The Bush Legacy

Four of the merely six words in the title of Pew Research Center's latest poll results (pdf) are "distrust, discontent, anger" and "rancor."

That sort of says it all, doesn't it? A concentrated, supermajority of fuming, "a perfect storm of conditions," said Pew's director, Andrew Kohut -- "a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."
All of which, I suppose, was inevitable. During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the more common observations was that the unluckiest candidate would be the winner. For nearly a decade the Bush administration had labored mightily to pile-drive the nation's distrust and discontent, while throughout, its chief political strategist -- Karl Rove -- cultivated partisan anger and rancor as electoral insurance, whose costly premium has now come due.

Theirs was a conscious, unconscionable effort to split the country -- plus one -- to achieve what they confidently envisioned as a permanent majority. Hyperpatriotic global adventurism and partisan scapegoating would hold it all together, while any domestic discontent would be decisively confronted with the Reaganite shibboleth that government is the problem, not the solution.

Their objective was a kind of impotent überstate -- a sort of controlled anarchy in which the militaristic protection of Big Brother would subsume the internal vulnerabilities of plutocratic whim and socioeconomic decline.

And in this, the Bush administration accomplished its one splendidly executed job: it hugely reinforced the erstwhile moderate American belief that government, where not in uniform, is spelled s-n-a-f-u.

Best of all? If that permanent-majority thing failed to work out, some other poor schmuck would have to cope with the enduringly miserable consequences. The Bushies and their politico-economic class could take their misbegotten gains and head for the hills of material comfort; the opposition would be left the herculean task of reassembling a disintegrated nation.

Which, for President Obama (as well as his admittedly hapless but passably well-intentioned allies on the Hill), became a thankless chore. The year 2009 wasn't 1933, which now, bizarrely enough, seems a golden political age, a time before lunatic cable-news hosts and lunatic radio talk-show hosts and lunatic bloggers -- all absolutely ubiquitous, and the crazier the more successful.

Yet a good deal of today's thanklessness loops back, I think, to that splendid job performed by the Bushies: their jackhammer, propagandistic insistence that government is unfailingly inept, so what might you expect?

To the contrary what the body politic did  expect -- unschooled as it is in the grinding parliamentary process of reversing determined decline -- was nothing short of a miracle: virtually instant betterment. Obama would simply stroll into the Oval Office, I can only presume, and snap his fingers and issue executive commands and presto -- within, let's say, a year, our city on the hill would gleam again.

Eight years -- indeed, several decades -- of unprecedented, deliberate neglect and suffocating decay would be erased. Theoretically. And when the theory failed to hold? Why of course, thought the electorate: Government is unfailingly inept. Why -- against the Bushies' admonishments -- did we ever expect otherwise?

Much easier, then, to revert to the former administration's finely cultivated zeitgeist of distrust, discontent, anger and rancor: reactionaryism's best friends.

During a presidential campaign such an apocalyptic foursome is not only acceptable, it borders on the acceptably advisable. For nothing concentrates the democratic mind like motivated revenge.

Yet what appeared to be relatively short-term distrust, discontent, anger and rancor had in reality become a new way of American political life. Except for one's closest ideological allies, everyone's a vague kind of enemy; plus government's a joke, hope's a pipe dream and real and upwardly robust change is not only unattainable, it's a liberal mirage, QED.
That is the Bushian DNA of our political ghosts -- Bush's truest legacy; a sour, fuming, disoriented, thoroughly disenchanted electorate which -- the result of relentless, top-down repetition -- can always land on at least one identifiable enemy: inept government.

And irony of ironies, who's paying the political price? Why of course. The unlucky winner of 2008, who is only trying his damnedest to ept the inept.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

Where is the Accountability?

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Words
A word is dead
when it is said,
Some say.
I say it just Begins to live.
-- Emily Dickinson, c. 1872  

BuzzFlash,

One of my favorites by Dickinson, because I agree, especially if the word or words come from political leaders around the world. Obama just this week brought alive two common words that were never really dead: nuclear and assassination.

Not the first time our leaders have mentioned these two words. There is something about power in leaders that seems to always lead to debt, death, and destruction. This week I understand that we, as a nation, under the Obama administration have signed a treaty:

Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to sign new nuclear arms treaty - latimes.com

The treaty substantially cuts the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy and will significantly reduce missiles and launchers, Obama said. It follows a 1991 treaty that expired in December and about which the United States and Russia have been negotiating.   

This is all really great, the attempt in the taming of nuclear power. However, the fact that we will still bump off our enemies using assassination attempts by the CIA per instructions from Obama, just doesn't fit well, in my mind, with a nation trying to avoid violence.

I still remember the horrible sixties and the great losses that this nation had, and I firmly believe that we, as a nation, suffered greatly for the next 30 years due to those leaders that we lost. That said, we constantly are subjecting people to dangers and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and we still maintain over 800 bases around the world, which spreads fear and paranoia in countries that just might look to the U.S. as an invading and occupying country today, especially after what Bush did to Iraq. How can they trust the US government, when it's very hard for American citizens to do so?

These orders for assassinations, to me, are so Bush GOP. I was hoping that with the Clinton administration, and now the Obama administration, that once and for all, we could rid our government of the Bush crime family's influence and their thuggish ways of doing business. But I guess not. It always strikes me that these people in D.C. are so far away from the deadly decisions that they make for our military and for other innocent people around the world, that we Americans don't have to wonder how in the hell they sleep at night.  

* * * * *

What Gets an American on the White House Kill List?

Feb 5 2010, 4:34 PM ET

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told to Congress Wednesday that the U.S. can target Americans to be killed if it believes they are involved in terrorism. This supports an earlier report that the CIA and JSOC maintain White House-approved "kill lists" of three to four Americans. Blair articulated the policy as requiring high-level approval but did not mention Congressional oversight or judicial review. He described the criteria as "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans." So far, the only confirmed American target is Anwar al-Awlaki. The vagueness of Blair's criteria, as well as the assertion that Awlaki meets those criteria, raises the question: What gets an American citizen on the kill lists?

