Contrary To The LA Times Assertion, We Will Not Continue To Torture*

The LA Times made big headlines on Sunday when they proclaimed that the Obama Administration would continue the practice of extraordinary rendition. Perhaps though, they may have wanted to go beyond their unnamed source and talk to Leon Panetta, who will head the CIA and oversee the Agency's practices. At least Sen. Dianne Feinstein had the wherewithall to ask that pertinent question at his confirmation hearing.



Update: I put the asterisk up there, because apparently Leon Panetta got ahead of himself, and retracted his statement you see above.

Fighting Terror With....Viagra?

When it comes to Afghanistan, Western intelligence operatives have come to realize that carpet-bombing innocent civilians does not provide the best information. Now, making friends with the locals is great, but it seems that giving key elders that little blue pill made by Pfizer is even better.

Tenet Blames The Jews For His Problems

George Tenet, winner of the Medal of Freedom, is reported to have said some not-so-nice things about the members of Bush's inner circle who happen to be Jewish. Yes, Jewish. He had been designated as one of the scapegoats for faulty intelligence that gave Bush the impetus to go in and invade Iraq. Well according to some inside sources, Tenet made his displeasure loud and clear. Well, it might have been a little bit on the slurry side.

From The Atlantic:

A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.

"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up," Tenet said, but "I am not going to take the hit."[...]

"According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, "the Jews."

Stay classy Mr. Tenet, and watch out for that dastardly Scotch!

Karl Rove, Master Hypocrite

Karl Rove, Fox News contributor and McCain adviser has been busy in his new roles, but that old one is still gnawing at him like a mosquito with the West Nile virus. He knows that there are plenty of people who believe that he was responsible (because its true) for helping to out Valerie Plame and break the law. With his massive ego though, he conveniently forgets about all that to criticize the NY Times for outing a different CIA agent.

From ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, on The O’Reilly Factor, Karl Rove slammed the New York Times for supposedly leaking the name of a CIA agent. “[T]hey’ve got a very callous view about our nation’s security and interests,” Rove charged:

ROVE: Well, I read their explanation. And basically, it sounded to me like they were saying we put his name out there because we decided we could. And I mean, they didn’t have a good explanation for it.

How ironic that Karl Rove says that the country is put “at risk” when a CIA agent’s name is exposed. A quick recap of Rove’s role in leaking undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity for political retribution:

– Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper said, “Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson [Plame’s husband] was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove.”

– A week prior to publishing his column which outed Plame, Robert Novak spoke with Rove. Novak brought up Plame’s role at the CIA, and Rove confirmed that Plame worked at the CIA: “I heard that too,” said Rove.

In an addendum to the article, the Times explained its rationale: “Mr. Martinez had never worked under cover and…others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news stories and books.”

Karl truly does have selective reading habits, easily reading what he wants to in an article by ignoring the rest of the facts (that don't suit him). Talking about an agent who has already been mentioned in the press is far different from putting an agent in the press when the were covert, for purely petty political reasons, such as the agent's spouse having spoken badly about the White House a few days beforehand.

Karl, Karl, Karl.....I hope one day you get to sit in jail for a long, long time for you to think about all the crap you've pulled....or at least be prevented from spewing more crap into our lives.

Why Would Michael Todd Literally Walk Off A Cliff?

Whenever I watch James Bond movies or anything of that genre I wonder how "Hollywood" some of those scenes are. Especially curious are the ones when the police or some secondary character gets knocked off because they know too much. Well apparently real life and Hollywood share somethings in common, unless it was just sheer coincidence that Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd walked off a cliff when he went hiking Monday.

From RawStory:

Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead in Snowdonia, about 240 miles northwest of London, Deputy Chief Constable Dave Whatton said. He had been missing since going out for a walk Monday during his day off.

Whatton said the body, which was found Tuesday afternoon, had not yet been formally identified but he believed it was Todd.

He said a coroner's inquest would investigate the cause of death and did not give any further details.

Todd was elected vice president of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales in 2006, according to a biography on his Web site.

The association gave him the task of looking into accusations that Britain allowed the CIA to use the country's airports to fly terrorism suspects to other countries without any extradition hearings, a clandestine procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."

