctrine:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

For his part, Gibson in his hopeless effort to tutor Sarah Palin also came up short. As I wrote in June 2007, preventive war (what Gibson deemed "anticipatory self-defense") is only one leg of the broken stool that is the Bush Doctrine:

That wheezing sound you may have heard this week amid the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon was the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes. Just two years after the President and his neo-conservative allies basked in the glow of their self-proclaimed moment of triumph, the Bush Doctrine of no safe havens for terrorists, American preventive war and democracy promotion is discredited, discarded - and dead.

For more on the evolution of and short-lived conservative crowing over the Bush Doctrine, see:
''The Myth of the Bush Doctrine."

For more on the decline and fall of the Bush Doctrine as an idea whose time never came, see:
"The Death of the Bush Doctrine."

For background on the New York Times revelations today that President Bush belatedly authorized strikes by U.S. special forces against Taliban and Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan, see:
"This Just In From Afghanistan: Bush Doctrine Still Dead."

UPDATE: Sarah Palin may not know anything about the Bush Doctrine, but she didn't hesitate to recycle Bush's effort link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks.

At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Dana Perino played down the Bin Laden danger to her lame-duck boss' flatline political standing, if not to the American people:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that - you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 -

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he's sitting in jail right now.

But back in January 2006, President Bush was singing a much different tune. Trying to fight back against the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman once again during remarks at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.

By May 2007, Bush turned to the specter of Bin Laden to justify both his regime of surveillance at home and his war without end in Iraq. During a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy, the President outlined a plot that connected Osama bin Laden and the head of al Qaeda in Iraq to terror plans intended to hit U.S. interests and the United States itself. A serious Bush intoned:

In January of last year, Osama bin Laden warned the American people: "Operations are under preparation and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished."

Of course, George W. Bush did not take Bin Laden seriously five years earlier. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in the months following the American failure to capture the Al Qaeda chieftain in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to capture Bin Laden in 2002, but by the fall of 2004, he faced the prospect of American voters who seemed to recall the murder of 3,000 of their countrymen. In the third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a "do over" of his statement two and a half years earlier:

Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden.

Which brings us full circle. In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used the specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after the 9/11 attacks:

There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

Seven years later, it is the Bush presidency itself which is dead. Bin Laden remains at large even as Bush's calamitous tenure winds down. In his waning days in office, George W. Bush is simply immune to further declines in popularity.

Which, according to Bush's Law, must mean Osama Bin Laden doesn't matter much anymore.

The announcement today that the United States will deploy up to 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan is just the latest signal of the Pentagon's seeming support for Barack Obama's strategy to fight Al Qaeda in the region. Following by just weeks Obama's latest call to send at least two more brigades of American troops there, the request by U.S. commanders again confirmed Obama's assertion, one denied by John McCain, that Iraq represents a "zero sum game" for scarce American military resources.

That request by General David McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, comes on the heels of Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen's agreement with Senator Obama that the situation along the Pakistan frontier is "precarious and urgent." The need is urgent indeed: in July, 9 American troops were killed in an insurgent raid that overran a U.S. border outpost; yesterday, 10 French soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack. In response, General McKiernan hopes to bolster the 101st Airborne Division with up to three brigades.

But as U.S. News reported this morning, the challenge for McKiernan and his staff is finding the needed troops. While their ask has been approved, a defense official noted, "Now that means we just need to figure out a way to get them there." As McKiernan himself made clear, the only "way" is to get the troops from Iraq:

Finding those particular troops to supplement the 101st, however, depends on conditions and troop levels in Iraq, adds McKiernan, who took over the NATO command in June. "That's really a zero-sum decision."

In early July, Admiral Mullen admitted as much. On the very day that 2,200 U.S Marines learned their tours in Afghanistan will be extended by 30 days, Mullen told reporters that the United States could only deploy more forces there by first drawing down from Iraq:

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."

And on that point, Barack Obama and John McCain part company. From almost the inception of his campaign, Obama has argued that the diversion of U.S. military assets from Afghanistan to Iraq meant that "the people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice." In a June speech, Obama highlighted McCain's denial of this inescapable point:

"We had al Qaeda and the Taliban on the run back in 2002. But then we diverted military, intelligence, financial, and diplomatic resources to Iraq. And yet Senator McCain has said as recently as this April that, 'Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq.' I think that just shows a dangerous misjudgment of the facts, and a stubborn determination to ignore the need to finish the fight in Afghanistan."

McCain's denial - and disagreement with the Pentagon - over the trade-offs in sending more U.S. forces to the Afghan-Pakistan frontier doesn't end there. While McCain reversed course and mimicked Obama's call for more troops in Afghanistan, he fudged as to whether they should come from the United States or its NATO allies. Cornered on the question of where he intends to come up with the needed reinforcements, McCain feebly responded:

"We need to work that out. We need to have greater participation on the part of our NATO allies, as I said in my opening remarks today, and we need a lot more help."

Still, McCain's confused and contradictory statements didn't stop him from calling for "surge for Afghanistan" on July 15. (As Steve Benen rightly noted, a "surge" is now John McCain's prescription for all ills, foreign and domestic.) But as General McKiernan reiterated today, the United States doesn't need a surge in the fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but a long-term commitment:

He disputes the notion that the three brigades on the way represent a troop "surge" for Afghanistan, predicting the need for an extended involvement of a larger force. "I've certainly said that we need more security capabilities," he says. "But I would not use the term 'surge,' because I think we need a sustained presence."

