Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
Like a jealous ex-girlfriend that you just dumped who won't go away, the Senate Republicans are lining up to make sure our initial date with the Obama Administration goes down in flames, by hook or by crook - and the economy and country be damned.
I mean, I can understand a reasonable difference of opinion, and balancing divergent ideas - but when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel says that the Obama Plan is too expensive at $816 Billion and that the Repubs have a cheaper more effective plan, they either stupid or lying, and I don't think they're stupid.
McConnel: A trillion dollars is a LOT of money!
No Shit! It's amazing how Money Conscious Republicans have become after blowing the Clinton Surplus with six years of record deficits, isn't it?
Hey Mitch, Y'know what else cost us a Trillion Dollars?
The Iraq War.
Barney Frank: There are pub needs that we have in this society that can not be accomplished by a tax cut. No tax cuts builds a road, no tax cut puts a cop on the street, No tax cut educates a child.
Dmint: This is the largest spending bill in history and we're trying to call it a stimulus...
Frank: Spending can be a stimulus... and the largest spending bill in history is going to be the Iraq War... I don't understand (the view) from my conservative friends that building a road, building a school, helping someone get healthcare is "wasteful" spending - when will have spent Over a $Trillion In Iraq
SCARBOROUGH: You’re not going to get Republicans to line up and support tax cuts for people who don’t pay taxes. That’s taking you to a position now where you have the federal government — and this is very dangerous — just writing checks to people for doing nothing. It’s not even welfare. ... If you want pure straight socialism, if you want to buy off people, do that.
Buy Off? Is that what the Republican s are doing whenever they suggest a tax cut for their buddies on Wall Street? Obama's cut for the working class will put money in people hands, money that people can pay their bills with, that they can pay off their credit cards and loans with, money they can buy things with - y'know all the stuff that keeps those Wall Streeters in business?
Oh, and buy the way - Obama's refundable tax credit gets far more bang for the buck according to economists.
A $1 reduction in refundable tax credit creates a $1.26 increase in GDP by stimulating the economy, whereas the same cut to corporate taxes only stimulates the GDP by 30 cents.
Last week House Republicans, after lying about a CBO report on Obama's plan that didn't exist, claimed that their plan would create 6.2 Million Jobs (twice as much as Obama's) except that Christine Romer, the person that wrote the report they were quoting, says They're Full Of IT!
Question: The House claims that based on the research of CEA Chair Christy Romer, their plan would create 6.2 million jobs. Isn’t that a more effective way of jumpstarting the economy?
Answer: The Republican House analysis is flat wrong in its claim that the House Republican stimulus is more effective. No matter what your analytical assumptions, as long as they are consistent the plan the President supports would result in substantially greater job creation than the House Republican plan.
The bottom line is this, Republicans can't afford for Obama's plan to pass - or for it to work, because if it does it will completely invalidate all the rhetoric they've been using to justify Reagan/Bush-Onomics which we've been suffering under for the past 30 years and have so hollowed out the working class that we're losing jobs the way that Niagra Falls loses water, bringing our entire country is on the edge of financial collapse.
Certainly, there are things that you can criticize about the current plan, not enough infrustructure spending on shovel-ready projects, nothing to address the problem of so many people losing their homes with either a credit amnesty or ability to renegotiate your primary residence payment as an alternative to foreclosure - but the Repubs aren't being honest brokers here.
They've already sunk their party, now they're trying to sink the rest of the country with yet another 60-vote ghost filibuster simply to be a bunch of - well - Dick Heads.
I have a strong feeling Obama is NOT gonna let that happen. We can't afford to let him.
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
For all the Bushies who think that Gitmo should remain open - this former Military Prosecutor explains that the case files are a shambles and that there IS NO EVIDENCE against many who've been held there and mistreated for years - including some who are children.
In an WSJ Op-ed former OLC Attorney John Yoo blasts President Barack Obama for removing the One and Only Effective Tool for protecting America from the horrors of Terrorism which is - well - using Terrorism.
While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001.
You mean the policy that captured, tried and successfully imprisoned Terry Nichols, Ramzi Yousef, the "Blind Sheikh" and executed Timothy McVeigh under Clinton or the "Ok, Now you've covered you ass" policy of Bush?
He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.
Michael Hayden would be the former head of the NSA who illegally spied on Everyone? Yeah, we should take his advice.
Not only does Yoo have a rather distorted view of the past, he can see the future too.
The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.
What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks.
It's not like regular cops, the border patrol and the FBI foiled all these plans using fully legal and humane methods.... except that they did!