His report denied that there was anything amiss between the CIA and Britain, but who really knows what went on behind closed doors. The world of intelligence, as flawed as it is, is still quite mysterious to say the least. Interestingly enough, last month Britain admitted to the U.S. using outposts in the Indian Ocean, but honestly no one knows if Todd was a part of the release of that information. And now Michael Todd will never tell us.

Today Is Another Sad Day For The Presidency

While the race in Wyoming between Obama and Hillary adds to the excitement of the 2008 election, and Bill Foster takes on Jim Oberweis to reclaim IL-14 for the Democratic party in Congress, it is a sad day over at the White House. Now Bush may not be in a glum mood, but the American ethic, the people and our reputation around the world will truly suffer as George vetoes a bill that would have banned torture.

From The Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — The White House says President Bush will veto legislation on Saturday that would have barred the CIA from using waterboarding _ a technique that simulates drowning _ and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States' right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country's moral standing abroad.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.

The bill would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual.

Those 19 techniques have unearth scores of secrets and won over many of our adversaries in the past. Way back in World War II, interrogators knew that torturing their captives never provided truthful or useful information. All that does is produce what the victim perceives the torturer wants to hear.

I think that this is quite indicative of our President. He only sees and hears what he wants to, discarding the truth when he sees fit. You can't fit much of the truth in if the glass you are looking through is as narrow as the Presidential red plastic viewfinder.

Pirates And Emperors, Cut From The Same Cloth

NY Times Strikes A Raw Nerve In The White House

When the powers that be get angry at something one does, you know you are on the right path. Well the New York Times is definitely on a speedy track to finding out the Bush Administration's role in the destruction of the 'torture tapes' the CIA made as they waterboarded terrorists in their custody.

Dana Perino blasted the newspaper for printing a story that showed the Administration was more involved in the destruction of the tapes than they let on. The White House at least wants the sub-heading changed, from "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said" to.....well, probably something that reads like "What tapes?" or "Bush saves cat from tree!"

From Yahoo News:

The Times cited "conflicting accounts" as to whether any of the lawyers supported destroying the tapes, but cited one former top intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter as saying that "there had been 'vigorous sentiment' among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes."

Other officials told the Times that no-one at the White House called for destroying the tapes -- but that no White House lawyer ordered that they be preserved or warned that destroying them might be illegal.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino angrily denounced the Times's sub-headline -- "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said" -- in a highly unusual written statement that demanded a formal correction.

"The New York Times' inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling, and we are formally requesting that NYT correct the sub-headline of this story," she said.

Perino said that the White House has simply refused to comment on the matter beyond saying that US President George W. Bush did not recall being aware of the videos or the decision to destroy them prior to being briefed recently.

Well of course we are going to get a "no comment" out of them now, we wouldn't want poor Dana to perjure herself or anything. Not that anyone in the White House would commit a crime like that.

Unfortunately for the Times and journalism as a whole, the Times submitted to their pressure and caved in, changing the heading.

Arlen Specter Is A Fool

Senator Arlen Spector got his name in the news today, looking like the same old buffoon that he usually is. His latest outburst was to pan Congress for stalling FISA legislation and the Bush Administration for throwing up roadblocks to see what was on those CIA torture tapes.

Sigh.

Spector can't possibly be this stupid can he? Well, he can certainly act like it.

From RawStory:

Specter is proposing a compromise that would give the telecoms immunity but make the federal government the defendant in their place. "I believe that it is very important on our checks and balances to have the courts as part of the picture," he told CNN. "Regrettably, the Congress has been very ineffective in oversight on what the executive branch does."

The ACLU has argued that suing the government isn't an adequate substitute, because it can use the state secrets privilege, executive privilege, and even a claim of sovereign immunity to get the cases thrown out. "My bill answers all of those considerations," Specter replied, saying that it would make the government an exact stand-in for the telecoms with no special rights. However, a CNN legal expert who commented at the end of the segment said she believed the ACLU was right and Specter was wrong.

Specter was also asked about Attorney General Mukasey's refusal to give the Judiciary Committee any information on his investigation of the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. "I'm very disappointed in what the Attorney General did because it runs exactly counter to the assurances he gave us at his confirmation hearings," Specter said.

