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You can't go wrong doing the opposite of almost anything Sen. Saxby "Toy Soldier" Chambliss, the man who specializes in smearing real soldiers like Max Cleland, proposes. And Dianne Feinstein, the woman who's never met a war or black-box op she didn't like? Rep. Jim McGovern, on the other hand, is a rare voice of reason:

A roundtable discussion on Afghanistan strategy from This Week with George Stephanopoulous:

STEPHANOPOULOS:There's a report in Newsweek this morning -- it's actually on the cover of Newsweek, where the vice president is pointing out that this year we're going to spend about $65 billion in Afghanistan, about $2.25 billion in Pakistan. And according to the report in Newsweek, this is what the vice president went on to say in the National Security Council meeting: "By my calculations, that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question: Al Qaida is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?"

What's the answer?

FEINSTEIN: Well, this whole situation is a bit of a conundrum. I basically agree with Senator Chambliss in what he said. I think reconciliation -- the first thing has to be to stop the violence. It has to be security. The Taliban has to know it cannot take over all of Afghanistan because the next step in Pakistan. And that's very serious.

And the Pakistanis are only recently beginning to show, I think, their mettle. I think Swat was a big wake-up call for them. I listened to the Pakistani foreign minister yesterday, and they -- they seemed to have much more get-up-and-go, to really be -- be able to work with us in securing some of the FATA areas and other -- other areas. So I think that -- that's really critical.

This is not an easy situation. Nothing is straightforward. Our allies have 39,000 troops. That's a lot of people over there. They, I gather, will continue their involvement on that level. I think we ought to press for them to increase it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's not going to happen.

FEINSTEIN: I think obviously -- I know it's not, but financially, we ought to have more financing from the rest of the world community. We cannot be everyone's gatekeeper, everyone's policeman, and I think what's lacking in the world is some universality of putting together movements which can change the dynamics in difficult situations.

STEPHANOPOULOS: General Keane, what do we do now in Pakistan? Three major attacks in the last week. Yesterday, the most brazen attack yet, the insurgents take over their army headquarters. It would be like coming in to the Pentagon. And how do you see the interrelationship between putting more troops in Afghanistan and putting more pressure on the situation in -- in Pakistan?

KEANE: Yes, the elephant in the room with Pakistan -- and, also, to a certain degree, with Afghanistan -- has always been, their lack of understanding that we're going to stay in that region. They -- they're not sure we are.

And -- and given our track record in Afghanistan and also in Pakistan, there's reason for that skepticism. That's why Musharraf and this regime to this day has a hedging strategy with the Taliban. We have to convince them that we're there, that Pakistan's stability is in our national interest. And we also have to prove that, as well, by stabilizing Afghanistan.

I agree with the senators. If we ever lost in Afghanistan, that contributes directly to destabilizing Pakistan. So our actions in Afghanistan relate clearly to Pakistan.

KEANE: The other thing, to get specifically to your point, we're starting to make some headway with Kiyani and the generals in Pakistan, to pull forces away from the Indian front, so to speak. We have great difficulty convincing them that the major threat to the nation-state is, in fact, the ranging insurgency inside the nation- state and not the external threat of India. To us, it's self-evident, but to them it's not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's not.

KEANE: And that's the reality of it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're just about out of time. I want to go once around the table with this question: What's the one thing you want President Obama to have in mind as he makes these decisions?

CHAMBLISS: Our troops and the stability of our troops and -- and the fact that we're giving our troops what they need. And I mean, from the top down, we've got to make a decision from the leadership standpoint whether we're giving more troops, but we've still got to make that commitment of making sure that we're enforcing and reinforcing them like we need to.

MCGOVERN: I would urge them to keep in mind that stabilizing Afghanistan should not mean and does not mean enlarging our military footprint there. I think it would be counterproductive.

I also think we're going bankrupt. We have wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, hundreds of billions of dollars that are all going on to our credit card. Our kids and our grandkids are paying for this. You know, we need to be smarter about where we deploy our -- our resources. And I think enlarging our military footprint in Afghanistan would be a mistake.