A 1981 executive order signed by President Reagan explicitly bans assassination by the U.S. government. However, in 2002, the Bush administration issued a secret finding allowing the CIA to target Americans directly involved in terrorism. American citizen Kamal Derwish was killed in 2002 under this authority, struck by an unmanned drone while traveling in a car with the al-Qaeda organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. The 2002 policy, which did not extend to JSOC, claimed that "enemy combatants" can be killed, a phrase that the Obama administration does not use.      

* * * * *  

The arrogance of such threats to kill, not only American citizens, but to kill others around the world, and we Americans have seen this type of killing already. Drones killing people in Pakistan, and we are told (paraphrasing) they were nobodies, they were dangerous "terrorists," (the idiot word of the century made popular by one of its own, idiot, of course). Or oops! They were actually innocent families and were killed as if they were just nothing more than ashes to ashes or dust to dirt or U.S. collateral damage.

I still remember the carelessness and the atrocities reported in Iraq. By the way, with the deaths of two reporters in the news as well as people targeted with cameras and not guns, how many Americans remember that at least 70 journalists and photographers were killed in Iraq, and most of them by the Bush U.S. military. Eh? Bush did not want anyone photographing or reporting, who was not connected to the U.S. military.

Also, probably not reported here in the U.S., there were families killed at check points, trying to get the hell out of Iraq. Families being killed by weapons that were being tested for use. Gory descriptions of what those weapons did. Our own military and leaders appointing themselves as judge and jury? Not in a functioning democracy, but in a dysfunctional democracy, yes, we would see this and we are constantly seeing this. I wouldn't want any of them on my jury. Do those types of mistakes sound as if those weapons were in the hands of professionals?

I thought that after Bush, who had several months of warnings before 9/11, and then used that to advance his own bloody and deadly agenda, that this would have taught U.S. government serious lessons about keeping a tight rein on U.S. leadership in power... only after one million people dead and two to three million people uprooted, homeless, and over 5,000, Americans dead, all due to lies, did most of the killing finally stop, but we Americans are still there.

And, let's think for a minute, say Saddam did have WMD. Are we, the U.S., the police of the world, when our own country has the largest stash of WMD? No. It's not our job to invade and occupy another country, killing innocent people and there was no way for this leader to ever get those WMD, which Saddam did not have, to the U.S. All lies. And, branded into my brain is the picture of Bush making fun and laughing as he played at searching for those WMD.

And, yet, today, all of those murders and lies, go unaccountable. Abuse of such power demands accountability for the dead. It's called taking responsibility. If we don't demand that, why should anyone in power think twice about what they do, even when it concerns taking lives, and it almost always concerns taking the lives of innocent people. This nation has not had accountability from our leaders since Nixon.

What happens? Over and over again, we have this type of scenario, killing people on the word of our leaders, even one such as Bush, who was never elected, and don't forget the killing Clinton did in Bosnia and the bombing for years of Iraq to please Bush number one. Killing by proxy. They may not pull the trigger, but they are responsible.

What do we have to do to get a government that respects life and is willing to be a role model for a real democracy? I'd like to know. We had to fight to save any lives with a minimal type of healthcare. Vets have to fight for healthcare after being wounded. Women have to fight to be in charge of their own bodies. I still remember years ago, as I've said before, when "rape" was questioned in U.S. courts with lawyers using coke bottles. In other words a woman being raped was not accepted. She had to "do" something to deserve it. How backward was that? Just as backward as hearing that even in today's world, women serving in our own US military were being raped by U.S. military, and not too much was being done about it.

Back to our leaders dishing out assassination jobs or invasions, when none of these people have ever known the violence of war and its lasting affects on the human heart and soul, or have even served in U.S. military. War involves such trauma that it lasts the lifetime of those involved. That is why they hate us.

Tormented from a lifetime of memories of horror. Just review the figures of so many of our own in U.S. military, suffering with PTSD and a lack of good healthcare, who took their lives after returning to this country.

Bush number two went AWOL without punishment. It's too easy for any leader of the U.S. today to kill people. I was always under the impression that Congress should be the watchdog of this type of misuse of power. But, we don't even have that type of Congress today. How many members of Congress have served in a war or in U.S. military, I wonder, and how many tried to stop Bush?

Below, more proof that Obama is just another continuation -- sorta, kinda like Clinton, and Bush number two -- of U.S. government's use of violence and using Bush's joke of the century:

"War on terrorism." We Americans are not that stupid, and our leaders are too far away from the American populace to realize that, unless they are out campaigning, that is. War is terrorism. Assassinations without trial, evidence, or a jury are not and never will be the leadership signs of a working democracy. Where is the passion that goes along with such beliefs. I don't see it in U.S. government, and it hasn't been there for years.   

And, we Americans thought we voted for change.

* * * * *

The CIA, Assassination, and the War on Terrorism by Jacob G. Hornberger

This article originally appeared in the October 2009 edition of Freedom Daily. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

Bush’s war-on-terrorism paradigm obviously provides another way to treat suspected terrorists — simply by killing them. No arrests, no Miranda warnings, no presumption of innocence, no attorneys, no trials, and no other messy procedures associated with the criminal-justice system. Not even incarceration in a military dungeon, torture, or trial before a kangaroo tribunal.

Instead, just have the CIA assassinate them.

* * * * *  

Actually, it (the Bush GOP's war on terrorism) started years ago. How many Americans know the history behind this true family of crime?

* * * * *

George H.W. Bush, the CIA & a Case of State Terrorism by Robert Parry

With CIA headquarters now officially named the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency might be hoping that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush will free it from demands to open up records to the American people.

* * * * *  

Of course, Bush was never elected and the Supreme was never punished for putting their guy into the White House. The fake five should have been impeached. Even the Supreme Court should not be above U.S. law. But, hell, U.S. law doesn't seem to be in any of the three branches of U.S. government in today's world.

For anyone interested, the below link is a long article that brings us up to 9/11:

TIME Magazine: Before Sept. 11 — The Secret History  

Where does it say in our Constitution that any President or illegal resident, such as Bush, of the White House has the power to use the CIA to carry out assassinations or even invasions and occupations for that matter? It's always been my belief that since George H. W. Bush was in charge of the CIA, that half of that organization are good people for the country and yet, another half is still under the influence of Bush Sr., and are thugs. A word that has a history and a direct connection to the word that became 'assassination.'