Wow. Lets start with the first paragraph, shall we? Giving the telecoms immunity would relinquish them from their responsibility for standing before a judge and jury for their crimes against the country and all the Americans that they allowed the Bush Administration to spy on. This "compromise," or "bending over and grabbing Congress' ankles for the President" would not solve one goddamn thing. And to talk about not having effective oversight on the Administration??? Where the hell have you been these last seven years Senator?

Obviously the ACLU answers Spector in the second paragraph. As for the third, this is further proof that Spector must walk around the Senate with a giant blindfold, because he exhibits no common sense whatsoever. Anyone that could rub two braincells together knew that Mukasey was going to do whatever it takes to keep the President away from legal scrutiny.

Apparently Arlen is down to his last working neuron.

FBI Agent Contradicts Pro-Waterboarding Claims

President Bush, who told us all that the United States does not torture endorsed the CIA's statement that waterboarding helped them to ascertain important information from Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qaeda operative. The only problem is that the important information and how it was gathered is in dispute. The CIA is backing up what they did, but FBI agents involved in his interrogation say that once he was subjected to torture whatever he told his handlers was "crap."

From The Washington Post:

In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop.

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."

The only good information came before they started "enhanced interrogation" methods (i.e. torture) which was an accidental slip that led to Jose Padilla's arrest and Khalid Sheik Muhammad's capture.

Coleman basically thinks that those at the CIA claiming waterboarding did any good is nuts. Torture has never provided any good information to anyone and this was certainly proved to be true in Abu Zubaida's case. Anyone at the CIA that tells you different is trying to pull gold from thin air.

More Obstruction Of Justice From The White House

As we learn that one man in the White House has given up his appeal of being found guilty of obstruction of justice, another count can be levied against the White House. The last one was for uncovering the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame. This one is for destroying evidence of torture, despite being told by a judge not to erase the tapes.

From The Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics[...].

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books _ and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."

Now President Bush is claiming that he only heard about the matter last week. This proves yet again that George is either lying or cannot control his White House. I'm gonna go with the former on this, the President had to know what was going on. His track record for telling the truth is far too f%*ked up to believe him now. I'd believe that he quit drinking cold turkey for twenty years before I'd take his word on not torturing people.

CIA Experts Imply Bush Lied About When He Knew About The NIE On Iran

When the information that Bush knew about the NIE before he knew what was in it smells like bullshit right off the bat. Now four former intelligence analysts are coming forward to tell the press that what Bush is trying to spin is completely and utterly ridiculous. Trying to blame this on Mike McConnell or any other CIA worker is, as they say, preposterous.

From The Huffington Post:

McGovern was totally incredulous: "The notion that the head of National Intelligence whispered in Bush's ear 'I've got a surprise for you and it's really important, but I'm not going to tell you about it until we check it out' -- The whole thing is preposterous," he said in an interview with The Huffington Post.

Riedel agreed, saying "the president either chose to ignore what he heard or his director of national intelligence is not doing his job." Riedel said he doubted McConnell failed to "do his part of the bargain."

"To me it is almost mind boggling that the President is told by the DNI that we have new important information on Iran and he doesn't ask 'what is that information?'" said Riedel, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center For Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

He said it wasn't the DNI's responsibility to tell the President to "stop hyperventilating about the Iranian threat."

So Mike McConnell should be out of the picture when it comes to the blame game. The onus is on those that hyped the Iranian threat. So replace the blame for intelligence agents with neo-cons and Bush Administration pukes (types may overlap). Hadley, Bush, Cheney, Condi and many more deserve to be held accountable for exaggerating the capabilities of Iran and trying to provoke yet another war.

Of course, all of those characters need to be held accountable for a whole slew of items, this one will just have to get in line with all the other gripes and crimes against the Bushies.

Olbermann Talks With Valerie Plame

With a new book on what really happened between her and the Bush Administration, Valerie sits down with the one, the only, Keith Olbermann:

Now Can We Impeach Him?

What will it take to get justice served in this country? Vetoing SCHIP was just heartless, not impeachable. Violating laws on torture doesn't seem to be doing much besides making a few headlines. What if we caught him illegally torturing children? Would Congress just shake its head and go back to their own business? Seriously what will it take, because this down below is just an official stamp on old news.

