Of course, Draper will be "revealed" by the right to be an extreme-left America-hating ultra partisan, bent on destroying this country.

Is there no level of rank incompetence that the right will not defend?

Dick Cheney isn't a real conservative! Doesn't he have a homosexual daughter?

they point to Rumsfeld's belief -- which was probably accurate -- that then-President Bush was easily manipulated

You think?

Maybe some intrepid reporter could score an interview with George Bush, Jr., but I suspect he's way too drunk to be talking to people. What a tragedy.

Many more stories like this, and I'm going to get the impression that George W. Bush is not a very smart man.

"Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, The nation that keeps faith."

I'll bet Dick Cheney was rolling on the floor laughing. No wonder he supported Rumsfeld well after Bush gave into the Iraq Study Group.

Another quote from the Rumsfeld memos:

"Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Proverbs 16:3

Here Rumsfeld's aim was to convince the dim-witted Bush into believing that he could do no wrong as long as he believed in God. It is nothing more brainwashing. I am sure that Cheney used the same kind of brainwashing. Between the two of them, they were able to dupe Bush into doing just about anything.

Sheridan,

Probably not unfair to call it brainwashing, but from a Christian perspective these memos, like so much of the Iraq war, might more usefully be called blasphemy. Coupled, of course, as throughout the Bush presidency, with a strong dose of idolatry.

I sure hope that Rich is right, and this latest trickle of Bush/Cheney info turns into an unstoppable deluge, even if the Obama administration would rather it all go away.

Perhaps the only question that should be asked of someone who applies for a job is "Are you always certain you are right?"

A yes means no job. And if one brings God in as justification, doubly so. And I say that as Christian, because all too often God is used as an excuse for immoral behavior. WWGB (who would God bomb)? No one. NO ONE.

Draper is right – seriously creepy stuff.

There are currently high-ranking officers in our military responsible for our national security that hold this nonsensical view. There was a secretary of DOD who used this stupidity to wrap distorted intel reports presented to a seriously stupid president. Shrub and Rummy are gone. I’m curious who the dim bulb was that put this stuff together. That person remains a serious threat to our national security.

Truth commission - now.

With appologies to Hemingway, we're currently reading the short story "the Short Happy Reign of George Bush".

Over the next 25-50 years, as the archives begin to open, and the documents are declassified, we will see more books about this eight year period than have been published about out Civil War.

Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, ...

Nice pick up line. All the God fearing ladies will fall for it.gregor

Doesn't the idea of Don't Ask Don't Tell more properly apply to religion in the military?

Doesn't this explicitly violate separation of church and state?

Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world's apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war.As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout "would be as bad as Abu Ghraib."

Umm....this would have made Abu Ghraib look like an outreach program. If this shit had been made public as the U.S. was invading Iraq under pretenses of WMDs and Iraq /Al Qaeda ties it would have been game over.

Just finished reading that GQ article. The worst revelations in the story are about how Rumsfeld kept rescue helecopters grounded for three days while New Orleans was drowning, and he dragged his feet even after Bush forced him to deploy.

Best line in the story: Livid, (Fran) Townsend said, “I want to know if the president knows what a fucking asshole Don Rumsfeld is.�

The whole point of propaganda is to use it against your opponents. When someone uses it on their own leadership and they and the leadership start to believe it, they are all are being unbelievably foolish. This says nothing that we didn't already know about Bush, but it's concrete, rather than abstract, which makes it vastly more repulsive and creepy.

This triumphalist juxtaposition of Biblical quotes and war photos is sickening and certainly a non-constitutional mix of religion and politics. The release of these photos and quotes has the potential of being more harmful to the United States internationally than the secondary group of torture photos. I left the fundamentalist/evangelical faith of my childhood many years ago because I could no longer support the conflation of judgmentalism, Republican politics and narrow Christianity. I would hope that revelations like this would put the ending seal on such mixes of religion and politics, but I suspect that the 21% of "true believers" will hang in there as they continue to see themselves as a persecuted minority. An independent commission, please!!

Wow.

How many of those creepy covers were there?

Did this go on for months or even years, or just the first couple weeks of the war?

Tie these briefing cover sheets with the story of Military Ministry's recruiting military personal and the tapes of military officials evangelizing in Afghanistan, and, oh my, I don't think this will improve the U.S. military's image in the Muslim world so much.