"Thug was first used as a term for a member of an organization of professional robbers and assassins in India who strangled their victims."
-- Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories.

* * * * * 

The threat of an Al Qaeda "Attack on America" is being used profusely by the Bush administration and its indefectible British ally to galvanize public opinion in support of a global military agenda.

Known and documented, the "Islamic terror network" is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus. There is firm evidence that several of the terrorist "mass casualty events" which have resulted in civilian casualties were triggered by the military and/or intelligence services. Similarly, corroborated by evidence, several of the terror alerts were based on fake intelligence as revealed in the London 2006 foiled "liquid bomb attack", where the alleged hijackers had not purchased airline tickets and several did not have passports to board the aircraft.

The "war on terrorism" is bogus. The 911 narrative as conveyed by the 911 Commission report is fabricated. The Bush administration is involved in acts of cover-up and complicity at the highest levels of government.

Revealing the lies behind 911 would serve to undermine the legitimacy of the "war on terrorism".

Revealing the lies behind 911 should be part of a consistent antiwar movement.

Without 911, the war criminals in high office do not have a leg to stand on. The entire national security construct collapses like a deck of cards

-- Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s "War on Terrorism"  Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.       

* * * * *  

I'm only bringing this up again because it's still going on even with Obama. This fake, so-called "war on terror." We, the U.S. and our leaders, such as both of the Bushes, have been the largest terrorists around the world, along with members of the CIA doing the bidding of these leaders and killing people when they don't even know for sure, "they just think they might be terrorists, which is what happened in Iraq and Pakistan" and this has been a proven fact. This makes the U.S. no different from any other outlaw country that goes around killing innocent citizens, such as our own innocent citizens were killed on 911. And what did Bush do to please those Americans wanting blood, anybody's blood? He bombed Afghanistan and killed up to 5,000 innocent citizens and never did get bin Laden, whose family just happened to be Bush family friends.

More facts that happened back then: At least 100 members of the bin Laden family were allowed to leave this country by Bush, without being questioned by the FBI, during the U.S. ordered fly down.

Also in the news this week is a report of a guy on a U.S. flight smoking a cigarette in the bathroom and when he is discovered, it's as if the professionals or upper class were left at home and the incident was being handled by the freshman. Whenever I hear of such idiocy, I have to think of the poor and very ignorant woman who made the mistake of believing some talking Bush GOP sap who was telling Americans that duct tape would protect them from an attack, and she wrapped her two children and herself into a small compartment and they smothered to death. 

When we have people in government being paid large salaries, they should be expected to know what the hell they are doing and what they are talking about. I personally am sick and tired of the slick phrases and parroted themes dished out to the populace by U.S. government. The same themes that were used constantly for the full eights years of the Bush GOP regime.   That was the kind of leadership that we in the U.S. did not need.

However, we do still need accountability. But what does Bush get for his continuing eight years of debt, death, and destruction all on his so-called quest of "fighting a war on terror?"  A library and speaking engagements. More proof that these leaders represent only the top 1 to 5 percent of the U.S. population, and that is the real change that we must achieve in this nation.

Which brings us to today, and since the Obama administration, just as the Clinton administration, refuses to demand accountability for the lives taken so frivolously by the Bush GOP regimes, and forge on ahead as if they meant nothing, nothing will change. Absolutely nothing. Just as it was during the eight years of the Clinton administration, and today, during the Obama administration, we have constant threats of violence from the Right Wing of the Republican Party, and the leaders of that party do nothing. We have violence inside and outside this country without responsibility. Bush would have arrested the teabaggers if they were Democrats, because he arrested and had cops at every protest, and these protests were against violence, his violence.

Power without responsibility will continue. Instead of a U.S. government of law and order, we have a government of power among the privileged and elitists. If there is a war going on, regardless of where, it is, in reality, a war against the poor.  

Thanks BuzzFlash,  
Shirley Smith
MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Let The Sun Shine In......

9/11 Commission Report Not Reliable!

I never thought it was, having read it cover to cover, and yet it was used to create whole new level of bureaucracy which the Bush administration used to hire loyalists, like Brownie. Disgusting.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

"The Reason For This Cover-Up Goes Right To The White House"

As I pointed out in 2007:

The 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees.

The official 9/11 Commission Report states:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these "detainees" have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot. Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting.

In other words, the 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand.

The Commission didn't really trust the interrogation testimony. For example, one of the primary architects of the 9/11 Commission Report, Ernest May, said in May 2005:

We never had full confidence in the interrogation reports as historical sources.

As I noted last May:

Newsweek is running an essay by [New York Times investigative reporter] Philip Shenon saying [that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees]:

The commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it.

The panel raised no public protest over the CIA's interrogation methods, even though news reports at the time suggested how brutal those methods were. In fact, the commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.

That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain.

And yet it is a distinct possibility that Al Qaeda suspects who were the exclusive source of information for long passages of the commission's report may have been subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques, or at least threatened with them, because of the 9/11 Commission....

Information from CIA interrogations of two of the three—KSM and Abu Zubaydah—is cited throughout two key chapters of the panel's report focusing on the planning and execution of the attacks and on the history of Al Qaeda.

Footnotes in the panel's report indicate when information was obtained from detainees interrogated by the CIA. An analysis by NBC News found that more than a quarter of the report's footnotes—441 of some 1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program, including the trio who were waterboarded.

Commission members note that they repeatedly pressed the Bush White House and CIA for direct access to the detainees, but the administration refused. So the commission forwarded questions to the CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel's behalf.

The commission's report gave no hint that harsh interrogation methods were used in gathering information, stating that the panel had "no control" over how the CIA did its job; the authors also said they had attempted to corroborate the information "with documents and statements of others."

But how could the commission corroborate information known only to a handful of people in a shadowy terrorist network, most of whom were either dead or still at large?

Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. ...

Kerrey said it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

Abu Zubaida was well-known to the FBI as being literally crazy. The Washington Post quotes "FBI officials, including agents who questioned [alleged Al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaida] after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home" as concluding that he was:

[L]argely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.

For example:

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.
"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."

