Zelikow, Bush Torture Memo Dissenter

It's up to Holder

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Why the Bush torture architects must be prosecuted:

 A counter-terror expert speaks out

By Malcolm Nance

Sunday, April 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

Reading the Bush Administration torture documents released last Thursday by the Department of Justice - documents all about inflicting pain, suffering and discomfort - I felt plenty of my own.
America is truly about to go through the looking glass. But it's a task that must be accomplished if we are to stand before the world and destroy al-Qaeda.

I have been engaged in the hunt for al-Qaeda for almost two decades. And, as I once wrote in the Daily News, I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people - as we trained our own fighting men and women to endure and resist the interrogation tactics they might be subjected to by our enemies. I know waterboarding is torture because I have been on the giving and receiving end of the practice.

This was during the last four years of my military career, when I served at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school. Working there, and helping protect our servicemen and women, was my greatest pride. We especially emphasized escape, because captivity by al-Qaeda's Jihadis would be severe, if not, final.  Our methods of instruction were intense, but realistic and safe.

Now, at long last, six years of denials can now be swept aside, and we can say definitively: America engaged in torture and legalized it through paperwork.

Despite all the gyrations - the ducking, dodging and hiding from the facts - there is no way to say that these people were not authorizing torture. Worse yet, they seem to have not cared a wit that these techniques came from the actual manuals of communist, fascist and totalitarian torturers.  It is now clear how clearly - how coldly - Bush's lawyers could authorize individual techniques from past torture chambers, claim they came from the safe SERE program, and not even wet their beds at night. That many U.S. service members over the years have died as a result of these same techniques was never considered.

This is about more than one tactic, waterboarding, that has gotten the lion's share of attention. As a general rule, interrogations without clearly defined legal limits are brutal.  Particularly when they have an imperative to get information out of a captive immediately.  Wearing prisoners out to the point of mental breakdown; forcing confessions through sleep deprivation; inflicting pain by standing for days on end (not minutes like in SERE); beating them against flexing walls until concussion; applying humiliation slaps (two at a time), and repeating these methods over and over.

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msnbc.com Video Player

Amen, Mr. Olbermann

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The official version of 9/11 questioned + Zero An Investigation Into 9/11

Bush said give me a reason (to attack Iraq) in the first cabinet meeting. Someone did just that!

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Ralph Nader on The Alex Jones Show: Investigate 9/11

More evidence....Bush and Cheney are war criminals

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LBJ accused Nixon of treason + From Nixon to 9/11

Not surprising in the least.

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Paying Attention to 9/11 Related Alternative News

Can it BE more obvious?

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9/11 FLIGHT 77 PHONE CALL LIES

Well, do tell!

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Is Obama Willing To Become A Conspirator After the fact?

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Rahm Emanuel: President Obama does not support prosecution of torture policymakers

By GottaLaff

Excuse me? Excuse me??

Oooh. Rahm has maybe dropped something accidentally definitive here. Asked about prosecutions, he starts to answer that the field agents who carried out the techniques should not be prosecuted, and that this is the belief of the president. GS asks, "What about the people who designed the policies?" And Rahm says that the President doesn't support their prosecution either. This shuts a door that was left open by the White House last week, in which the potential prosecution of the people who constructed the torture regime was still on the table. Now it appears that it's not. That's big news.

That's not just big news, that's big bad news.

UPDATE: Video here.

Thank You, Spain!

Judge wants to keep Gitmo case alive

 

Posted: 10:19 AM ET

By Al Goodman
CNN Madrid Bureau Chief

MADRID, Spain (CNN) — A Spanish judge moved Friday to keep alive an investigation into six former Bush administration officials for alleged torture of prisoners at the U.S. detention camp for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Cuba.

He acted just hours after prosecutors urged the case to be dropped, according to a court document.

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Teabaggers turn off Independents

We can sure vouch for that! 

Goopers are digging their own graves....and possibly ours.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Tea Tantrums Backfire: Independents Turned Off, Some GOPers Worried

By GottaLaff

 

Gee, it seems them wacky, zany Tea Tantumers, those patriotic paragons of secession and racism, are embarrassing their own party. Some people never learn. Oh well:

While the anti-tax sentiment of the protests may have been sincere, the images pulled from the events have often been offensive, embarrassing, or politically problematic.
It is a development that has tripped up the GOP before. The rallies outside McCain-Palin events included some of the same bile that was seen at the tea parties: charges of fascism, terrorism and other malicious criticisms leveled at Barack Obama. And it did the Republican ticket little good in its efforts to bring moderate voters to the cause. [...]