What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)
So Bush and Rice spent 9 months blowing off Richard Clarke who urged we need to take urgent action on al Qeada, and they blew off George Tenet and the August 6th PDB which said that al Qeada was likely to "Hijack Planes and attack New York and Washington" - and their only recourse after 9-11 - is to use Torture - and Yoo Verifies that Bush did exactly that at least three times!. Interesting that he wouldn't say any of that when he was under oath before congress.
Coincidence? I think not.
Then Yoo really starts talking some straight up nonsense.
The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America.
No, it doesn't Mr. Boalt Hall Professor. From Media Matters via Thinkprogres.
In fact, the Army Field Manual explicitly permits good cop-bad cop interrogations under the name of “Mutt and Jeff” interrogations, which involve two interrogators “display[ing] opposing personalities and attitudes toward the source.” The Field Manual says the “goal of this technique is to make the source identify with one of the interrogators and thereby establish[ing] rapport and cooperation.”
Wanna go 0 for 6 Professor Yoo? I thought you did.
Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" in accord with the Geneva Conventions.
No, actually that Order came from the Supreme Court in Hamdan V Rumsfeld. It's also in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Obama is simply following and implementing the law - unlike yourself.
His new order amounts to requiring -- on penalty of prosecution -- that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.
Y'know what - according to the people who actually perform interrogations, including former Special Forces Operative Matthew Alexander, the man who'se techniques led to the neutralization of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi head of Al Qeada In Iraq - Being Polite Works! - while getting all Jack Bauer with it actually puts us and our troops at far greater risk.
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.
...
I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.
More from Alexander on Countdown.
More Yoo.
Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
All of which are parts of - um - Our Constitution, y'now that thing you swore and oath to protect and defend as a member of the U.S. Government?
Here's the thing, Yoo notes that the Israelis and the British have used these techniques (against the PLO and IRA) respectively - but he leaves out the fact that both of them found that they generally created a ton of Blowback. Just as Alexander points out - it energizes the forces against you when you use inhumane techniques, Israel is having the problem right now after hitting Gaza with White-Phosphorus and destroying the UN headquarters.
He forgets that in WWII many Italian and even some German soldiers were more than eager to surrender because they knew they would be treated well by American Troops, and this was even true during the first Gulf War when many Iraqi soldiers gave up immediately upon encountering our forces with fighting. Contrast those facts to the rise of the insurgency following Abu Ghraib - and you have the answer to his hypothetical question of "risk vs reward" on the banning of torture in other coercive interrogation techniques. Following the law saves lives - Our Lives and Their Lives Too!
Yoo would seem to believe that techniques such as water-boarding are NOT torture simply because he wrote a memo saying so which re-defined "Torture" as treatment leading to imminent organ failure or death.
Here's the thing, if you stuff a pillow or a rag over someone's nose and mouth - how long will it take for their lungs to fail from lack of oxygen? And if you add water to that - how much quicker will they fail as the person DROWNS? The reason people respond so quickly to waterboarding is because - It's Attempted Murder. They're Killing YOU!
Oh sure, it doesn't leave any bruises - which allows for deniability, something that the Khmer Rouge certainly loved - but it's still attempted murder. The only thing that prevents from being full-on murder is whether they stop soon enough. And it's not that hard to cross that line.
According to Human Rights Watch - this type of "Murder" is not a hypothetical question from their 2006 Report
Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on terror.” According to the U.S. military’s own classifications, 34 of these cases are suspected or confirmed homicides; Human Rights First has identified another 11 in which the facts suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention. In close to half the deaths Human Rights First surveyed, the cause of death remains officially undetermined or unannounced. Overall, eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death.
Ya hear that Billo? Get it Johnny? Tortured TO DEATH. NOT "Near Organ Failure" - Not "Simulated" or "Feels Like" - Dead!!
Estimates from the ACLU's review of various autopsy reports are far higher, more than 44 detainees tortured to death. If true, that's 44 War Crimes all punishable by Execution under U.S. Law.
Those deaths - all of them in addition to thousands of needlessly injured, wounded and dead U.S. soldiers - lay directly at the feet on John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush.
Eat it up Johnny.
Vyan
P.S. Jack Bauer is a Fracking Tool - not a "Hero".
I don't know how... but somehow, someway, Olbermann has been reading my mail.
I know it sounds crazy, but then with all this NSA Spying stuff who knows what they're leaking out and who they're leaking it too. But after I posted on sunday about Alberto Gonzales thinking he's not gonna get prosecuted, and how Steve King said Khallid Sheikh Mohammed isn't on a "Path to Citizenship" and is more likely to wind up in the Florence SUPERMAX in Colorado - I just had to start wondering when I saw this last night...