***

"They said, 'You've got to be kidding me,' " said Coleman, recalling accounts from FBI employees who were there. " 'This guy's a Muslim. That's not going to win his confidence. Are you trying to get information out of him or just belittle him?'" Coleman helped lead the bureau's efforts against Osama bin Laden for a decade, ending in 2004.

Coleman goes on to say:

Abu Zubaida ... was a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.

***

Looking at other evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he had severe mental problems that called his credibility into question. "They all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone," Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. "You think they're going to tell him anything?"

ACLU, FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler and RawStory broke the story yesterday that (quoting RawStory):

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.

"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."

***

"The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees."

Destruction of Evidence

The interrogators made videotapes of the interrogations. The 9/11 Commission asked for all tapes, but the CIA lied and said there weren't any.

The CIA then destroyed the tapes.

Specifically, the New York Times confirms that the government swore that it had turned over all of the relevant material regarding the statements of the people being interrogated:

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission ....
“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

But is the destruction of the tapes -- and hiding from the 9/11 Commission the fact that the tapes existed -- a big deal? Yes, actually. As the Times goes on to state:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed. If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Indeed, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The CIA also is refusing to release any transcripts from the interrogation sessions. As I wrote a year ago:

What does the fact that the CIA destroyed numerous videotapes of Guantanamo interrogations, but has 3,000 pages of transcripts from those tapes really mean?
Initially, it means that CIA's claim that it destroyed the video tapes to protect the interrogators' identity is false. Why? Well, the transcripts contain the identity of the interrogator. And the CIA is refusing to produce the transcripts.
Obviously, the CIA could have "blurred" the face of the interrogator and shifted his voice (like you've seen on investigative tv shows like 60 Minutes) to protect the interrogator's identity. And since the CIA is not releasing the transcripts, it similarly could have refused to release the videos.

The fact that the CIA instead destroyed the videos shows that it has something to hide.

Trying to Create a False Linkage?

I have repeatedly pointed out that the top interrogation experts say that torture doesn't work.

As I wrote last May:

The fact that people were tortured in order to justify the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 is gaining attention.

Many people are starting to understand that top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.
Indeed, the Senate Armed Services Committee found that the U.S. used torture techniques specifically aimed at extracting false confessions (and see this).
And as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times:

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

[A]ccording to NBC news:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being "tortured."

• One of the Commission's main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

In fact, the self-confessed "mastermind" of 9/11 also confessed to crimes which he could not have committed. He later said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information - telling them what he thought they wanted to hear - in an attempt to stop the torture. We also know that he was heavily tortured specifically for the purpose of trying to obtain false information about 9/11 - specifically, that Iraq had something to do with it.

***

Remember, as discussed above, the torture techniques used by the Bush administration to try to link Iraq and 9/11 were specifically geared towards creating false confessions (they were techniques created by the communists to be used in show trials).

***

The above-linked NBC news report quotes a couple of legal experts to this effect:

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says he is "shocked" that the Commission never asked about extreme interrogation measures.

"If you’re sitting at the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than guess," said Ratner, whose center represents detainees at Guantanamo. "Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore their conclusions are suspect."...

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University’s School of Law, put it this way: "[I]t should have relied on sources not tainted. It calls into question how we were willing to use these interrogations to construct the narrative."

The interrogations were "used" to "construct the narrative" which the 9/11 Commission decided to use.

Remember (as explored in the book The Commission by respected journalist Philip Shenon), that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was an administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually true. He wrote an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the process, controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission's inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).

***
As constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley stated:

[The 9/11 Commission] was a commission that was really made for Washington - a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties - a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals.

Other Obstructions of Justice

The failure of the government to allow the 9/11 Commission to speak with the detainees directly and the CIA's subsequent destruction of the interrogation videotapes isn't the first obstruction of justice by the government regarding the 9/11 investigations.

For example:

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11 said that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times
• 
  
• Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:
• 
  

  Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . .

  
  

  * * *
  

  
  

  The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.
  

  
  

  In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

Let The Sun Shine In......

A 9/11 Reality Check

Posted on Sep 8, 2009

By Robert Scheer


What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law?       

(Not to mention the most disturbing domestic Cheney/Rove product, Data mining, millions of Americans. While pretty much useless for the purpose of finding "terrorist cells,"  data mining is a high tech way of keeping tabs on Americans most personal information, along with publicly expressed opinions on blogs and comments all over the web.)

As assaults on a society go, the 9/11 attacks, which left 3,000 dead and are sure to be described in this anniversary week as being among the greatest of historical outrages, were something less than that, given the world’s experience with the ravages of war. The countless Russians and the 6 million Jews killed by those so finely educated Germans come to mind. The 3.4 million Vietnamese, mostly rice farmers, whom Robert McNamara admitted to having helped kill with his carpet-bombing of their country, are a forgotten footnote. Yet we who have never experienced such carnage on our home front all too easily poke out tens of thousands of eyes for each lost one of our own.

Surely two planes crashing into office buildings and another hitting the Pentagon doesn’t compare to the leveling of every major city in Japan with conventional bombing, capped off by the mass murder of hundreds of thousands more at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Speaking of eyes lost, mark the words of Hiroshima’s mayor two years ago: “That fateful summer, 8:15 AM. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted.”


We assumed that the Japanese people would readily forgive us and, having been raised in the spirit of total obedience to their emperor, they accommodated our occupation quite well, even injecting industrial-grade silicon into their women’s breasts to satisfy the erotic appetites of our soldiers.

Americans who blithely claim the moral high ground with every pledge of allegiance to a flag that, because it is American, is assumed to have never been sullied by imperial greed or moral contradiction expect no less than instant and full forgiveness for our “mistakes.” Only last month, four decades after he led the massacre of 500 villagers in My Lai, Vietnam, did former Army Lt. William Calley express “regret” for his crimes. He served no time in prison for the point-blank shooting of toddlers, thanks to the commutation of his sentence by Richard Nixon, who might have been anticipating his own need for a presidential pardon.

In blind and wrathful retaliation for 9/11 we wreaked havoc on Iraq, a nation that our then-president knew had not attacked us, and we continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan who aren’t able to find Manhattan on a map.


