Conservative Gunman Committed Terrorism Against Liberals

In his statement to the court upon sentencing, the Knoxville Tennessee shooter who killed 2 and wounded 4 people in a Unitarian Church reveals why he did it - to kill those Damn Dirty Liberals. (Full PDF)

"Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them....

Echoing Palin and Joe the-Unlicenced-Not-A-War-Correspondant Plumber and their hateful "Socialist" talk, this man truly believed that he was the first footsoldier in a war to take America back from The Hated Left.

And guess who wrote his hit-list for him?

Local News Coverage of Sentencing for James Adkisson:


More from "the Manifesto"

"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."

"I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me....Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

Here we have O'Reilly and Bernard Golberg threatening to assult Media Matters - for merely documenting things they really did say!

O'Reilly: "I want to send them a cake, but I want something to be inside the cake, and I might be put in prison if that happens."

Here's Goldberg again, suggesting that O'Reilly should go down the the New York Times with a Baseball bat.

Bernard Goldberg: If NY Times attacked me like it attacks O'Reilly, "I probably would have gotten a baseball bat and gone down to the New York Times with it and found the person that wrote the editorial, but that's me."

Yeah, well it's not like someone like O'Reailly might ever really fly completely off the handle. Well, almost:



Besides O'Reilly and Goldberg you also have Ann Coulter who'se suggested in the past torture should be a televised sport, that All Arabs should have bombs dropped on them, and Liberals should be sent to Gitmo.

Which brings me to this week's scandal about No Such Agency [NSA] spying on "Americans." I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

And people wonder why I'm not a big fan of most conservatives.

Frankly, if you've ever watched Fear Factor or Saw - you know that torture already is a national spectator sport.

Throwing out violent threats against Liberals and/or anyone that confronts , threatens or challenges thems is a regular right-wing strategy.

It may be rather easy for fairly rational people to blow-off these types of comments and suggestions of violence against Liberals. There is of course, the Free Speech defense - but I do recall almost 20 years ago when the right-wing certainly didn't much care for the "Free Speech" view.

They completly ignored that idea when the band Body Count led by Ice-T dared to release the song "Cop Killer" (which is actually a statement Against Police Brutality and warning that the Rage in L.A. was rising to the boiling point and the Rodney King Riots), Republicans and members of the Fraternal Order of Police phoned in Death and Bomb Threats against their Record Label forcing them to pull the song from the album with threats of violence.

The criticism escalated to the point where death threats were sent to Warner Bros. Records executives, and stockholders threatened to pull out of the company. According to his own words in his book The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck? (1994) Ice T decided to remove the song from the album of his own volition. Eventually, the album was re-issued with "Cop Killer" removed. Ice T left the label in 1993, following disputes over the album Home Invasion. The performer stated of the controversy that "When I started out, [Warner] never censored us. Everything we did, we have full control over. But what happened was when the cops moved on Body Count they issued pressure on the corporate division of Warner Bros., and that made the music division, they couldn't out-fight 'em in the battle, so even when you're in a business with somebody who might not wanna censor you, economically people can put restraints on 'em and cause 'em to be afraid. I learned that lesson in there, that you're never really safe as long as you're connected to any big corporation's money."

Ice T Interview from Australian TV exlains what his song was really all about, and you can tell how the interviewer isn't trying to hear him.


Arguably Ice T wasn't speaking literally. He was telling a story - "It's a song from Madman", just like Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sherrif", it's Self-Defense. It was a fantasy - much like Goldberg and the baseball bat. Neither of them is really planning on carrying these actions out, anymore than Dirty Harry or the Terminator are likely to going around shooting people. Ice T has even performed several acting roles as a (non-brutal) police officer himself in films such as New Jack City and NBC's Law and Order. Clearly he knows the difference.