Here's the really creepy part. Olbermann isn't the only one.
Look at this Shit from the Daily Show, again from just last night... I'm telling you It's Creepy!
So maybe it's not just me. (Although the entire Florence SUPERMAX Thing with Tim McVeigh, the Unibomber and Ramzi Yousef was my Idea. IT REALLY REALLY WAS) Ok. ok. enough - obvious the paranoid delusions of the right wing are starting to get to me....
Whew
Ok, Here's a test. One thing that was on Thinkprogress yesterday that I wanted to write about bit didn't were the following comments from one of Bush's former speechwriters justifying and praising U.S. Torturers as "Heroes".
Just Listen.
THIESSEN: The CIA developed these alternative interrogation techniques, and all of a sudden he started talking. Zubaydah’s information led us to Ramsey bin al Shibh, who was was one of the 9/11 hijackers. Together, they gave us the information that led the capture of KSM. Then, KSM gave us information about another al Qaeda operative, Majid Khan, who was in CIA custody. He told us that Majid Khan had been tasked to give $50,000 to an operative named Zubair, who was developing plots with a Southeast Asian group called JI.
THIESSEN: They’re not torturers. They’re heroes. ... And the thought that we’re sitting here discussing whether these people should be prosecuted or investigated is just outrageous. These people are American heroes who saved lives and stopped the next Sept. 11.
Ok, MY RESPONSE to this is to point out what both the CIA and the Pentagon said about the information we received from Zubaydah After he was tortured as reported by Ron Suskind in the Washington Post last year.
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
Somehow?
After Thiessen's comments, I think we know part of why Bush speech on Zubaydah had nothing to do with the reality about Zubaydah.
According to Kiriakou's account, which he said is based on detailed descriptions by fellow team members, Abu Zubaida broke after just 35 seconds of waterboarding, which involved stretching cellophane over his mouth and nose and pouring water on his face to create the sensation of drowning.
But other former and current officials disagreed that Abu Zubaida's cooperation came quickly under harsh interrogation or that it was the result of a single waterboarding session. Instead, these officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months.
But here's the thing - the good information we got from Zubaydah was all BEFORE he was tortured.
During his first month of captivity, Abu Zubaida described an al-Qaeda associate whose physical description matched that of Padilla, leading to Padilla's arrest at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002. A former CIA officer said in an interview that Abu Zubaida's "disclosure of Padilla was accidental." The officer added that Abu Zubaida "was talking about minor things and provided a small amount of information and a description of a person, just enough to identify him because he had just visited the U.S. Embassy" in Pakistan.
Other officials, including Bush, have said that during those early weeks -- before the interrogation turned harsh -- Abu Zubaida confirmed that Mohammed's role as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
So he did confirm KSM's role for us, but it wasn't because of those "Heroes" who tortured him - it was the Other Heroes who didn't. Not only that, but the information he gave us after he was tortured just got worse and worse and worse....
But FBI officials, including agents who questioned him after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home, have concluded that even though he knew some al-Qaeda players, he provided interrogators with increasingly dubious information as the CIA's harsh treatment intensified in late 2002.
In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop.
One of the bogus things that Zubaydah told us - most likely after "Theissen's Heroes" got ahold of him was that Saddam Hussein and Al Qeada had an "Operational Relationship". Zubaydah is apparently a source for the fabled "Meeting in Prague" between Iraq Intelligence and Mohommed Atta. It's just that - that shit didn't happen according to a former Pentagon Analyst.
“The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be.” [...]
“The White House knew he’d been tortured. I didn’t, though I was supposed to be evaluating that intelligence. ... It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective.”
Ya think?
Because of what Zubaydah told us under torture falsely linking Saddam to 9-11 because That's what the White House Wanted to Hear, and what Curveball (who was also nuts) told us about "mobile weapons labs" which didn't exist - 4000 American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are now DEAD!
Torture is why we wound up in the wrong war with the WRONG COUNTRY!
Admittedly I've been focusing on Zubaydah and Thiessen went much further than just him bringing up some links that I suspect have never been revealed before, but it's also clear that we didn't get any good intelligence from water-boarding Khallid Sheikh Mohammed either. From Vanity Fair via my favorite site - Thinkprogress.
But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., “90 percent of it was total f*cking bullsh*t.” A former Pentagon analyst adds: “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”
Not "us" - How stupid Bush and his cronies were. No, ARE!
