Headlines you may have Missed: Torture is Torture and America committed it

by: Zappatero

Wed Apr 17, 2013 at 21:16:09 PM MST

In one of the most comprehensive studies of U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects, the panel concluded that never before had there been "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody."

(Wondering how Puppetmaster Dick Cheney escaped being name-checked. -z)

The 11-member task force, assembled by the nonpartisan Constitution Project think tank, concluded:

"It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture."

The scathing critique of methods used under the Republican administration of former President George W. Bush also sharpened the focus on the plight of inmates at Guantanamo, which Bush opened and his Democratic successor has failed to close.

Obama banned abusive interrogation torture techniques such as waterboarding when he took office in early 2009, but the widely condemned military prison at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba has remained an object of condemnation by human rights advocates. (Thanks to Republicans who freaked out over Obama's attempt to prosecute Gitmo's detainees in New York. -z)

TRUTH COMMISSION

Members of the task force described themselves as the closest thing to a "truth commission" since Obama decided early in his presidency against convening a national commission to investigate post-9/11 practices.

The panel, which included leading politicians from both parties, two U.S. retired generals and legal and ethics scholars, spent two years examining the U.S. treatment of suspected militants detained after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Panel members interviewed former Clinton, Bush and Obama administration officials, military officers and former prisoners, and the investigation looked at U.S. practices at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the CIA's former secret prisons overseas.

The task force was chaired by Asa Hutchinson, a Republican former congressman and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, and James Jones, a Democratic former congressman who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

Bush and Cheney: Murder, Inc. and Oil, Inc. ten years on...

by: Zappatero

Tue Mar 19, 2013 at 16:09:21 PM MST

Few will admit it, fewer will say it, but our young, brave and selfless soldiers did die in vain in the Iraq War: They died for the Vanity of an Idiot President, eager to outdo his father in warmaking, who was easily manipulated by an Oil-thirsty Vice President who counted the spoils of war as his own.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their blood-and-oil thirsty henchmen/liar/sociopaths should all be tried for war crimes then burn in hell for the destruction they wreaked on the world.

A Disabled Iraq War Veteran and Brave Volunteer writes a last letter to the war criminals:

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans-my fellow veterans-whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character.

You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago.

You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

Tomas Young, soon to die from his wounds, sums up his life and the tragic war that ruined his future:

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come.

I hope you will be put on trial.

But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live.

I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

They won't.

And most of those who supported these hideous and hollow human beings won't either.

They all sleep well at night and care not for the lives they smashed in a fit of blind rage initiated by a Terrorist, though evil as them, who could see the emptiness of their souls from 7,000 miles away.

Why I love Michael Moore

by: Zappatero

Thu Oct 11, 2012 at 18:55:25 PM MST

It takes real hubris 2 accuse Obama of not protecting us on "the anniv of 9/11" when it was a Repub prez who didn't protect us on the real 9/11

"Operation Ignore" by Al Franken has the facts about what the Bush Administration was not doing up to and on 9/11.

Is bipartisanship always good?

by: Zappatero

Fri Sep 21, 2012 at 09:00:59 AM MST

Is that bipartisan agreement good for our nation?

(h/t Gloria listener on AM760.)

Never forget

by: Zappatero

Tue Sep 11, 2012 at 05:50:41 AM MST

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda . That morning's "presidential daily brief" - the top-secret document prepared by America's intelligence agencies - featured the now-infamous heading: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief - and only that daily brief - in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document's significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda's history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration's reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that "a group presently in the United States" was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be "imminent," although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives' suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

"The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden," the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government's transliteration of Bin Laden's first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have "dramatic consequences," including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but "will occur soon." Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action.

The attacks of 9/11 were a tremendous failure of the Bush Administration and his National Security team, including and especially Dick Cheney (lying again here today) and other key figures like Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld.

And never forget Karl Rove was there behind the scenes the whole time as well.

They in turn politicized the terror threat and sent us down the rabbit hole of legalized torture, non-stop spying, ridiculous airport security checks and ever-diminishing rights.  

Many will say we shouldn't politicize this, but I, for one, will never forget the truth about what happened on 9/11.  

Waterboarding; Cheney Still Advocating For It

by: Bill Egnor AKA Something The Dog Said

Mon May 09, 2011 at 06:00:05 AM MST

On Fox "News" this Sunday criminal Former VP Dick Cheney said the following about returning to the use of waterboarding in terror interrogations:

I certainly would advocate it; I'd be a strong supporter of it

This is an area of contention that I have had with President Obama nearly from the first days of his administration. Namely the purely political decision not to follow through on our legal responsibility to investigate any credible allegations of torture and to prosecute those who were found responsible.

The fact that the criminal Bush Administration admitted to waterboarding at least three of our detainees, which has been by US and international law an act of torture and a potential war crime yet none of the top level people have ever been investigated for it is a national shame that will not be wiped away for a long time to come.

Worse it has left the issue of torture and waterboarding in particular open. At this late point it is easy to get academic about this form of torture. Given that I thought I would give everyone a taste of what is would be like to be waterboarded. This is a first person fictionalization of it, it is my best attempt to reproduce what a person would feel in that situation.

Warning: if you have been a victim of torture, you might not want to read this. I have been told that it can be triggering for traumatic  memories and while I want everyone to get as vicsoral as possible an understanding of torture I don't want to traumatize anyone:  

Borrow And Spend Republicans Unveil Tax Cut Package

by: Bill Egnor AKA Something The Dog Said

Wed Sep 15, 2010 at 06:33:24 AM MST

From the WaPo :

"We have a spending problem. We spend too much. We don't have a taxing problem. We don't tax too little," McConnell told reporters Tuesday. "And if we want to begin to get ourselves out of this economic trough that we're in, the only way to do that is to grow the private sector."

State department gives Blackwater $120 Million Contract

by: wade norris

Sat Jun 19, 2010 at 21:41:06 PM MST

Furthermore, Blackwater paid millions in bribes to local officials to remain silent after a bloody massacre of civilians in Iraq.
Now, Erik Prince is moving to United Arab Emirates, a country with no extradition policy with the U.S. coming on the heels of further investigations.
You'd think this company would never get another dime from the State Department.
You'd be wrong.