Time and time again prosecutors have refrained from prosecuting musicians (and film-makers) for suggestions of violence, even when people have actually carried out the actions described in their songs and films. (Although they did try to prosecute Ozzy Osborne for "Suicide Solution" and Judas Priest after some young men committed suicide - those cases all failed!) They generally realize, rightly I believe, that such an argument tends to reduce some responsibility, and guilt for the perpatrators themselves. It's allows a killer to use someone else as their scapegoat.

We shouldn't blame Catcher in the Rye for the shooting of Lennon, or the Beatles themselves for the Tate/LaBianca killings.

Common sense needs to apply here.

But what should happen when the perpatrator specifically names the person who inspired his actions, the reason for his targeting of a specific type of individual and both they and their inspirational figure further attempts to incite others to follow in the footsteps of violence against those targets?

We aren't talking about the right of self-defense with James Adkisson, he wasn't being attacked! His actions weren't justified in any manner. But he also admits he was specifically incited to commit Murder for ideological reasons, just like Eric Robert Rudolph who was inspired to Bomb the Atlanta Olympics and Women's Health Clinics by virilent anti-Abortion rhetoric, and Timothy McVeigh was inspired by The Turner Diaries after Waco, the Weapons-Strength Anthrax sent to Pat Leahy and Tom Dashcle or the Fake Anthrax that was sent to Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart. These action are not completely random. They are intended to intimidate.

At a certain point violent rhetoric crosses the line and is not Art, it's not Humor, it's not Satire, and it's not free speech when it becomes a direct and deliberate incitement to VIOLENCE - At a certain point, It's Terrorism.

Plain and simple.

Vyan

Do you Waste (Waste)
All the time that you have
Do you Take (Take)
Everything you can get
Do you Fake (Fake)
Every feeling you show
Do you Hate (Hate)
Everyone that you know

(Chorus 1)
I can't change you
Unless you change yourself
I can't make you
Into someone you don't wannabe?
Who do you Wannabe?

Will you Fight (Fight)
For what you believe in?
Do you Share (Share)
Everything you don't need?
Do you Make (Make)
All the luck that you get?
Do you Love (Love)
Even those that don't love you?

From the song "Wannabe?" - by ME!

Justifying the Inexcusable

24 - Split Up and Go After The Family


In this scene from Fox's "24" Jack Bauer talks two FBI agents into helping him kidnap and torture an innocent woman and her 10 month-old in order to get information from her Husband, a traitor Secret Service Agent. We're not talking about torturing some killer or terrorist here - they're talking about torturing A BABY!

But the truth, which so many people fail to realize is there are NO EXCUSES for Torture. None. EVER. Regardless of who it is.

Bauer presents a classic false choice - "Follow your conscience or let the 1st Gentleman Die" which is the same as what Senator Cornyn asked Attorney General Eric Holder: "Assume You Have No Option (other than to use Waterboarding)". You always have a choice, and you're always responsible for your actions. In this case they already had phone records and GPS tracking data they could have used to find the President's Husband in time.

There absolutely was a third and even a forth choice - refusing to DO THE RIGHT THING is not a valid reason for doing the wrong thing.

Holder v Leahy


Holder V Cornyn.


The UN Convention Against Torture, Signed by Ronald Reagan says this:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

The is no wiggle room here, there are no valid excuses or justifications available. It's a crime - Period.

During the Randy Rhodes show I just listened to Pat Leahy discuss how we need a "Truth Commission" to at least found out what happened, while John Conyers says - We Need TO PROSECUTE after release a 400 page document on the various abuses of the Bush Administration (that we know about!)

This week, I released "Reining in the Imperial Presidency," a 486-page report detailing the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration and recommending steps to address them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the term "imperial presidency" in the 1970s to describe an executive who had assumed more power than the Constitution allows and circumvented the checks and balances fundamental to our three-branch system of government. Until recently, the Nixon administration seemed to represent a singular embodiment of the idea. Unfortunately, it is clear that the threat of the imperial presidency lives on and, indeed, reached new heights under George W. Bush.