Fortunately the mainline professionals in the CIA knew better.
Inside the C.I.A., says a retired senior officer who was privy to the agency’s internal debate, there was hardly any argument about the value of coercive methods: “Nobody in intelligence believes in the ticking bomb. It’s just a way of framing the debate for public consumption. That is not an intelligence reality.”
Nor Reality? Do tell? Jack Bauer is just a (badly written) character on TV? Really? In fact, somebody tell Theissen - he needs a reality refresher it seems.
And if any of this shows up on Countdown tonight - I'm moving to fracking CANADA!
(Not! - Please use my shit Stuff Keith!! Pretty Please!!! Just give a shout-out to Dkos or Thinkprogress and I'm good.)
Well, it looks like our favorite extremely unemployed former Attorney General - Alberto Gonzales - just doesn't seem to understand what all fuss about "Prosecutions for War Crimes" is all about since his successor Eric Holder said "Waterboarding is Torture"!
On the question of prosecuting officers who employed any of the “extreme tactics” that the Bush administration has acknowledged, without admitting to any “torture” of detainees: “I don’t think that there’s going to be a prosecution, quite frankly.” Gonzales said. “Because again, these activities.... They were authorized, they were supported by legal opinions at the Department of Justice.”
But under those circumstances, I find it hard to believe...
“Nonetheless, the very discussion about it is extremely discouraging,” the former attorney general said.
Dementia and Delusion really are sad, pathetic diseases aren't they?
Here's the thing, when the President said in his recent interview with Brit Hume that "I'm in the Oval Office and I've been told that we've captured Khallid Sheikh Mohammed - and they gave me a list of tools and I said 'Are these tools legal'?".
Well, from what we currently know one of the very first answers that Bush received that question on January 25, 2002 wasn't that the "techniques are legal" it was that you won't get prosecuted for them if you PRETEND that Geneva doesn't count.
"It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 [the War Crimes Act]," Gonzales wrote. The best way to guard against such "unwarranted charges," the White House lawyer concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision--then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell-- to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Geneva convention provisions. "Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that (the War Crimes Act) does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution," Gonzales wrote.
Under Gonzales advisement Bush attempted to put forth a patently false claim that Geneva only applies to people in uniforms. Problem is that Geneva Article 5 says this...
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
In plain-as-day English it says everyone - EVERYONE - is presumed to be covered by the full convention, and the only thing that changes that fact would be a Tribunal that determines that they are either a POW, a Civilian Criminal, a Military War Criminal or a NON-COMBATANT. That's it, that's all.
It wasn't until the Hamdan v Rumsfeld decision that Bush finally gave this line of idiocy up.
In Hamdan the court determined (obviously) that Geneva applied, Justice Kennedy said:
Article 3 of the Geneva Convention (III)Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,Aug. 12,1949, [1955 ] 6 U..S.T.3316,3318,T.I.A.S.No.3364. The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law.See id.,at 3316. By Act of Congress, moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered "war crimes," punishable as federal offenses,when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel. See 18 U.S.C.§2441. There should be no doubt,then,that Common Article 3 is part of the law of war as that term is used in §821.
Justice Stevens said:
Hamdan is entitled to the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention until adjudged,in compliance with that treaty, not to be a prisoner of war;
Bush then responded with the Military Commissions Act, which Revoked Habeasu Corpus for "Illgal Alien Combatants", allowed for both the use of coerced confessions and information gathered using torture while protecting the torturers.
Why did this subject even come up? although the exact timeline of events has yet to be revealed, in all likelyhood It wasn't because the President was "presented with a set of techniques" - it was because an FBI Agent had tried to arrest the CIA Interrogators who were questioning Abu Zubaydah, which was discovered after the Tapes of the Interrogation WERE ILLEGALLY DESTROYED!
Justice officials refused to comment on what the new A.G. will do, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that if he does open an investigation, the White House would support him. The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute.
The sad part is that the MCA was passed by Congress and therefore does provide the Bush Administration some level of legal cover (that doesn't come from their own delusions).
However, the MCA does prohibit torture in conjuction with the Detainee Treatment Act. It does not retroactively immunize illegal actions which took place prior to the passage of the DTA in 2005. This means that brutal coercive treatment Zubaydah, al-Qhatani and Khallid Sheikh Mohammed were in fact Criminal Acts directly authorized by the President!