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

If anything, Gonzales should be tried for war crimes in The Hague. Bush, Cheney and the rest of them would be right behind them for actions that began far before Gonzales' term as Attorney General. What they truly deserve is something that no earthly presence can bestow. But what I want to know is how dark must one's heart be to approve this behavior despite knowing the difference between right and wrong.

Cafferty: Tenet, Return Your Presidential Medal

George Tenet has made quite a splash with his new book of memoirs bashing the Administration's march to war. What Tenet is missing however, is that he is just as guilty as the rest of them for being complicit in the manipulation of intelligence that was used to mislead the nation before we invaded Iraq. Tenet's job was to give the President the facts as they were, not to tell him how he could twist them for Bush's political purposes. He got that medal for twisting intelligence, and he should give it back.

First "Bombshell" From Tenet's New Book

Anyone who has followed the path America took to occupying Iraq without beating on a war drum could see the obvious. There is no way that Bush, Cheney or whomever within the Bush Administration seriously debated the threat of Saddam Hussein in the global war of terror (oops, should I have said "on" instead). Yet none of us were intimately close to the decision makers like George Tenet was. After being awarded the now-dubious Presidential Medal of Freedom, his explosive new book is going to do something revolutionary, it is going to tell the truth.

From The New York Times:

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

This book will definitely be an interesting read, if you can stomach 549 pages of George Tenet. Nevertheless, the key facts will be disseminated for those of us who are less likely to read the whole thing. Those key facts will turn a scapegoat thrown under the bus to the guy that might just be able to run over the Administration. Having been a member of the 'inner circle,' it might just do us some good.

You Must Want Your Family To Die

Dana Rohrabacher, in the true loving spirit of the Republican party had some kind words for those that do not support the Bush Administration. Apparently in his sick and twisted mind, he believes that if you do not support George Bush's secret torture program that stretched across Europe, he wants your family to die. The black and white thinking of this sad little (well not so little) man shows his hatred for anyone that opposes the Bush Administration and its never-ending efforts to destroy the constitution and the support of the world for our country. That small-mindedness was exemplified in all its glory towards the European Parliament’s committee on Human rights.

From AfterDowningStreet:

Back to the Congressional hearing. With eyes narrowed and mouth in a contorted grimace, Congressman Rohrabacker attacked the two British and one Italian members of the European Parliament who testified before the committee. Reminding one of Joe McCarty in tone and substance, Rohrabacker demeaned and degraded the report and chastised, belittled and berated the Parliamentarians. Remarkably, Rohrabacker said the most of the CIA private flights that landed in Europe were to transport CIA agents all over the world, not to move prisoners. Yet the logs of the 1245 flights have been tied by date and location to the movement of specific individual prisoners from one location to another.

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American.

Citing historic examples of other countries kidnapping persons, Rohrabacker said Israel had every right to kidnap Nazi official Adolph Eichmann from Argentina, bring him to Israel and execute him. Rohrabacher conveniently forgot to mention that the Israeli government did put Eichmann on trial, a trial which none of those who have been extraordinarily rendered have had. Rohrabacher then attacked and belittled the European Community for outlawing the death penalty saying that “You in the European community won’t stand up to evil people, you won’t execute them. Eichmann deserved to be executed, just like these terrorists must be executed.”

Someone needs to wipe that goofy smile off of his face and remind him what America is truly about. We are supposed to have this thing called the rule of law, and neither him or his master in the White House have any respect for that time-honored tradition. It is what has helped America to be the great country we became, but are now falling from in the eyes of its awakened citizens and the global community. And by the way, the Israelis put Eichmann on trial, a right that was not afforded to those secret prisoners the CIA shipped around the world.

Tenet Doesn't Pull Any Punches

According to word on the street, it looks like former CIA Director George Tenet's new book won't spare anyone when it comes to the run-up to the disastrous war in Iraq. "At the Center of the Storm" is relatively nice to Colin Powell. Everyone else won't look nearly as good, and that includes Tenet himself.

There really aren't any details yet on how he is going to run many connected to the Bush Administration through the ringer. Of course it isn't hard to imagine what he'll say about Bush, Cheney, Condi, Feith and Wolfowitz, but it will be interesting to hear how he is going to criticize himself. He'll be doing this on 60 Minutes in two weeks (Apr. 29th), the day before his book is set to come out.