As this report documents, there was the administration's contrived drive to a needless war of aggression with Iraq, based on manipulated intelligence and facts that were "fixed around the policy." There was its politicization of the Justice Department; unconscionable and possibly illegal policies on detention, interrogation and extraordinary rendition; warrantless wiretaps of American citizens; the ravaging of our regulatory system and the use of signing statements to override the laws of the land; and the intimidation and silencing of critics and whistle-blowers who dared to tell fellow citizens what was being done in their name. And all of this was hidden behind an unprecedented veil of secrecy and outlandish claims of privilege.

I understand that many feel we should just move on. They worry that addressing these actions by the Bush administration will divert precious energy from the serious challenges facing our nation. I understand the power of that impulse. Indeed, I want to move on as well -- there are so many things that I would rather work on than further review of Bush's presidency. But in my view it would not be responsible to start our journey forward without first knowing exactly where we are.

We can't "Move On" unless we fully understand where we've been and how to make sure we never go back. We can't afford to sweep all of this under a rug, because we know from doing just that after the Nixon Administration - it just sits there and festers!.

Obama doesn't need to address this, Holder doesn't need to address this - we need an Special Counsel to be appointed in order to do a fair and reasonalble analysis of the Bush Administration Crimes. A Top to Bottom Review - there is no other way, and there is no excuse!

If he doesn't fully investigate and prosecute - we'll be right back here in another 30 or 40 years. No More!

Vyan

Obama opens the Whup-Ass Can!!

At the House Democratic Caucus Retreat



Some Great Lines:

Obama: Don't let the Perfect be the enemy of the absolutely neccesary. I found this debt when I showed up - wrapped in a great big bow waiting or me...

It's. About. Fracking. TIME!

For the last two week Republicans have been hammering Obama's Stimulus Plan as being nothing but a pork-barrel spending bill with an average of amount of 2 to 1 in comparitive airtime across nearly all cable networks.

Well, Obama says That's the Point!.

So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point," Obama said to laughter.

...

THIS IS NOT A GAME

Spending IS Stimulus.

In this Washington Post editorial Obama lays it out even more.

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

This is our ECONOMIC 9-11 - the time for talk is over - it's time to Git 'er Done!!

Vyan

The Lie-Publicans are gonna Cock-Block the Stimulus

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

Another thing, the tax-cut plan McConnel endorses (pdf) as an alternative really isn't cheaper than the current House/Obama plan according to an analysis by the center for American Progress, it's 3.5 Times as Expensive



Then you've got Ex-Gringrichian Congress-Critter Joe Scarborough ranting that Obama is giving tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes, except that according to the CBO they do pay sales, payroll and social security taxes.

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

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Email Form

Congress: 202 225-3121

Vyan

Former Gitmo Prosecutor Quits in Disgust

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.

Vyan

John Yoo Blasts Obama on Torture Ban - Incriminates Bush on War Crimes

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 can't? You mean that it wasn't civilian law enforcement that prevented the Millenium Attacks on the L.A.X., the bombing of Lincoln and Holland tunnels and Project Bojinka (A plot to blow up 12 planes over the Pacific simultaneously, led by WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef)?

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".

Update from Comments:
FYI - John Yoo's Homepage at UC Berkeley

Keith Olbermann is Reading my Mail!!

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!

Maybe it's just the fact that both of them tend to read Thinkprogress.org - which I admit I do everyday. And they did post the Gonzo Prosecution story, as well as the Steve King Crazy Talk Story.

The story about the Vice President's House no-longer being obscured on Google Maps was on Thinkprogress too.

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.

Far from being "Heroes", the FBI nearly arrested the Interrogators who water-boarded Zubaydah, and like the criminals they are they destroyed the interview tapes - and oh by the way - that alone isn't what "broke" him.

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.)

Vyan

Gonzo doesn't Think he'll be Prosecuted!

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.

Who offered that opinion?

Why it was then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

"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.

This what she had to say about the Yoo torture memo.

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.


Vyan