The question of what will happen, and what won't will soon rest on the shoulders of AG Eric Holder, but it will also involve the counsel of Obama's new choice for head of the OLC (where onerous memos legitimizing torture from John Yoo and Jay Bybee worked). That nominee is Dawn Johnsen, and she's a doozy of a selection.
I want to second Dahlia’s frustration with those who don’t see the newly released Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) torture memo as a big deal. Where is the outrage, the public outcry?! The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it — all demand our outrage.
Yes, we’ve seen much of it before. And yes, we are counting down the remaining months. But we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power. Otherwise, our own deep cynicism, about the possibility for a President and presidential lawyers to respect legal constraints, itself will threaten the rule of law — and not just for the remaining nine months of this administration, but for years and administrations to come.
But here - right here - is the meat Johnsen's arguement on whether those "Opinions" that Bush and Gonzales are better their future freedom on have any validity what-so-ever.
OLC, the office entrusted with making sure the President obeys the law instead here told the President that in fighting the war on terror, he is not bound by the laws Congress has enacted. That Congress lacks the authority to regulate the interrogation and treatment of enemy combatants. . . .
John Yoo, the memo's author, has the gall to continue to defend the legal reasoning in this memo, in the face even of Bush administration OLC head Jack Goldsmith's harsh criticism--and withdrawal--of the memo. Not only that, Yoo attempts to spin the memo's advice on presidential power as "near boilerplate" . . .
I know (many of us know) Yoo's statement to be false. And not merely false, but irresponsibly and dangerously false in a way that impugns OLC's integrity over time and threatens to undermine public faith in the possibility that any administration can be expected to adhere to the rule of law.
Ouch!
Here's a little more from another Johnsen article on Slate.
The same question, of what we are to do in the face of national dishonor, also occurred to me a few weeks ago, as I listened to President Bush describe his visit to a Rwandan memorial to the 1994 genocide there. . . .
But President Bush spoke there, too, of the power of the reminder the memorial provides and the need to protect against recurrences there, or elsewhere. That brought to mind that whenever any government or people act lawlessly, on whatever scale, questions of atonement and remedy and prevention must be confronted. And fundamental to any meaningful answer is transparency about the wrong committed. . . .
The question how we restore our nation's honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists. . . .
Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals.
It may be premature for me to say, but I think Gonzo, Yoo, Bybee and Bush just might be eventually making an involuntary tour of Club Fed! if both Holder and Johnsen are confirmed and in charge of Justice in this nation for the next few years.
What must we do in the face of this national disgrace? I think we must prosecute. For political reasons, it my require a Special Prosecutor - but we MUST prosecute.
Ok, so Obama has done the very thing he always said he would do - he's ordered that the Gitmo Detention Facility be shutdown, and that those being held there be - what's the word? oh, yeah - tried under the law.
And a whole lot of rough tough people are having a shit hemmorage in their panties.
Like this guy on Glenn Beck's show who thinks the idea of terrorists in prison, would turn the rest of the inmates into terrorists, despite them - not being muslim - as if violent jihad were a virus like the cooties or something.
“I don’t think the average murderer or rapist hates all Americans or hates what America stands for like the terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo,” said Gramley, who lives in Venango County. “You intermix them with the prison population, and there’s the very real possibility they would influence those individuals in prison.”
This he said in response to Congressman John Murtha (decorated Vietnam Vet and Marine) saying he wouldn't mind if some former Gitmo detainees we're held in the Federal Military prison within his district.
Also In the far less than gutsy column we have Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius (D-Unfortunately) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Big Surprise) claiming "they don't want detainees" in their back yard, except I'm really not sure the Bureau of Federal Prison's has ever bothered to get permission from a Governor or Senator when they want to send someone to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
Yeah, I'm pretty positive they don't ask "Mother May I" - they just Send them!. It's not like Castro had anything to do with Gitmo.
Then you've got Rep Steve King who thinks closing Gitmo is going to make these guys U.S. Citizens! Like Obama closing a quasi-legal prison that has become the best example of Human Rights Violations World-wide is somehow creating an Illegal Alien Combatant Amnesty Program. I mean, c'mon - sometimes the stupid in Washington is as thick as frozen chicken soup. The chunky kind.
KING: Let’s just say that, that, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, is brought to the United States to be tried in a federal court in the United States, under a federal judge, and we know what some of those judges do, and on a technicality, such as, let’s just say he wasn’t read his Miranda rights. … He is released into the streets of America. Walks over and steps up into a US embassy and applies for asylum for fear that he can’t go back home cause he spilled the beans on al Qaeda. What happens then if another judge grants him asylum in the United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on a path to citizenship. I mean, I give you the extreme example of this.