We, a people whose nation has never suffered a long and widespread occupation, easily gave vent to our most barbaric impulses, assuming the absolute right to arrest and torture anyone anywhere in the world without revealing his identity, let alone respecting a single one of those God-given rights that we claim for ourselves alone. And even when we identify the few we hold responsible for the attacks on our soil, we refuse them public and fair trials even after years of torturing them.


Many of our co-citizens were driven to frothing-at-the-mouth vengeance, not merely be the attacks of 9/11/01, but by the out-and-out lies of the Bush/Cheney administration in the weeks and months that followed, eventually leading to the massive bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq, a nation of people who had zero to do with the events of 9/11/01. 

I knew that there would be an attack on Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, even though they asked for proof and the Bush administration refused to give any information at all. But was that the most expedient way of arresting leaders of Al Qaeda. 

I remember well, Donald Rumsfeld saying, when months past without any sighting of Osama, after Tora Bora, that finding Osama is like finding a needle in a hay stack. Seemed to me that the best way to accomplish that feat would not be blowing the haystack to "kingdom come." 

Now, 8 years later, Osama is either dead of natural causes or is still on the loose. Within months of 9/11, we now know Bush and Cheney, plus various Neocons already had Iraq in their sites before they took office and were moving assets to prepare for war with Iraq long before Congress was asked for a war resolution against Iraq

But we do have a saving grace for our experiment in democracy—although unfortunately it did not exist in the Supreme Court or Congress as a barrier to an imperial vice presidency. It is the power of the lone whistle-blower of conscience, occasionally given voice in what remains of our free press and which can influence presidential elections, as happened quite dramatically this last time around. There are those like Joe Wilson, who exposed presidential fraud masquerading as national security concern over bogus Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, and more recently the truth-telling of Ali H. Soufan, a former FBI agent and lead interrogator of terrorists.

In Sunday’s New York Times, Soufan, who was involved in obtaining much reliable information from prisoners before they were tortured, observed that the recently released memos cited by Cheney to back his argument that torture was efficient actually “fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.”

So, Cheney is again proved wrong, but if there had been a larger attack on 9/11, I doubt whether many free souls would be around now to tell him so.


AP / Alex Brandon

Two Afghan men watch from their motorcycle on Saturday as soldiers with the 20th Special Forces Group go on a training mission in Afghanistan.

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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

U.S. Interrogators In Favor of Crminal Investigation

The article below reflects what our source, a former Intel. operative, told us and it certainly fits with common sense which, unfortunately, isn't all that common in American anymore.

Support for a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the Bush administration's use of torture has grown to include a former top FBI interrogator and a career military intelligence officer with more than two decades of experience conducting interrogations.
   

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI security and counterterrorism expert who was assigned to the agency's elite Bin Laden Unit, and Col. Steve Kleinman, a career military intelligence officer recognized as one of the Defense Department's most effective interrogators, said ignoring clear-cut evidence of interrogation-related crimes would encourage more law-breaking in the future.

Cloonan and Kleinman, who conducted interrogations of terror suspects after 9/11, disputed claims by former CIA Director Michael Hayden and Republican lawmakers that a criminal investigation would damage intelligence gathering and could lead to another 9/11-type attack on the United States.

In an interview, Cloonan and Kleinman said Hayden and the lawmakers were sounding "false alarms" in an effort to keep serious crimes from being exposed. "What this is really about is cover your ass," Cloonan said. "To suggest [intelligence gathering] will come to a screeching halt if there were an investigation is not accurate."

   

Cloonan, who retired in 2002 after more than 25 years in the FBI, said he doesn't believe an investigation would lead to a terrorist attack. Kleinman, who most recently served as a senior adviser on a director of national intelligence-commissioned study on strategic interrogation, agreed.


"I'm a professional interrogator, I have 25 years of experience in this and I don't have any concern whatsoever that an investigation into how we conducted ourselves since 9/11 would in any way undermine our ability to continue gathering intelligence," Kleinman said.

Furthermore, Kleinman and Cloonan believe many of their colleagues in the intelligence community share their views. But many are unable to speak out publicly, Kleinman said, "because to do so is almost a career ender."

Kleinman and Cloonan added that the outside contractors and the interrogators, who lacked the training and experience, are the ones who saw the use of torture as a means to gain valuable information. Moreover, they are the ones who fear an investigation.


"The people who are true professionals don't see anything wrong with an investigation," Kleinman said. "I conducted interrogations in three separate military campaigns. I can look back if they called me in tomorrow and I would not even be thinking about getting liability insurance."

 

Investigation Opposed


Ex-CIA Director Hayden had a different view. At a panel discussion on the outsourcing of intelligence last Thursday, Hayden said an investigation, "no matter how narrowly defined," would undermine counterterrorism efforts.


"Continuing looking back, continuing to pull these good people through a knothole will teach people never to play to the edge, will teach people 'yeah I got an opinion from Justice and I know the President wants me to do it and the director [of the CIA] says it's a good thing and I know I'm capable of doing it but I just don't think so.'


"We will teach timidity to a workforce we need to be vigorous and active. And no matter how narrowly defined this look back might be it'll start pulling threads, you'll have a significant number of agency folks being pulled through this process, in my mind, to no good," he said.


A day earlier, nine Republican senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder saying a criminal investigation into the CIA's interrogation practices would jeopardize the "security for all Americans" and "chill future intelligence activities."


Cloonan, Kleinman and Matthew Alexander, who was the senior interrogator for the task force in Iraq that tracked down al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006, sent a letter on Friday to the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees calling for the creation of a bipartisan commission to "assess policy making that led to use of torture and cruelty in interrogations." ("Matthew Alexander" is a pseudonym used by the interrogator for security reasons.)


They wrote that a special counsel is an "important step forward" by reaffirming "the enduring power of our system of checks and balances."


"The prohibition on torture in this country is unequivocal," Cloonan, Alexander and Kleinman wrote. "To ignore evidence of criminal wrongdoing would incentivize future breaches of law."

However, they added that an investigation and the potential for prosecutions "of individuals who violated anti-torture statutes alone ... will not prevent policy makers from making similar mistakes in the future."

The veteran interrogators said an examination was needed into the problems created when "policy makers ignored the advice of experienced interrogators, counterterrorism experts and respected military leaders who warned that using torture and cruelty would be ineffective and counter-productive."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and his counterpart in the Senate, Patrick Leahy, have advocated a truth commission to look into the use of torture and other abuses that took place during the Bush administration.