We need to come up with a strategy that includes an exit strategy because it'll also put pressure on the government of Afghanistan to step up to the plate, which it has not done so far.

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Richard Wolffe returned to Countdown this week, absent from MSNBC airwaves for only a month after Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his full time employer was no longer Newsweek, but a lobbying firm:

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States. Then again, Wolffe himself -- when it was previously revealed that he was exploiting his position as a Newsweek reporter covering the Obama campaign to leverage access to Obama in order to write a glowing book about him -- said this:

And [Wolffe] suggested he’s not that different from other reporters in an era in which the business and the profession of journalism have gotten closer and closer.

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers.

"You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

And yet, he's back...with nary a word about his absence, still as an MSNBC political analyst.

Don't get me wrong, I like Richard Wolffe in general, and appreciated his appearances on Countdown in the past, but to name him as a "Senior Strategist at Public Strategies" is truly the sparest way to describe him as a lobbyist and really blurs the lines between journalism and promotion/propaganda beyond what should be acceptable. How can we ever know if Wolffe's analysis is truly what he believes or if it's what he's been paid to promote by a client?

And frankly, I'm tired of the insular nature of these broadcasts, when the same predictable people show up day after day after day. To be fair to Keith, Olbermann is not the only news anchor with a retinue of guests they stick with over and over. They all do it. Even Rachel Maddow brings on "Uncle Pat" Buchanan, whose views are generally factually wrong or so far outside the mainstream, you can't but wonder why he's still on television. Wolffe isn't like that. But as I've documented before on media balance and biases, so much critical information is withheld from we viewers already that we generally don't get a fair view of the issues of the day, I really do have to ask if there are no other voices that Olbermann can turn to that he has to bring back a DC lobbyist?

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Sean Hannity devoted to the entire hour of his Fox News show Thursday to a special reported titled "The Valley That Hope Forgot," all about the water crisis in California's San Joaquin Valley that many right-wingers -- including Sean Hannity -- are blaming on the diversion of water to maintain the fishery on the San Joaquin Delta.

It's actually a classic case of resource juggling: Giving water to the farmers in drought years might keep farmed produce turning, but it would destroy the fishery that supplies millions of fish -- and not just the delta smelt -- to the oceans and ultimately to our food supply. For the time being, the fish have won in the courts. Moreover, there are signs the water is returning to the valley on its own, since the recent drought appears to be subsiding.

Still, Hannity was more interested in demagoguing than in producing an accurate portrait of the situation, let alone helping find a resolution. He blamed the high unemployment rate in the San Joaquin Valley on the lack of water for farmers, and blamed that solely on the delta smelt lawsuits.

Near the end of the show, he had on his usual Intended Liberal Victim, for whom he could reserve such deep journalistic questions as "And I just want to know: How did you get your priorities so screwed up in life? What happened to you?"

But the Intended Victim, a fellow named Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, actually bit back, pointing out how callous and indifferent Hannity was toward the plight of the people on the coast who have traditionally made their livings by fishing salmon, both commercially and recreationally.

Judge for yourself, but it seemed to me Grader got the better of this exchange. Hannity was left to sputter insults at Grader instead of actually addressing his main point: That defending the fishery is a matter of defending people's livelihoods, too. It's not fish vs. people; it's people vs. people.

Doug Obeggi at the Natural Resources Defense Council has a good piece explaining why the whole "delta smelt" claim is a red herring:

First, Endangered Species Act protections for delta smelt aren't just about a tiny fish. Nor are those protections only about protecting the Bay Delta estuary, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, home to migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway, to magnificent salmon that migrate past the Golden Gate Bridge through the Delta, and to numerous native fish and wildlife.

Moreover, as local economists have pointed out, the recession, not the lack of water, is the cause of the economic downturn in the San Joaquin basin.

And what about the California/Oregon coastal fishermen? The folks whose salmon catch we depend on for food just as much (if not more) than we do produce from the San Joaquin? Well, because of previous mismanagement of the river, the salmon fishery from the Central Valley has seen an unprecedented collapse -- forcing a halt to the California salmon fishery generally.

A California commercial fisherman named Mike Hudson wrote a piece describing what life has been like for people in his line of work:

I’m pretty proud of doing a good job at it.