What part of "Unconstitutional and Illegal as SIN" does this dim-bulb so-called "Law Maker" not understand?
Hey, Steverio - The President and Vice President both admitted that we Tortured That Guy.
If there's problem prosecuting him, It's not gonna be because of Miranda - it's not gonna be some minor "technically" - it's gonna be because of THE WAR CRIMES. And the person who'se fault it's gonna be is George W. Bush's seeing as he was nice enough to confess on camera to Brit Hume. (No water was even needed, Brit just asked and he answered!)
This crazy "We can't HANDLE these scary terrorists" under the law so we have to pull some nutball Jack Bauer Stunts idea, is a load of shit.
See this guy?
Know who he is? He's Eric Robert Rudolph, the domestic terrorist who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics killing Alice Hawthorne and wounding 111 others. He also committed several other bombs of gay nightclubs and abortion clinics until he was finally caught. Where is he now? Since 2003 he's been inmate #18282-058 serving two life sentences at a Supermax Federal Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. He spends 22-23 hours a day - everyday - in solitary confinement. Don't worry about him Comin' to GETCHA" - he's cozy.
Who's he? He's Ramzi Ahmed Yousef the Al Qaeda operative who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 killing 11 people and injuring over 1000. Later that summer he tried to kill Benizar Bhutto in Pakistan but was interrupted. He later bombed Phillipines Airlines Flight 434 as part of test run for a plan to simultaneously destroy 12 Airplanes at once over the pacific ocean (a precursor plot to 9-11). He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995, extradited to the U.S., tried and sentenced to life in 1995 for the planes plot, an in 1997 for the WTC bombing. He's currently in the same Supermax as Rudolph.
Some of you might know this boyishly cute face.
That's Timothy McVeigh, the former Gulf War Tank Vet and Domestic Terrorist who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people and injuring 450 - which until 9-11 was the most deadly terrorist attack on our soil - he was caught due to a traffic violation and identified as the bomber using a serial number from the truck that housed that bomb and a rental receipt. No wiretaps or waterboarding was needed. Where is he now? DEAD. He was executed on June 11, 2001 in Terra Haute, Indiana after being held at - you guessed it - the Florence Supermax. McVeigh's bombing was an attempt to start a Second American Civil War, between White Christian Patriots and - well - Everyone else, especially "Negroids" and "Zionists" in retaliation for the destruction of the Branch Dividians at Waco. Didn't really work out the way he planned it.
Here's a funny thing, heh heh, his execution was just one month before George Tenet, Richard Clarke and Cofer Black's desperate meeting with Condoleeza Rice on July 10th, 2001 to warn her in person that "Bin Laden is going to HIT US!" with a Terrorist Attack that would make McVeigh's and Yousef's bombs look like a firecrackers.
According Bob Woodward, She didn't listen, then LIED ABOUT IT to the 9-11 Commission and guess what else funny happened in between? BIN LADEN HIT US!
Surprise...surprise...
Wanna know who else was on McVeigh's cellblock?
This guy.
That's Ted Kaczynski - aka The UniBomber - who over the course of 18 years sent 16 bombs through the mail killing 3 people and injuring 23. He's been at Florence since his conviction in 1995.
Trust me, the U.S. Federal Prisons know how to handle people who like to blow shit up.
Know who else killed at least 16 people?
This guy.
That's Jeffry Dahmer, who lured, subdued, killed, cooked and ATE 17 people. He was caught in 1991, convicted and sentenced to 15 Life Sentences - then killed by a fellow inmate in 1994 at the Columbia Correctional Institude in Portage, Wisconsin.
He really didn't do so well at "coverting the natives" to his way of thinking.
The guys in Gitmo are supposed to be the "Worst of the Worst" - I don't any of them are worse than this guy. In fact a lot of guys in jail actually don't like terrorists - and KSM just might get Dahmered if he was released into general population. Steve King should like that idea, except his tendency not to think much.
Then there's this dude.
That's Charles Milles Manson. He masterminded the killing of (at least) six people in the Tate/LaBianca murders with the help of his followers Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkle, Leslie Van Hauten, and Linda Kasabian. The goal of the killings with it's deliberate bloody brutality was to spark a race war between Whites and Blacks, while Charlie and his followers hid out in the desert until all the dust settled and they could "rule" in the aftermath. His was an act of Terrorism, not all that different from McVeigh's (or Bin Laden's) when you think about it - all of them were trying to start a war, only Bin Laden succeeded - twice. To further this point another Manson Family member Squeaky Fromme tried to kill President Ford pure to create chaos. Even though Manson was originally sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted when the death penalty was briefly overturned in the 70s'. Although he does occasionally come up for parole, he remains at Corcoran State Prison 35 years after his crimes.