But Leahy said he would not follow through on his plan without the support of Republicans, which he does not have, and Conyers's proposal never even gained the support of key Democrats. President Obama told lawmakers in closed-door meetings earlier this year that he did not support those efforts.

 
Heavy Costs


But Kleinman, Cloonan and Alexander said a serious investigation was needed because the Bush administration's policies "came with heavy costs."


"Key allies, in some instances, refused to share needed intelligence, terrorists attacks increased worldwide, and al Qaeda and like-minded groups recruited a new generation of Jihadists," they wrote.

"A nonpartisan, independent commission with subpoena power should assess the deeply flawed policy making framework behind the decision to permit torture and cruelty. Our system of checks and balances is designed to produce sound policy decisions which advance our strategic interests and are in accordance with our core values of due process."

Kleinman said he also was "disappointed" with a Washington Post op-ed by CIA Director Leon Panetta, who urged lawmakers to "move on" from talk of investigations and to resist focusing on the past.

"Every world-class intelligence organization look at where they come from to get better," Kleinman said. "I think it's critical a lot of people say this is a witch hunt. I think they're wrong."

Cloonan and Kleinman also doubted claims, like those made by Dick Cheney, that the use of torture produced actionable intelligence, the type that helped prevent another terrorist attack on US soil and "saved hundreds of thousands of lives," to quote the former vice president.

Cloonan said he had a "long conversation" with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee after he testified before the panel last year and was told that there isn't a smoking-gun document that will show torture was effective on any of the high-value detainees who were brutally tortured.


Kleinman noted that the news media reported over the weekend that the CIA's inspector general report will show that agency interrogators conducted a mock execution, brandishing a gun and a power drill during the interrogation of at least one detainee.


"I defy anybody in the intelligence community to bring forward the research, the thoughtful objective analysis that purports to support that mock executions is a consistent and effective means of getting accurate information from people," Kleinman said. "Show me the studies that say causing a great deal of fear is consistently successful in getting useful information. 'Cause there won't be.


"What people are doing is they're just scrambling because they don't know what else to do. They're scrambling for some sort of technique and they're just using things that they think 'well that will scare me so it must scare them. It would make me talk so it must make them talk.'


"Sure, they'll talk. But they're talking because they are afraid they are going to die. And they will say anything to keep from dying."

Read On »

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By Jason Leopold, the editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

When Will The GOP Get It?

 A policy of torture written and administered by the government of the U.S.A. has nothing to do with the actions of the terrorists accused but who can never be found guilty of terrorism, because they cannot be tried after they are tortured.

It says more about who we are than it does about those who stand accused of committing the crimes of 9/11. This is an issue of criminality and outrageous behavior by the highest elected and appointed officials in the U.S. government. For the sakes of our own souls we must demand accountability; REAL ACCOUNTABILITY, for crimes committed in our names and with our blood and treasure. 

Our laws are not just pretty words for good-times, to be shunted aside in times of national stress. It is during times of national stress that the people of the nation must keep a vigilant eye on power grabs which can easily be used to rob us of our Constitutional Rights.

Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona is one of nine senators who signed a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday urging him not to appoint a special counsel to investigate torture.
   

Nine Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Eric Holder on Wednesday saying the US could face a terrorist attack if the attorney general appoints a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA's use of torture against "war on terror" suspects.

If there is such an attack, these law-makers should be held an questioned, as they seem to have some kind of prior knowledge that they do not wish to share with the rest of us.

Holder is under pressure to resist launching a criminal probe, even one limited to rogue CIA interrogators. At the same time, he is facing mounting pressure from some prominent Democrats and civil liberties and human rights groups to not only sign off on a criminal investigation, but to expand it to include top Bush administration officials.

Take the investigation where it leads, Mr. Holder. In no way should underlings be held accountable if it is found that they were acting under orders they were led to believe were within the law.

The latest correspondence came on Wednesday in a letter to the attorney general that said an investigation into the CIA's interrogation practices, no matter how limited in scope, would jeopardize the "security for all Americans, chill future intelligence activities," and could "leave us more vulnerable to attack."


The senators resorted to fear-mongering, invoking the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to try and dissuade Holder:
   

"We are deeply concerned by recent news reports that you are 'poised to appoint a special prosecutor' to investigate CIA officials who interrogated al Qaeda terrorists. Such an investigation could have a number of serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans," the letter said.


The letter was sent to Holder by Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Missouri), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was also signed by Sens. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).


"The 9/11 Commission emphasized that keeping our country safe from foreign attack requires that the Justice Department work cooperatively with the intelligence community, but the appointment of a special prosecutor would irresponsibly and unnecessarily drive a wedge between the two ...


"We will not know the lost opportunities to prevent attacks, the policies to protect the nation left on the table, due to fear of future policy disagreement being expressed through an indictment. It is hard to imagine how the Justice Department could take that risk after September 11, given that the foremost duty of the Department is to protect Americans."


The timing of the letter coincides with the expected public release next Monday of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report that called into question the legality of the Bush administration's interrogation program.


Heavily redacted portions of Helgerson's 200-page report were released to the ACLU in May 2008 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, but the ACLU appealed the Bush administration's extensive deletions and the Obama administration responded to that appeal with a promise to review the materials at issue and declassify, at the very least, portions of it to the civil liberties group.


The Justice Department has delayed turning over the report three times since then. Last month, a federal court judge gave the CIA until August 24 to declassify the report.


Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said on Wednesday she believes the CIA will turn over the report next week, but she did not know whether it would be redacted yet again when released.


The secret findings of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson led to eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department for homicide and other misconduct, but those cases languished as Vice President Dick Cheney is said to have intervened to constrain Helgerson's inquiries.


His report reportedly says the techniques used on the prisoners "appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture."


Holder started to consider the need to appoint a special counsel to conduct a criminal investigation after he read Helgerson's findings, according to published reports.


The Republican senators, in their letter to Holder on Wednesday, said the CIA IG report "has been available to the Justice Department for more than five years" and should not be used as a basis to "justify" the appointment of a special prosecutor.