At least I was until two years ago, when excessive water diversions from our rivers and Delta totally destroyed our industry. In 2004, the Bush Administration issued new permits to allow the Delta pumps to export more water. And as these water exports increased, salmon numbers collapsed. So commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, Tribes, and environmental groups like NRDC joined together and sued to invalidate those permits, and we successfully won better protections for California's endangered salmon and other fish.

The damage was already done. Thousands of commercial salmon fishermen like myself are now out of work. Our boats stay tied to the docks along the entire California coast all the way into Oregon while tens of thousands more good jobs are lost in businesses that surround our fishing industry. Closing the salmon fishing season affects everyone from processors laying off their fish cutters to marine fuel docks and commercial tackle shops closing their doors. How do you think the local grocery store in Bodega is doing now that all of a sudden 100 hungry commercial fishermen don’t stop by any more to purchase groceries for their next trip and thousands of recreational anglers don’t come to their community any more because there’s no salmon to be caught? Not good.

The Department of Fish and Game estimated that the closure of our commercial salmon fishery cost the state 279 million dollars and nearly 2,600 jobs in 2009, and that’s a conservative estimate at best.

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Howard Kurtz asks his panel of the editor of The New York Times Week in Review and The New York Times Book Review Sam Tanenhaus, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly what they think of the right wing's preemptive freak out over President Obama's speech to school children last week.

Tanenhaus says it is an indication of what he calls "the death of conservatism" which is the theme and name of his book.

Brody thinks the President has a "perception problem". Hmmmm.... I wonder what might have contributed to that. The media overplaying the right wing screechers that should otherwise be dismissed couldn't have possibly contributed to that, could it David?

And Ceci Connolly says the "media are addicted to conflict". And don't blame them for feeding us crap on a daily basis since that 24 hour news cycle is so hard to fill up. Well here's a thought. Why not fill it with something besides crap? Somehow Amy Goodman manages to find an hours worth of news every day that you guys can't find the time to report on in that 24 hour cycle. Imagine that. I would imagine that a good deal of our readers here at Crooks and Liars could recommend more stories that are worth reporting on than there would be time for in the 24 hour news cycle, even on a "slow day".

I'd like to think that Sam Tanenhaus' observation is the correct one and that this over the top rhetoric does mean the death of the conservative movement, but our "mainstream media" along with a lot of other powerful forces are going to do their best to make sure it doesn't happen any time soon.

Transcript below the fold.

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Maybe it's just me, but I think we're hurtling towards a Howard Beale moment between the blogosphere (the *new* media) and the mainstream media. You have cozy little holidays between politicos and the "journalists" scheduled to interview them like George's tweet above, oblivious to the appearance of conflict. And you have DFH bloggers trying to explain to corporate journos like Marc Ambinder, Chuck Todd and Joe Klein that we actually do know what we're talking about and moreover, we're correct more often than they are, much to their consternation. With the ridiculousness that passes for top stories, how much longer will it be before we all collectively yell out that we're not going to take it any more?

Aside from the aforementioned lovefest between Georgie and McCain, the same ol' complainers are on: Grassley on Face The Nation; Orrin Hatch on Meet the Press and Lieberman on State of the Union. Ironically, the death of newspapers is the subject of The Chris Matthews Show. Betcha not one of the journalists will accept responsibility for the demise because of their abdication of their journalistic integrity.

ABC's "This Week" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; former national Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Bob Woodward, Tina Brown, Gloria Borger and Joe Klein. Topics: Can America survive without newspapers? Will online news fill the void? When city papers fold, who's going to watch City Hall? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Mullen; Eikenberry; Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ben Cardin, D-Md.; Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Encore presentation of Fareed's Emmy nominated interview with China's Premier Wen Jiabao. Plus, the always interesting Malcolm Gladwell tells us how to get to Carnegie Hall and more.

"Fox News Sunday" - Jim Towey, president of Saint Vincent College and former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.; Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.; Tammy Duckworth, an assistant Veterans Affairs secretary.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

(Suzanne Ito writes for and manages Blog of Rights, the blog of the national ACLU.)