If Manson can't get out after all this time, I really don't think Khallid Sheikh Mohammed - whose much older than Charlie was - is getting out while he's still alive.
But, just for the sake of argument, what if some of them do go free?
Well considering the sudden BRAND NEW PENTAGON REPORT (what a coincidence) that says that 61 released former Gitmo inmates have returned to AL Qeada, we should at least consider the possibility. Nevermind the fact that almost no-one at Gitmo has been proven to be guilty of anything, there happens to be another report from Seton Hall which shows that the Pentagon is full of it.
DENBEAUX: Well, the government wrote two documents. One was a press release published non-DOD letterhead on their Web site that identified what they said were 30 people who had returned to the battlefield. That was in July of ‘07. That list of 30 identified 15 people.
Eight of those people were divided up into two - into groups. Three were from England; they were called “Tipton Three.” And they were there because they did a documentary called, “The Road to Guantanamo.”
MADDOW: Wait, wait. “Returning to the battlefield” means you were in a documentary?
DENBEAUX: Yes. That is included. Five more of that group actually are identified the Uighurs. Now, the Uighurs are the Chinese Muslims, and they were being held in an Albanian village after leaving Guantanamo. And they were listed as returning to the battlefield because their lawyer wrote an editorial criticizing Guantanamo detention policies.
That‘s eight of the 15 people they identified. They give seven more names, two of whom were never in Guantanamo. So they were down to five names, and of those names, two were Russians who were arrested in Russia, but not prosecuted and two more Moroccans.
So in fact, the number of people who would meet anybody‘s definition of returning to a battle field is tiny and the numbers they have given are simply incoherent.
So basically we really should be scared spitless that Obama is going to close Gitmo, all those deadly scary terrorist are all coming to get us...he he..
Yeah, right.
But what about that "Al-Shihri" guy on the news? Didn't he leave Gitmo and "re-join" Al-Qeada?
Well...
Let me just let Keith Address that one.
Said Ali al-Shihri was released while GITMO WAS STILL OPEN, so clearly this isn't Obama's fault. But the question is : Why did they release him? Was he innocent or did they just FUCK THE HELL UP again? There are two options here: If he was innocent when he went in and a terrorist when he came out - I don't think GITMO is working the way it should. So why keep it open to help make even more terrorists? If he was a terrorist when he went in, and they *Still* let him out - why the FUCK did they let him out unless none of their evidence was - a) legal b) admissable c) TRUE!
I'm just saying...it's time to get off this terror treadmill.
Anyway - speaking of scared little girls and are in the midst of wetting themselves over the scary al Qaeda guys who live in caves - You know who should be scared? Bush and Cheney should be scared.
Why - because of what happened 30 years ago with this dude.
This is William Charles Ayers - the supposed "Domestic Terrorist" that Barack Obama "Pals Around With". As a member of the Weather Underground, he was accused of several bombings including one that broke 100 WINDOWS and destroyed a statue dedicated to Riot Police in 1969. The statue was rebuilt in 1970 and then blown up again! (C'mon, - ya gotta admit that's funny in a Frat Prank kinda way) There were several casualties of the Weather Underground, but the only confirmed fatalities included 3 of their own members who were killed by a bomb that detonated prematurely. After that incident the WE determined to make non-lethal bombs only and to plant them when no victims where in the area. The were other injuries, but none (confirmed) fatal. They then proceeded to plant these bombs at the New York City Police Headquarters, The U.S. Capital Building and the Pentagon. Ayers was NEVER Convicted of anything.
Why not?
Because of various crimes and political suppression from J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO program - including tampering with evidence and illegal wiretaps which were conducted by the FBI that tainted the validity of the case and evidence. As a result the Federal Prosecutor - not the Judge, The Prosecutor! - dropped all charges against Ayers and other WE members.
Maybe Hoover and his cronies should have followed the law - ya think?
Here's the real twist, the only people who actually went to jail in connection to the Weather Underground Activities - were MEMBERS OF THE FBI!
In 1978, former FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, former acting Associate Director W. Mark Felt (now known better as "Deep Throat"), former Assistant Director for the Domestic Intelligence Division Edward S. Miller, and former supervisor of the New York field office's Squad 47 (the COINTELPRO section) John Kearney were indicted for having conspired to "injure and oppress citizens of the United States" in their anti-Weatherman operations. After a lengthy 1980 trial, Felt and Miller were found guilty by a jury, the only FBI personnel ever tried and convicted of COINTELPRO-related offenses.