The IG report has "been available to the Justice Department for more than five years," the senators wrote. "Three former Attorneys General and numerous career prosecutors have examined the findings of that report and other evidence and determined that that facts do not support criminal prosecutions.


"It is difficult to understand what rationale could drive the Justice Department to now reverse course, reopen a five-year-old matter, and tarnish the careers, reputations, and lives of intelligence community professionals ...


"The intelligence community will be left to wonder whether actions taken today in the interest of national security will be subject to legal recriminations when the political winds shift. Indeed, there is a substantial risk that the mere prospect of criminal liability for terrorist interrogations is already impending our intelligence efforts, as demonstrated from the fact that CIA officials increasingly feel compelled to obtain legal defense insurance."


The senators are wrong. Jane Mayer, in her book "The Dark Side," said there was a mountain of evidence to support prosecutions and a belief by some "insiders that [Helgerson's investigation] would end with criminal charges for abusive interrogations."


But top Justice Department officials, including former head of the criminal division Michael Chertoff, his deputy Alice Fisher and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, allowed the cases to languish and may have even scuttled the probes to protect the Bush White House.


McNulty resigned in disgrace two years ago and is under scrutiny by a special prosecutor investigating the firings of nine US attorneys. McNulty faces obstruction of justice and perjury charges related to his February 2007 testimony to Congress about the ordeal.


In an interview with Harper's magazine last year, Mayer said Helgerson "investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees, and that Helgerson's office forwarded several to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution.


"The only case so far that has been prosecuted in the criminal courts is that involving David Passaro - a low-level CIA contractor, not a full official in the Agency. Why have there been no charges filed? It's a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers.


"Sources suggested to me that, as you imply, it is highly uncomfortable for top Bush Justice officials to prosecute these cases because, inevitably, it means shining a light on what those same officials sanctioned. Chertoff's role in particular seems ripe for investigation. Alice Fisher's role also seems of interest. Much remains to be uncovered."


Mayer also reported that another possible reason that the Justice Department investigations went nowhere was that Vice President Cheney intervened and demanded that Helgerson meet with him privately about his investigation. Mayer characterized Cheney's interaction with Helgerson as highly unusual.


Cheney's "reaction to this first, carefully documented in-house study concluding that the CIA's secret program was most likely criminal was to summon the Inspector General to his office for a private chat," Mayer wrote in her book "The Dark Side."


  "The Inspector General is supposed to function as an independent overseer, free from political pressure, but Cheney summoned the CIA Inspector General more than once to his office."
    "Cheney loomed over everything," one former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG's office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House."
   

In their letter, the senators also said "media reports also suggest that the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, would be a primary focus of the investigation that you envision."


Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in the span of a single month, far above the legal limit imposed by the August 2002 torture memos. Helgerson, Mayer wrote in her book, "had serious questions about the agency's mistreatment of dozens more, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."


The Republican lawmakers said, "the interrogation of KSM, and others like him, produced information that was absolutely vital to apprehending other al Qaeda terrorists and preventing additional attacks on the United States."


They then go on to blame the Obama administration for failing to provide justice for the victims of 9/11.


"It is ironic that the Obama Administration, which has delayed justice for the victims of September 11 by suspending the trial of KSM, may soon be charging ahead to prosecute the very CIA officials who obtained critical information from him," the Republican lawmakers wrote. "That KSM's treatment is receiving more prompt attention from the Justice Department than his depraved acts cannot be justified."
   

On the other end of the political spectrum, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said in a letter to Holder on August 4 that if he does appoint a special counsel to probe the Bush administration's program of torture, it must include the top officials who created and implemented the policy.
   

"There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation," Nadler wrote.


"First, such an investigation would fail to consider the possible violation of laws by high-ranking officials and lawyers who, through legal advice or otherwise, may have authorized torture," Nadler wrote.


"This country has been instrumental in establishing the principle that high-ranking officials and lawyers who use legal reasoning to justify or otherwise authorize war crimes can, and should, be held legally accountable. The ban on torture is absolute and we have a legal obligation to investigate torture and all of those who may have been party to its use."


Nadler, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and about a dozen other Democrats on the committee sent a similar letter to Holder earlier this year.


President Obama has already stated numerous times that he does not support a truth commission or any effort that would result in looking "backwards" into the Bush administration's policies.


Considering the backlash the Obama administration and Democrats faced from their Republican colleagues this month over a proposal to reform the health care industry, and the extreme partisanship over Obama's domestic policies in general, it's entirely possible that the fear-mongering in the letter sent to Holder on Wednesday could have an impact on his decision.


At the Netroots Nation conference last week in Pittsburgh, Nadler said, "As difficult and traumatic" a criminal investigation "may be for the nation we must proceed."

»

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Jason Leopold is editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.


"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.

Let The Sun Shine In......

9/11/01: Still there are valid questions

Pelican Independents have varying views on this issue, but everyone thinks there should be an independent investigation because we have seen enough evidence, over the ensuing years, to warrant such an investigation. Whatever the truth is, there is certainly enough evidence that top members of the Bush administration are, at least, guilty of criminal negligence before 9/11/01 and of using terror to further their political agenda after 9/11/01. 

None of us believes that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are innocent in the events of 9/11/01, yet no one believes they had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, which began only one week after the events of 9/11/01, though the public was not made aware of it.  Tom Ridge stated that the death of a Florida reporter was not a terror attack.


Judicial Watch, hardly a left-wing organization, had enough evidence that White House staffers, mostly staffers working for Dick Cheney and the V.P himself, began taking Cipro on the evening of 9/11/01. J.W asked the White House to confirm or deny those reports and were ignored. Cheney has yet to deny those accusations. The very fact that neither Cheney nor Bush could barely utter a sentence without the words 9/11 attacks for years after the attacks on NYC and the Pentagon but never mentioned the anthrax attacks, which were directed only at Democratic leadership in Congress and news media considered to the liberal by, probably, half of Americans, gives us pause. 

