In the deadliest attack in three months, a bomb blast in Baghdad has killed 51 people, the New York Times reports. Once again, the turmoil and the chaos in Iraq belies the Bush administration claims that the McCain Doctrine is working and that they were making progress.

Comment on a Washington Post article:

Lawmakers Urge Special Counsel Probe of Harsh Interrogation Tactics, by Joby Warrick

Hat tip to tahoebasha2 and Code Breaker, whose under-read diaries here and here inspired me to run their information through the dKos wringer one more time.

I have come to rely on dailyKos for almost all of my news.  In fact, I'm downright smug about it.  When someone offers up an item from the news, I usually say something along the lines of "I know.  What really happened is . . ."  When someone dismisses something I've read here as propaganda or wild speculation, I just sigh at their ignorance.  I have learned that if I read something here which has gone unchallenged or uncorrected, then it is virtually always accurate.  And I usually learn it somewhere between a day and six months before any non-Kossack.  But yesterday the great orange glow was dimmer than it should have been.

Via ThinkProgress, we now learn two new things.  Not only did high-level Bush administration members meet to go over interrogation details with the knowledge and approval of the President. Some got to go watch.

There was an extraordinary meeting held in September 2002, just before the techniques were to go up the chain of command, so to speak. [Gonzales, Addington, and Haynes] descended on Guantanamo, met with the combatant commander there Mike Dunlavey, watched some interrogations, and as I was told by Dunlavey and by his lawyer Diane Beaver, basically sent out the signal ‘do whatever needs to be done.’

And the other bit...torture probably happened before and after the Yoo memos.

The Thursday, February 2 story by Richard Norton-Taylor in London's Guardian reveals information from a memo of a White House meeting on January 31, 2003 between George W. Bush and Tony Blair in which Bush revealed that the U.S. intended to invade Iraq whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons program.

Phillipe Sands, a professor of international law at University College in London, revealed the memo in a new edition of his book, Lawless World.  Professor Sands last year exposed doubts shared by British Foreign Office lawyers about the legality of the invasion in disclosures which eventually forced Prime Minister Blair to publish the full legal advice given to him by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.  

The new smoking gun reveals a flagrant violation of international law.  Waging war under such circumstances constitutes a breach of the Nuremberg and Geneva codes and the UN Charter, which legitimize such action only in clear and present danger situations involving self-defense.

I searched the diaries and stories, but haven't seen this posted anywhere.

A piece running in the Guardian reveals that Blair and Bush met in January, 2003, two months before the commencement of war, and pretty much sealed a pact between them to prosecute the war against Iraq.  Their conversation was apparently memorialized in a memo which is reported on and quoted from by Phillipe Sands, a professor of international law at University College, London.   I have excerpted some choice tidbits from the Guardian piece after the flip.