Just a reminder of how far Christian fascism has come in this country.

Well, this is just one more issue that the dirty fucking hippies were right about.

WMD's? Of course there weren't any. Any idiot could see that they were nothing but a flimsy excuse to invade for political/geostrategic/personal reasons.

Torture? It was happening, it was widespread, it wasn't just a "few bad apples," it was policy ordered from the top and now defended daily on television by the assholes that ordered it.

Wiretapping? It wasn't just phone calls, it wasn't just overseas contacts, it was every fucking email and phone call and text message from every American.

Now we have more evidence of a pseudo-religious administration using the Bible to justify any horrible thing they saw fit to do. How many times were we told we were crazy when we alleged just such a thing?

Unlike Ann Coulter, I don't think my ideological opponents should be shot or hung from trees. I don't think they should be put in reeducation camps per the fantasies of Mike K. I just think they should be mocked and humiliated for the cowardice and bigotry disguised as smug triumphalism that they showed for eight years in defiance of reason, evidence, and humanity, and that they should be duly marginalized for being incorrigible assholes.

Just read the GQ article. I have one question with a few follow ups.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The VP and SecDef are by the reckoning of their own Republican colleagues managing the information flow to the President in order to manipulate him. The SecDef is dragging his feet when given orders to help drowning US citizens. He is "obfuscating" about why things are not getting done. In other words, he's lying and misleading.

The DCIA is telling the President that WMD is a "slam dunk," but we don't believe the Speaker of the House when she says the CIA mislead her about torture.

If the Obama administration, the appropriate congressional committess, and AG Holder fail to
initiate, truth commisions, and prosecutions with stiff sentences, I'm going to vote a straight Republican ticket and move to Canada.

Knowing Dubya was just a tool for the Greater Good helps in imagining him sitting in the Oval looking over this fish wrap.

Propaganda from the bottom of the food chain to the top (using that word lightly). Yup, history isn't going to come down kindly on him.

Ringrid is right -- this stuff is much more damaging that photos the top dogs seem to think they pawn off as the work of "a few bad apples." These coversheets show that the men who sent us to war were religious fantatics bent on defeating "infidels" at the price of thousands of lives. The coversheets ARE a crime & are proof of war crimes.

Maybe Obama is right -- that these old boys shouldn't go to jail -- an institution for the criminally insane, preferably a medieval-style one, seems like just the right place for them.

The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com

"If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world's apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war."

And published now, they prove it. Bush and Cheney profited personally from a convenient war and they dressed it in religion and patriotism in order to market it to a populace hungry for revenge. This is the ultimate in poor leadership and tyranny.

"Joshua 1:9: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." "

Besides the lack of morality involved in torture, I had always thought that the Catholics had thought of themselves as "GD's Children. So, as the previous quote demonstrates, why would King George( who said that GD talked to him nightly in his dreams) need torture when GD's affiliation would be with us, instead of our enemy who has the nerve to call their Gd Mohammed, and not KNOWING that Jesus Christ was the "true(snark) son of GD.

Well, there goes the last excuse for having to torture, even for those who think their are the TRUE children of GD and doing GD's doing. Would a "father" ever allow his children to lose to a bunch of bums, especially since this father is supposed to be the almighty GD, father of the pagan symbol Jesus Christ

Am I the only one who read that article and thought, "The Bushies are making dead horse Rummy the scapegoat." He might been just as awful as the story said he was, but the article blames him for just about everything that went wrong with the last eight years. I smell an airbrush.

pol,
You could look at it that way, but isn't it possible that Bush is just that dumb, so lacking in curiosity, so clueless that this is accurate rather than attempt to lay blame? I see it more as an explanation than an attempt to make a scapegoat. I found myself thinking that this article explains a lot. As time passes I see more and more confirmation to the belief I held during his presidency that Bush wasn't really in the driver's seat too much. From reading this it sounds like Bush wasn't even aware of that! That said, I still believe he's very responsible for everything that happened. If he relinquished his control/power as president that was his decision but it doesn't absolve his ultimate responsibility. So they can try to make Rumsfeld a scapegoat but the ultimate responsibility is Bush's.

I think Bush was truly over his head in the position of President and I'm not sure he was even aware of it. He doesn't strike me as a terribly self-aware guy. His whole presidency is a national tragedy.

WWGB (who would God bomb)? No one. NO ONE.

Er, no.