The anthrax sent to Democratic leadership was, indeed, weaponized. So, what we had was an attempt at assassination. Assassination attempts should be considered every bit as serious as the attacks on NYC and D.C., yet anthrax went unmentioned by the Bush administration with the exception of the DOJ going after an innocent man, wasting valuable time. None of us believe that the man finally blamed, a man who committed suicide and therefore cannot defend himself, had anything to do with the attacks, or if he did, he wasn't alone. We were impressed by the fact that all of his colleagues defended him and stated that they do not believe him guilty of sending weaponized anthrax to congressional leaders. A colleague of mine once said, "There is nothing more frightening than falling into the hands of one's own government." I would add, "crazy-making." Most Americans have no idea what it's like when the government comes after you, whether you are guilty or innocent. I'm sure that after what happened to the first man accused, the second man knew he didn't stand a chance.


The timing of the attacks on Congress is also interesting. They came at a time when Congress was debating the Patriot Act, one of the most anti-American Acts ever passed by Congress. Within a day or so after the attacks became public knowledge, senate offices were closed and members did not even have access to their offices before they had to vote on an Act of Congress, no small thing, that few even read. As the old saying goes, "timing is everything." 

It is in hindsight, after other politically convenient use of terror alerts and other actions have come to light, that we have a tendency to not believe anything various members of the Bush administration have to say about anything. 

Will we ever know for sure? I doubt it. If the truth ever does come out, it will be years from now and no one will care. Of course, if the 9/11 truthers are right, it will have been the Bush administration that caused the downfall of the U.S. as an empire ( a good thing) and probably as a nation (not a good thing).

9/11 mind swell

By Joel S. Hirschhorn Online Journal Contributing Writer Aug 14, 2009, 00:24

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years, the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded.

Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?

Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.

The 9/11 truth movement, at best, gets meager public attention when it is derided and insulted, used as an example of persistent conspiratorial insanity.

Make no mistake; I concluded a few years back, after using my professional engineering and materials science background to study the evidence, that the official government story is a lie. As a former full professor of engineering, I firmly believe that elements of the US government were involved with contributing to (not just allowing) the 9/11 tragedy, but that does not necessarily eliminate the role of those terrorists publicly blamed for the events. Science, logic, evidence and critical thinking told me this.

Who should we blame for the failure of the 9/11 truth movement to fix the historical record and, better yet, identify those in the government who turned 9/11 into an excuse for going to war, getting them indicted, prosecuted, and punished for their murderous acts?

It is too easy to blame the mainstream media and political establishment for refusing to demand and pursue a truly comprehensive and credible independent scientific and engineering investigation. President Obama with his tenacious belief in looking forward, not backward, exemplifies a national mindset to avoid the painful search for truth and justice that could produce still more public disillusionment with government and feed the belief that American democracy is weak at best, and delusional at worst.

Marginalized movements always face competition for public attention. There are always countless national issues and problems that feed new movements and distract the public. There have been many since 9/11, not the least of which was the last presidential campaign and then the painful economic recession, and now the right-wing attacks on health care reform. The 9/11 truth movement illustrates a total failure to compete successfully with other events and movements.

This can be explained in several ways. The 9/11 movement has not been able to articulate enough benefits to the public from disbelieving the official government story and pursuing a new investigation. What might ordinary Americans gain? Would proof-positive of government involvement make them feel better, more secure, and more patriotic? Apparently not. In fact, just the opposite. By its very nature, the 9/11 issue threatens many things by discovering the truth: still less confidence in the US political system, government and public officials. Still more reason to ponder the incredible loss of life and national wealth in pursuing the Iraq war. In other words, revealing 9/11 truth offers the specter of a huge national bummer. Conversely, it would show the world that American democracy has integrity.

The second explanation for failure is that the truth movement itself is greatly to blame. It has been filled with nerdish, ego-centric and self-serving activists (often most interested in pushing their pet theory) unable to pursue strategies designed to face and overcome ugly, challenging realities. The truth movement became a cottage industry providing income and meaning for many individuals and groups feeding the committed with endless websites, public talks, videos, books and paraphernalia. They habitually preach to the choir. Applause substitutes for solid results. In particular, it embraces the simplistic (and obviously ineffective) belief that by revealing technical, scientific and engineering facts and evidence the public and political establishment would be compelled to see the light. Darkness has prevailed.

Proof of this are the views expressed days ago on the truth movement by Ben Cohen on the Huffington Post: “I have done some research on the topic, but stopped fairly quickly into when it dawned on me that: 1. Any alternative to the official account of what happened is so absurd it simply cannot be true. 2. No reputable scientific journal has ever taken any of the ‘science’ of the conspiracy seriously. 3. The evidence supporting the official story is overwhelming, whereas the 9/11 Truthers have yet to produce a shred of concrete evidence that members of the U.S. government planned the attacks in New York and Washington.” Similarly, in the London Times James Bone recently said a “gruesome assortment of conspiracy theorists insists that the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001, were an inside job. It is easy to mock this deluded gang of ageing hippies, anarchists and anti-Semites.” Truthers continue to face a very steep uphill battle.

A common lie about the truth movement is that there have been no credible scientific articles in peer reviewed journals supporting it. But those opposing the truth movement will and do find ways to attack whatever scientific evidence is produced and published. It takes more than good science and facts for the movement to succeed.

Besides the movement having too many genuine crackpots (possibly trying to subvert it), a larger problem is what has been missing from it: effective political strategies. Besides pushing scientific results and more credible supporters, it did nothing successful to make a new 9/11 investigation a visible issue in the last presidential campaign. It did nothing effective to put pressure on a new, Democratic-controlled Congress to consider legislation providing the authorization and funding for a new, credible investigation. It seems that people who want to blame the government are often unable to also see the political path forward that requires the government to fund a new investigation.

To its credit, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth does have a petition aimed at Congress, demanding a new investigation, but has fewer than 5,000 signers. The petition effort in New York City to get a new investigation is commendable, with just under 75,000 signers, but national action is needed. Pragmatically, both efforts are unimpressive compared to other campaigns seeking political action. To get both media attention and political support, the movement needs a hundred times more documented supporters, willing to do a lot more than sign a petition.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 will come fast. The opportunity is making 9/11 an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The least delusional and defensive in the truth movement should think deeply and seriously on what needs to change to accomplish the prime goal: having an official investigation that compels most people and history to accept the truth, no matter how painful it is, including the possibility that it finds no compelling evidence for government involvement.

 
Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.

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