"My own sense that is I don't see anything going on that is good for Republicans," said Doug Bailey, a longtime Republican consultant who helped co-found the centrist reform movement Unity08. "I just don't get it. [...] [A] large segment, in terms of numbers, doesn't amount to a couple hundred people demonstrating in Washington or wherever. That's a non-event ... Nobody likes taxes. So, of course, I'm sympathetic myself. I might throw a tea bag myself. But the fact is, that it is particularly ineffective for the Republican Party when it is Rush Limbaugh and the likes stirring it up. That just doesn't speak to the middle."

Of course, because the series of nationwide tea parties were geared towards a specific day (Tax Day), the political ramifications of the events seem naturally limited. "Those tea parties will be long forgotten by, oh, say tomorrow," said Stu Rothenberg, of the Rothenberg Political Report. "Do you really think that next November, when people go to the polls, the April 15 tea parties will be on their minds?"
That said, plans are in place for a next wave of protests in July. More significantly, as the

GOP continues to stake their future on a wave of populist anger at the government and economy (witness: Texas Gov. Rick Perry talking about secession), the likelihood only increases that the most vocal and offensive elements of that anger will come to personify the party.

Then by all means, keep doing what you're doing. Offending Americans is the best way to alienate them, hence, the fastest route to losing more elections. So please, be our guests: offend away.

More fun here.

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Republican Learning Curve....

 ....and why it is necessary to prosecute American war criminals.

During the crash called the Great Depression, Hoover refused to help the people, saying that the market would correct itself in time. Problem was, none of the working class had time.

Learning: zero...action: do their damnedest to destroy the New Deal and the Great Society because of their fear of socialism, even when balanced with capitalism. The New Frontier was simply murdered.

Nixon: Most people my age remember well those years and crimes. Lesson learned. Do what you will, future presidents. The worst that can happen is that you may be forced resign, just ahead of an impeachment and trial by the senate, and avoid any kind of real punishment. All of the high ranking criminals of the Nixon walked free.

Reagan/Bush: Iran/Contra: Never fear, the guy who was basically behind most of the crimes got elected president, after Mr. Reagan's terms were up and he was so confused he didn't even know his own Sec. of State or that he had ever been president, for that matter.

Clinton let the matter drop, saying let bygones be bygones. Problem is, the rest of the world remembers what happened during the Reagan wars in Central America, under the cover of the "War on Drugs,"another war so stupid that it is trash to the rational mind. Basically, the Reagan/Bush administration told Congress to shove it and that they would do as they damn well pleased. The Boland amendment be damned! Meanwhile, Cocaine was being flown into the U.S. by the CIA just as fast as financial aid to the Contras went out, through a circuitous route, involving Iran and Israel.

Republicans now believed they were truly invincible, and with very good reason. Casper Wineberger was pardoned by Poppy Bush and none r of them really paid any price at all.

All of the above gave us the BuCheney years of horror.

This is the Republican learning curve. If they can get away with all they have gotten away with, why not start WWIII. Nothing will happen to them. Nothing ever has.

It is time that changed, and if it doesn't change now our country will implode.

It is past time to hold criminals accountable, especially those with wealth and power, as they can do the most damage.

The release of the torture memos opens the door to accountability. We, the people, must insist on it, NOW!

If those rsponsible for the nightmarish last 8 years are not held accountable, how can we stay here? If we do, we are upholding war crimes of a most grave nature, as well as crimes against the Constitution.

Maybe that sounds simple....too simple. Most of the time the truth is simple. We are the ones who complicate it beyond all reason.

The minute the Bush administration began their own campaign of terror, we lost the "war on terror," as if one could actually declare a war on a deeply felt emotion.

Gather the evidence and put the "Deciders" on trial. We really have no choice but to do so or leave.