Like I said, Bush, Cheney and Gonzales better watch their ass - or they just might wind up in a cell at Florence - right next to Eric, Teddy and Ramzi.
Don't scoff - it's happened before, it can happen again. With luck.
From all indications even after being out at various inaugural balls until after 1 a.m., newly sworn in President Obama was hard at work on his first day in office.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.
Obama also signed an executive order establishing strict ethics regarding all Administration personnel, banning them from lobbying after leaving their posts, accepting gifts, and freezing the pay of those making over $100,000 (including himself)
Talk about "Taking One for the Team". Following the cease-fire instituted by Isreal in Gaza just prior to his inaugural, President Obama phoned the leaders of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian authority to begin the peace process. He also selected Senator George Mitchell - who helped end the conflict in Northern Ireland with the Belfast Accords - as a special envoy to the middle-east.
Anyone who can solve the problems in Northern Ireland and get the IRA to disarm, can provide a great deal of help for Gaza.
Obama also signed an Executive Order to expedite the processing of Presidential Records and FOIA requests, like those that ACLU has used to under hundreds of cases of Torture. This of course, has already sent the Right-Wing into a Panic. Particularly Rush Limbaugh who has already declared "I hope Obama fails".
LIMBAUGH: What I’m afraid of is that what Obama did with this executive order is actually make it easier for the media to go get Bush documents. Because you know Pelosi and some of the guys over in congress are talking about war crimes trials and charges and so forth. […]
What I’m afraid of is what Obama’s done here is made the gathering of the information for this kind of stuff– This is not American. This is not America. This is not what America does. We don’t– This is Banana Republic kind of stuff.
Not so much for the "renewing" is he?
Elsewhere under the "not exactly Reconciled" column the nitwits on Fox News doubted that Obama actually is the President because Chief Justice John Roberts misread the oath of Office during the Inauguration.
Chris Wallace is the Fox brain donor who actually asked President Clinton why he didn't do anything about the U.S.S. Cole bombing? (Answer: Because the CIA and FBI couldn't agree on who did it! You wouldn't want an American President to use half-baked information and go attack the wrong people would ya, Chris? That would've Sucked!!! I'm so glad that didn't happen, whew..)
The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
You get that Chris?
After a one day delay caused by Sen John Cornyn of Texas, Hillary Clinton was confirmed by the Senate, sworn in as Secretary of State and is now on the job.
Senator Cornyn also managed to stall the confirmation of Attorney General Eric Holder in an effort to get Holder to commit to NOT prosecuting former Bush Officials for War Crimes.
“It could well be there will be a request to delay the markup for a week so those questions can be asked and answered,” Cornyn said. “Part of my concern relates to his statements at the hearing with regard to torture and what his intentions are toward our intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based on their understanding of what the law was.”
Well, Senator if I remember the Nuremberg Trials correctly "I was just following orders" really wasn't an adequate defense. No one is required to carry out an illegal or immoral order. On Bush's watch more than 40 detainees died in custody as a result of abuse during interrogation.
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.
""There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths"" said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. ""High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military.""
That's 40 War Crimes, all punishable by DEATH, resulting from techniques specifically authorized by George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
Meanwhile Senator Carl Levin feels that Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor to look into these issues.
LEVIN: We’re going to try to complete this investigation, at least on the DoD side, Ok. But on the intelligence, the CIA side, that’s going to be up to the Intelligence Committe. I know I suggested to Eric Holder, who will be the next Attorney General despite the delay that took place today, that he select some people or hire an outside person whose got real credibility, perhaps a retired federal judge, to take all the available information, and there’s reams of it.
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (who had been mysteriously fired by the Bush Administration for reason no one could explain even under oath) has been chosen to handle Gitmo Prosecutions.
Obama Orders the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, he also signed an order requiring all interrogations to follow the Army Field manual (which prohibits torture), setup an task force to determine the dispensation of current detainees.
Yet another bold step away from the long national nightmare that was the Bush era.
Meanwhile in Texas, the still unemployed former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales shed a tear, while his fellow Bushian former FEMA director Joe llbaugh lamented on how the former President - was just so misunderstood.
Yeah, I guess we all just don't understand how we lost $2.5 Trillion Dollars, 5 Million Jobs and 10,000 American Lives (from 9-11, Katrina and Iraq) on George Bush's watch. We should all really be thankfull...