June 26 of this year marked the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, and the anniversary of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. On that day, the ACLU joined countless other human rights groups in calling for Accountability for Torture. We asked people to send Attorney General Eric Holder the Office of Legal Counsel memos—the actual evidence released through ACLU lawsuits that revealed the fact that high-level Bush administration officials had sanctioned these illegal acts—and urged him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these crimes.

We were pleased when Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported that Holder was indeed considering an investigation. But now a month has passed, we haven't heard much from the Justice Department. So last week, the ACLU renewed its call for accountability by launching a new video, featuring director Oliver Stone, composer Philip Glass, Rosie Perez, and many others reading from the torture memos, and calling for accountability.

The public knows that detainees were tortured during the Bush presidency. From the photos from Abu Ghraib, to congressional reports (PDF), to the torture memos themselves, it's crystal-clear that these abusive interrogation practices were authorized by the highest levels of the Bush administration. Even Dick Cheney couldn't resist a little cheerleading about how effective he thought waterboarding was.

It is a core premise of American democracy that no one—not even the president—is above the law. When we hear Attorney General Holder is considering only investigating those who carried out the torture, not those who authorized the torture in the first place, it sickens us to think how this clashes with the most fundamental American ideals of fairness. Too much evidence of high-level orders exists to limit criminal investigations to "a few bad apples." We cannot compromise the rule of law because we're afraid the outcome might be politically messy, inconvenient or even painful. To not investigate is to tell future presidents and their administrations that they're above the law, and that would render our system of justice meaningless.

So please watch the video, and send it to Attorney General Holder. It's time for a comprehensive investigation of the Bush era torture policies.

After reading this, I have to conclude that Conservatives really can't tell reality from fantasy and are easily manipulated by movies and TV. I'm starting to understand why the Brent Bozells are always trying to sue some TV show or other. They think it's real; I mean, why would anyone sue a Buffy TVS episode, right?
Anyway, Digby's post covers the Jack Bauer influence on the right wing party.

It's very creepy and disturbing.

The Wapo also reports that the thing was just about to be operational before the plug was pulled last month. The plot thickens.

The LA Times says that the "CIA Was A Long Way From Jason Bourne" but when I read that description of a secret hit squad with no limits, I was reminded of something else, which I wrote a year ago:
Fanboy Interrogations

Dahlia Lithwick has a great column in this week's Newsweek about the biggest influence on the thinking of members of the Bush administration in regards to its "interrogation" policies: Jack Bauer.

I've written a ton about this shocking phenomenon over the years, but even I didn't know that John Yoo actually cited the show in his book:

"What if, as the Fox television program '24' recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?"...read on

Read her full article because she ends with this.

Rush was actually asking the right question. I laughed at him at the time,thinking he was an embarrassing torture fanboy. But it turns out that the military really was getting ideas from the show:

According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas."

This probably worries me as much as anything I've heard about the antics of the Bush administration. These people are so fundamentally unserious that they found inspiration in a television show when the stakes were about as high as they could possibly be. It's horrifying to think these powerful people were this daft. But they were.
It seems it was actually worse than I thought.

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We knew that Bill O'Reilly had done a nasty segment on Rick Perlstein -- including running his picture -- tonight on Fox News because Perlstein called me shortly afterward and asked:

"Hey, did Bill O'Reilly or someone on Fox do something with me in it tonight?"

"I dunno. I'm recording but not watching. Why?"

"My inbox just started getting deluged with hate mail a little bit ago."

"What time did it start?"

"About 7:30 [Chicago time]."

"Yep, that would be O'Reilly."

"I think they ran my picture. A lot of the mail is about how ugly I am."

I pulled my recording and yep, sure enough, there was a segment attacking Perlstein for his Newsweek op-ed column this week. He invited on his frequent guest, Bernard Goldberg, to talk about it.

As you can see, what set O'Reilly off was Perlstein's characterization of O'Reilly's audience as working-class whites whose more unstable elements sometimes act out violently:

O'Reilly: The most recent Newsweek contains a nasty piece on Sarah Palin that implies she is an intellectual moron supported by poorly educated conservative idiots.