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Right Wing Extremist On the Rise In Amarica

Napolitano stands by DHS report conclusion that right-wing extremist groups are targeting vets.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a report finding that right-wing extremist groups inside the United States may be gaining new recruits and that they are targeting veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, conservative critics — led by Fox News — have been up in arms, with some claiming that the report shows that the Obama administration is waging a “war on veterans.” Today on CNN, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that she regrets the politicization of the report that has ensued, but stands by its conclusion:

NAPOLITANO: Here is the important point. The report is not saying that veterans are extremists. Far from it. What it is saying is returning veterans are targets of right-wing extremist groups that are trying to recruit those to commit violent acts within the country. We want to do all we can to prevent that.

Watch it: at Think Progress, link above.

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Senate Report Finds Rumsfeld Directly Responsible for US Torture of Prisoners

How the hell did we miss this?

Bush, Cheney and Rummy and others have done more harm to my country than Osama could have ever dreamed of doing.

Does Osama work for Bush or is it the other way around. Their goals certainly seem to be the same.

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Maddow: CIA report describes torture at 'black site' prisons

This, given what I already knew, makes me sick and ashamed.

As Poppy would say, "This cannot stand."

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The Bush Torture Story Is Not Over!

Prosecute the Deciders, NOW

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Limbaugh Laughs at Torture

Rush has apparently done more damage to his gray matter than we thought with his massive addiction to Oxycontin.

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VOICES: Georgia passes law honoring terrorists and traitors -- look away, look away

UnFreakingBelievable!!

By John F. Sugg, Executive Editor
Georgia Online News Service

A time trip I like to take about once a year spirits me back to Sept. 19-20, 1863, at a spot along the Tennessee-Georgia border where soldiers did what soldiers do. And that includes dying -- 3,969 of them -- and being maimed, blinded, shattered and a variety of other almost-but-not-quite-lethal events we describe as wounding -- another 24,430.

It was called the Battle of Chickamauga, and if you go to the visitor center at the battlefield, you'll be captured, as I am on my annual treks, by the photographs of common men in rough blue and gray uniforms. Many of the warriors were mere boys. This is not the fancy dress Civil War portrayed by Hollywood.

Among the larger photos is one of Col. Cyrus Sugg of the Confederate Army's 50th Tennessee Infantry, who commanded Gregg's Brigade after Brig. Gen. John Gregg was shot in the neck. One of the plaques scattered around the battlefield even notes where "Sugg took command," a phrase that appeals to me.

Unfortunately, Col. Sugg rated a calculation in one or both of the numbers above. He was wounded at Chickamauga, and then taken to a field hospital in Marietta, where he expired.

Cyrus Sugg was a relative, and one of many Suggs who fought in the Civil War, so this is personal for me, folks. John H. Sugg, another Tennessean, was a Confederate soldier who ended up as a Yankee prisoner of war. Then there was Joseph Sugg, who kept dodging service in one or the other of the competing armies in Missouri until captured by federal troops who made him join their band. There was even a Rebel steamboat named the Tom Sugg, which was captured by Union solders in Arkansas' Little Red River.

And, there are many African-Americans with the surname Sugg or Suggs, who likely are descended from slaves owned by my ancestors who originally settled in South Carolina. I've even attended a family reunion of one branch of the black Sugg family.

So, all things considered, I get this Southern heritage thing. But if I ever in some eternity get to ask Col. Cyrus Sugg a question, it would be: "Suh, jes' what were y'all thinkin'?"

And if I ever get a chance to ask the Georgia General Assembly, en masse, a question on the subject of history, it would be: "Gentlemen and ladies, if I may use those terms in their loosest application, what the hell were you thinking when you failed to pass urgent transportation funding but did find time to pass a silly law that would have the effect of elevating the fables of Gone With the Wind to sanctified history?"

Which is exactly what a bill that passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses (AKA asylums) of the General Assembly did. The law denoting April as Confederate Heritage and History Month will undoubtedly be signed by Gov. Sonny "Unreconstructed" Perdue.

Let's consider for a minute exactly what Georgia will be commemorating. A bunch of brigands, in order to preserve their own aristocratic way of life, connived and committed acts of mass terrorism to undermine and overthrow the U.S. government. If there had been a Pentagon in the 1860s, they surely would have bombed it.

They pursued their criminal conspiracy by convincing the most uneducated and unsophisticated citizens that the nation they thought they were part of really wasn't their nation, but that a mythological fairyland of cavaliers and damsels was their homeland. The treasonous leaders of this conspiracy, especially the military el jefes led by a turncoat named Robert E. Lee, violated their sacred oaths, including those made to God. They claimed to be honorable, but where the hell is honor in betraying one's country and vows?