At every turn, the Pentagon has backed Barack Obama's approach to defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions. While John McCain in February ridiculed Barack Obama's call for unilateral American strikes against Al Qaeda targets within Pakistan, the Bush administration and the Pentagon soon adopted Obama's thinking. (Just today, an apparent U.S. missile strike killed 18 militants in South Waziristan.)

Earlier this week, the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy released their annual "Terrorism Index." Their survey of 100 bipartisan foreign policy analysts found that 51% believe Pakistan will be the next Al Qaeda stronghold; exactly zero said "Iraq." 80% said the U.S. had not dedicated enough resources to Afghanistan, while 69% called for redeploying the majority of American troops from Iraq over the next 18 months.

All of which sounds like it could have come from Barack Obama. Or, as was made clear again today, from the Pentagon.

Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq and expertise on the geography of the Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in capturing the Al Qaeda chieftain:

"I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it."

No doubt, McCain hasn't been shy when it comes to explaining how he'll bag Bin Laden. Over the course of the campaign, Senator McCain has repeated his pledge to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and follow him "to the gates of hell."

For example, in May 2007, McCain described himself as the dog that'll hunt:

"We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of Hell."

Then in October, McCain told workers at a small weapons factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

And in January, McCain reassured suspicious South Carolina voters as well, just in case they had missed his earlier promises on the point:

"My friends, I want to stand before you now and tell you that if I have to follow him to the gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden and I will bring him to justice. I will get him!"

In New Jersey last month, McCain pledged, like President Bush before him, that he would get Bin Laden, dead or alive:

"I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college's Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

"We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water," McCain said.

(McCain, of course, was speaking metaphorically. Referring not to aquatically proficient spies who would make their way overland to Waziristan after first swimming across the Indian Ocean, McCain was instead describing agents capable of seamlessly mixing in among the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan.)

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that McCain will tap Mitt Romney as his running mate. Their shared commitment to get Bin Laden may have something to do with Romney's appeal to Mr. StraightTalk. After all, in May, Romney also made a promise when it comes to Osama Bin Laden. "He's going to pay," he said, "and he will die."

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals. In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur. But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons - put the United States in the same discussion with Sudan and the Republica Serbska.

To be sure, the long-overdue capture of Karadzic is a cause for celebration. On the run from peace-keeping forces in Bosnia since 1996, Karadzic had been hiding in plain sight in Serbia's capital. Between 1992 and 1995, the butcher of Srebrenica was responsible for ethnic cleaning and massacres in the Balkans that claimed at least 100,000 lives.

Which puts him in the same class as the killer in Khartoum, Sudan's al-Bashir. A week ago Monday, the ICC charged the Sudanese president on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes for his campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that has killed as many as 300,000 people in Darfur.

As ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo acknowledged, the strategy risks ending any prospect of cooperation between the government in Khartoum and the international community for bringing peace-keeping forces and humanitarian relief to Darfur. But as its ambassador to the UN Abdalmahoud Abdalhaleem Mohamad made clear to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Sudan - like the United States - will not subject its officials to the jurisdiction of the Court:

ZAKARIA: But of course, you know that other governments that did not recognize the Criminal Court were still forced to extradite their leaders. I'm thinking of Yugoslavia.

MOHAMAD: No. I don't care about them.

As far as we are concerned, we are not members. We have been told these days repeatedly that the ICC is an independent body. And so, OK, if it's an independent body, I am not a U.N. organ.

We have full right to be part of it or not. And we choose not to be part of it, like the United States.

Sadly, Mohamad is right about the company Sudan keeps. In May 2001, President Bush renounced the ICC treaty signed by Bill Clinton the previous December, claiming "This is a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial." During a 2004 debate with John Kerry, Bush taunted American allies supporting the Court, arguing, "You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe." By that November, the Republican Congress was threatening to cut off economic aid to governments who refused to sign immunity agreements which would shield U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the Court.

Insistent on avoiding accountability for potential crimes abroad, the Bush administration may now be acting to prevent it at home as well. As the New York Times reported on Saturday, key conservative figures are urging the White House to "grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs." The President, they argue, can and should move proactively to shield wrong-doers in his administration:

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance...

...Several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons - whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president's orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

"The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations," said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. "If we don't protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances."

Which brings us to America's first war crimes trial against terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This week, prosecutors opened their case against Osama Bin Laden;s driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose 2006 Supreme Court case overturned the Bush administration's previous regime of military tribunals. But in what be the first challenge to President Bush's regime of torture and so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," the presiding judge Monday barred evidence obtained from Hamdan under "highly coercive" conditions during his detention in Afghanistan.

No doubt, the indictment of Sudan's al-Bashir and the apprehension of Karadzic are victories against the forces of what Jane Mayer deemed The Dark Side. It is one of the tragic legacies of President George W. Bush, one few Americans could have imagined, that the United States government would join them there.

Neocon godfather Irving Kristol once famously said that "a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." By that standard, the political right will need to coin an altogether new term to describe John McCain in the wake of the beating he has taken over the past several days. In the span of just two weeks, McCain has seen Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afghanistan validated by the Pent