[Hmmmm. Read the piece for yourself. As you can see, it certainly does not use language like that, and in fact discusses to working-class whites in largely respectful tones -- but points out that they don't get much respect among Republican elites. O'Reilly's caricature of the column is actually rather self-revealing.]

O'Reilly: The article goes on to say that these stupid conservatives are influenced by extremist commentators. Quote:

Now [William F.] Buckley is gone, and the most prominent spokesmen -- the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Becks—can be heard mouthing attitudes once confined to the violent fringe. ... Fox heavily promoted anti-administration "tea party" events this past Fourth of July -- rallies in praise of secession ...

Well, obviously, that paragraph is pure propaganda.

Actually, let's read the whole passage, and you can judge for yourselves. Again, what O'Reilly omits is telling:

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I haven't had a chance to read the whole article, but it seems encouraging.

Newsweek:

Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. "You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation's laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort," Holder says. "But the reality of being A.G. is that I'm also part of the president's team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values."

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

It's the way it should be. The AG should be doing what's right for the country regardless the administration occupying the White House. I hope this wasn't leaked so either it'll get squashed or other important legislation like health care will get dumped on, but we need these atrocities investigated. I've been calling for this for along time now and so has many readers and bloggers on the left as well.

d-day has read the entire article and has much more: Holder Of The Cards

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Heather at VC:

Joe Scarborough attacks Paul Krugman for his op-ed The Big Hate:

Scarborough: I’m just gonna say it. As somebody that has to sort through a lot of hate mail, a lot of hate email, a lot of viciousness. Paul Krugman’s name is attached to a lot of those emails. They use Paul Krugman as their shield for their left-wing hate. This is because Paul Krugman, like a lot of extremists on the right, they only see their side. They have a closed-minded world view. Paul Krugman uses this tragedy, uses this death to try to knock down his opponents on the right.

Unbelievable. Project much Joe?

Scarborough was attacking Paul Krugman by using the DHS report with the phony conservative line that the report was targeting our veterans. Not true. Do these conservative hacks want America to be safe? The report wasn't a partisan witch hunt, but conservatives are trying to find anything to jump on and make an issue out of. Then he goes of into la-la land when he brings Bush and Cheney into it. And by the way, there are no left wing radicals threatening to kill you, Scarborough, so your argument makes no sense.

On a separate but related matter ... I wonder why Joe didn't talk much about Dr. Tiller, either? Oh, wait. Seems Scarborough first got famous down in Florida defending an abortion-doctor killer named Michael Griffin, and it appears Joe didn't want that info dredged up. In fact, it appears that Scarborough used the murderer to get himself elected to Congress. Who knew?

Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice writes: Why Don't MSNBCers Question "Morning Joe" About Abortion Doc Killings?

Scarborough's hometown of Pensacola -- where his show once frequently originated -- was the site of the first two abortion murders, the second also occurring during his first run for Congress in 1994. A raw 30-year-old, Scarborough's surprising Republican win was principally funded by anti-abortion groups and he immediately went to Washington and voted against bills to protect abortion clinics, including one version sponsored by a Republican congressmen.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Michael Isikoff about his latest article in Newsweek, Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers.

An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys." According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

But then–Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy, Mark Filip, strongly objected to the draft, according to the sources. Filip wanted the report to include responses from all three principals, said one of the sources, a former top Bush administration lawyer. (Mukasey could not be reached; his former chief of staff did not respond to requests for comment. Filip also did not return a phone message.) OPR is now seeking to include the responses before a final version is presented to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. "The matter is under review," said Justice spokesman Matthew Miller.

If Holder accepts the OPR findings, the report could be forwarded to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action. But some former Bush officials are furious about the OPR's initial findings and question the premise of the probe. "OPR is not competent to judge [the opinions by Justice attorneys]. They're not constitutional scholars," said the former Bush lawyer. Mukasey, in speeches before he left, decried the second-guessing of Justice lawyers who, acting under "almost unimaginable pressure" after 9/11, offered "their best judgment of what the law required."

You can read the rest of the article here as linked above: Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers.

We is all on the cover of Newsweek! Open thread below....