The plebeians were largely duped into joining the 19th Century's version of Al Qaeda, but the law allows little room for those who are determinedly stupid. Just as many uneducated Muslims are conned by "leaders" into committing vile and unforgivable acts of terrorism, so too were the farmboys of the South deceived into believing in a "cause" that never really existed.

That's not quite the magnolia and Scarlett O'Hara version of Confederate history that the legislators envision. Without regard to the implications, their proposed law calls on all Georgians "to honor, observe, and celebrate the Confederate States of America, its history, those who served in its armed forces and government, and ... the cause which they held so dear from its founding on February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, until the Confederate ship CSS Shenandoah sailed into Liverpool Harbor and surrendered to British authorities on November 6, 1865."

Indeed, it's worth noting that they did not pass a law endorsing the rich, fruitful "Southern history," only that part of the South's past as it relates to a band of usurpers, terrorists and traitors. But, of course, defining it as "Confederate" history means it's white history. Blacks, as we know from the Holy Gospel of Margaret Mitchell, had only supporting roles, mostly to be whipped or be treated with about the same paternalism as one shows to a good dog.

In part, this Confederate history law is a mean-spirited swipe at the idea of black history months. The legislation would equate the fantasy of a noble "lost cause" with the actual reality of the African-American narrative, a story that has been suppressed, often viciously so, by the South's Jim Crow mentality. Put another way, to follow the Georgia legislature's logic, the Aryan myth of Nazi Germany would be just as valid as the true history of the Holocaust.

Since this is Georgia, everything is about race. The Republican (AKA Neo-Confederate) dominated legislature didn't pass transportation funding or other critical legislation because the rural good ol' boys were playing racial politics, at least in part. They don't want to be perceived as doing something that would help all of those blacks, interloping white Yankees, gays and other minorities in Atlanta.

The Confederate history law is more of the same mindset. Indeed, its Senate sponsor, John Bulloch, hails from that part of the state 200 miles south and 200 years in the past from metropolitan Atlanta. It's a part of the state where more than a few folks have folded sheets and hoods in their attics. I'm sure Bulloch has no intention of teaching about the legacy of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Ku Klux Klan, and the 5,000 or so incidents of terrorist lynchings by fans of Confederate history. That would be simply inconvenient and uncomfortable.

Racism has been a sure road to power for some Republicans. When former state Rep. Sue Burmeister (R-Augusta) introduced a requirement for photo voter registration in 2005, U.S. Justice Department lawyers reported that she said, "If there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and "when black voters ... are not paid to vote they do not go to the polls."

Sadly for the GOP, being beholden to the "Old South" is about as viable a long-term political strategy as Germans who still believe a fellow named Adolf had some great ideas for running the world. Aunt Pittypat bemoaned: "Oh, dear. Yankees in Georgia. How did they ever get in?" Bad news for Pittypat (and Georgia legislators):

A lot of Yankees and a lot of Southerners (like me) who won't tolerate racial politics and who most definitely don't believe in honoring terrorists, whether named Osama bin Laden or Jefferson Davis, now live in Georgia.

State Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta) chided his colleagues on the Confederate history month law -- but his comments are equally applicable to much of what goes on at the Gold Dome. "These Southern states really still have not come back into the Union," Brooks told the Los Angeles Times. "That is why it's been so difficult over the years to get the states to recognize that flying the Confederate emblem on the flag, holding reenactments and pushing these calendar events as a matter of law is a reflection . . . of their Confederate mentality. ... The Confederacy lost, and the majority of the American people will not accept these ideas about a renegade group of folks who decided they would overthrow the U.S. government."

Put another way: Do un-American acts have a shelf-life? If certain acts were un-American less than 50 years ago, weren't they un-American 150 years ago? If so, who would expect us to honor those acts today? Are these people terrorist sympathizers? Are they un-American?

(Photo of Georgia state Sen. John Bulloch from the Georgia legislature's website)


We gotta get out of this place....if it's the last thing we ever do....

Let The Sun Shine In......

C.I.A. Memos Could Bring More Disclosures

 

We can only turn the page when we have finished the one before. There are legal issues involved in this nightmare. More so, there are real moral issues; defining issues for our nation. 

We are facing an identity crisis of  huge proportions. We need something like the Nuremberg trials. I don't recall any German prosecuted simply for being a German soldier. More, it was the various Deciders who were prosecuted before the whole world.

 

Even as Bush told the world that the U.S. doesn't torture, our CIA, and perhaps others, were engaged n what anyone would deem torture. Those who say that interrogation methods, like water-boarding, are not torture, should have to endure them. Otherwise, they have no credibility.

 

We have known for years that torture does not work. Rather it supplies only what the interrogator wants to hear; false Intel, giving the "Deciders' a reason to do what they had already planned to do.

Physicians who agreed to participate in the torture sessions should be kicked out of the AMA and their practices shut down. They should never be allowed to practice medicine in the United States. They have smashed to bits their Hippocratic oaths. First, do no harm!

Those who ordered torture should be tried for their crimes, and not behind closed doors.

Of course the Republicans object. Their is nothing scarier to them than the truth about the last two administrations; the Bush/ Cheney years.

April 18, 2009

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Even as President Obama urges the country to turn the page, his decision to reveal exhaustive details about interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency could lead to a flood of new disclosures about secret Bush administration operations against Al Qaeda, current and former government officials said Friday.

At the same time, the new revelations are fueling calls by lawmakers for an extensive inquiry into controversial Bush administration programs, and Mr. Obama now faces a challenge making good on his promise to protect from legal jeopardy those intelligence operatives who acted within Justice Department interrogation guidelines.

Some members of Congress and human rights lawyers are likely to press for new disclosures about the period of several months in 2002 when C.I.A. interrogators began interrogating Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda operative captured in March of that year, before the Justice Department had officially endorsed the interrogation program.

Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Friday raised the prospect of prosecuting senior Bush administration officials and Justice Department lawyers who authorized the harsh interrogations.

“If our leaders are found to have violated the strict laws against torture, either by ordering these techniques without proper legal authority or by knowingly crafting legal fictions to justify torture, they should be criminally prosecuted,” Mr. Conyers said in a written statement.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article published Friday, two senior Bush administration officials were highly critical of the White House decision to declassify the memos.

“Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001,” wrote Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, and Michael B. Mukasey, a former attorney general.

“These are the first dominoes,” said Jameel Jaffer, an A.C.L.U. lawyer. “It will be difficult for the new administration to now argue that other documents can be lawfully withheld.”

Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, raised that very prospect in recent meetings with White House officials as he pressed his case to withhold delicate details from the public release of the Justice Department memos.

In a statement to the C.I.A. employees on Thursday, Mr. Panetta said the release of the Justice Department memos “is not the end of the road on these issues.”

“More requests will come — from the public, from Congress, and the Courts — and more information is sure to be released,” he said.

Some Republicans in Congress criticized the White House for declassifying the details of the interrogation techniques, saying that the revelations would allow Qaeda operatives to train to resist the rigors of captivity.

Agency officials are now worried that the revelations could play into demands by lawmakers for extensive investigations on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Officers of the C.I.A., they said, could even be called to testify in public about their role in detention and interrogation operations.

One focus of scrutiny could be the period from April to August of 2002, when C.I.A. officers interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the Justice Department gave its official written endorsement of the interrogation program. According to a Justice Department inspector general’s report, F.B.I. officials who watched some of the interrogation sessions in a Thailand safe house reported that the C.I.A. interrogators had used several harsh techniques.

The Justice Department is also expected make public an internal ethics report that officials say is highly critical of top Bush lawyers who drafted the interrogation memos, including Jay S. Bybee, John C. Yoo and Steven G. Bradbury. Legal experts said there is an outside chance that the report could include referrals to state bar associations, which have the power to reprimand or disbar their members.

Republican lawmakers and some Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have already criticized Mr. Obama for banning all of the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The techniques were both lawful and effective, they said, and putting unnecessary limits on intelligence officials could make the United States more vulnerable to future attacks.

The effectiveness of the C.I.A. techniques is now the subject of a review by the Senate Intelligence Committee. White House officials have generally supported this inquiry for several reasons. Unlike the idea of an independent commission proposed by Mr. Conyers, which would be a very public affair, the intelligence committee’s review is being carried out behind closed doors. The committee’s final report, if it is to be made public, could be as much as a year away.

Let The Sun Shine In......