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Old 12-07-2007, 10:21 AM   #1 (permalink)
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In the Climate of the Bush "Politics of Fear", Democrat Leaders Our Eyes & Ears?

Ranking Democratic Senate Intel Committee member Sen. Jay Rockefeller
"knew something about this", but he said nothing....he should have been our "eyes and ears". Now he is chairman of that Senate Committee. Where are the unreleased parts of the 2004 Intel commitee report on the ways the white house handled Iraq pre-invasion intelligence he had promised to make public?

Ranking Democrat on the house intel. committee until Jan., 2007, Jane Harman, says she vaguely "Knew about it", and "wrote a letter".

Was this enough to meet her obligation to be "our eyers and ears"?

A main white house effort the last four years was <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5411688">to militarize the management of formerly civilian headed intelligence agencies</a>. In addition to key democrats on the two intel committees turing "a blind eye", wasn't it a good idea, in terms of serving the interests of "the people", to appoint civilians to head these agencies? Aren't the largest intel. agencies, DIA, etc., already managed by the military?

Why did democrats vote to approve these appointments by the president of military officers to head key intelligence agencies?

Should defendants in criminal cases in the US receive new trials now that Mike Hayden admits that "evidence" uised against them was "coerced" from third parties by CIA personnel using "techniques" that made them fearful enough to destroy videotaped evidence of?
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/wa...nted=1&_r=1&hp
C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations

December 6, 2007
C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by President Bush and Congress. It was not clear who within the C.I.A. authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The New York Times informed the C.I.A. on Wednesday evening that it planned to publish an article in Friday’s newspaper about the destruction of the tapes. Today, the C.I.A. director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote a letter to the agency workforce explaining the matter.

<h3>The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

Mr. Moussaoui’s lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Mr. Moussaoui — showing that the Al Qaeda detainees did not know Mr. Moussaoui and clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot..... </h3>

...Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

“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 and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

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.

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” his statement read....
Quote:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/12/w...-you-need.html
Thursday, December 06, 2007

Where's Rose Mary Woods When You Need Her?

Marty Lederman

Think they couldn't top the Ashcroft hospital encounter? The waterboarding and removal of Daniel Levin?

Well, how about a good, ol'-fashioned case of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/washington/06cnd-intel.html?hp">obstruction of justice</a>?

Truly remarkable. When the Times told the CIA that it was going to run this story, Mike Hayden quickly sent out a letter to the CIA, reprinted below. (Hat tip to John Sifton for the letter.) Hayden's explanation for the destruction was the need to protect the identity of CIA agents. As though the CIA destroys all its documents that contain identifying information about its agents. Unfortunately for Hayden, but not surprisingly, the Times reports that the tapes were destroyed "in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy." Says who? Says <h3>several officials</h3>.

There is a lot to parse in that letter, but unfortunately I can't this evening, other than to briefly annotate the letter itself.

Except that one thing should be emphasized: According to Hayden, "the leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago [they didn't ask to see them?!] <h3>and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the material</h3>. In a news release that he put out this evening, Jay Rockefeller claims that the Intel Committees were not "consulted" on the use of the tapes "nor the decision to destroy the tapes." But he does not deny that he was informed of the agency's intent to dispose of the tapes, and he acknowledges that he learned of the destruction one year ago, in November 2006. <h3>And this is the first time he has said anything about it</h3>. Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of legally dubious (at best) CIA intelligence activities, and then saying nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at which point he expresses outrage and incredulity -- but reveals nothing. Really, isn't it about time the Democrats select an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one who will treat this scandal with the seriousness it deserves, and who will shed much-needed light on the CIA program of torture, cruel treatment and obstruction of evidence?

[UPDATE: <a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hyL3au-RZxEcch2P9ymXaJ9mroogD8TCAIDO0">Pam Hess reports</a> that Jane Harman also knew of the intention to destroy the tapes, and she at least "urged" the CIA in writing not to do it. (Where were her colleagues?) But when she found out the CIA had destroyed the tapes, where was Harman's press conference? Where were the congressional hearings?]


<h3>Message from the Director: Taping of Early Detainee Interrogations</h3>


The press has learned that back in 2002, during the initial stage of our terrorist detention program, CIA videotaped interrogations, and destroyed the tapes in 2005. I understand that the Agency did so only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries--including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. [What about the 9/11 Commission? What about the failure to tell the Moussaoui judge about these tapes? What about the obvious future legislative and judicial inquiries? (Note that the destruction likely occurred just after Dana Priest broke the story of the CIA black sites in 2005.)] The decision to destroy the tapes was made within CIA itself. The leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the material. [Yes, and what did they say about that?]/ Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed.

If past public commentary on the Agency's detention program is any guide, we may see misinterpretations of the facts in the days ahead.

With that in mind, I want you to have some background now.

CIA's terrorist detention and interrogation program began after the capture of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002. Zubaydah, who had extensive knowledge of al-Qa'ida personnel and operations, had been seriously wounded in a firefight. When President Bush officially acknowledged in September 2006 the existence of CIA's counter-terror initiative, he talked about Zubaydah, noting that this terrorist survived solely because of medical treatment arranged by CIA. Under normal questioning, Zubaydah became defiant and evasive. It was clear, in the President's words, that "Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking."

That made imperative the use of other means to obtain the information-means that were lawful, safe, and effective. To meet that need, CIA designed specific, appropriate interrogation procedures.

Before they were used, they were reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice and by other elements of the Executive Branch [why other "elements" of the Executive branch? Which ones? And doesn't this confirm that OLC approved the CIA techniques -- probably orally -- even before the 08/01/02 Torture memo was promulgated?] Even with the great care taken and detailed preparations made, the fact remains that this effort was new, and the Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations.

The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages. At one point, it was thought the tapes could serve as a backstop to guarantee that other methods of documenting the interrogations-and the crucial information they produced-were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. [Can you imagine? No need for actual video and audio recordings of this vital gathering of "crucial information." No need for future trials, future investigations, future training, future investigations, etc.] Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002.

As part of the rigorous review that has defined the detention program, the Office of General Counsel examined the tapes and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning. The Office of Inspector General also examined the tapes in 2003 as part of its look at the Agency's detention and interrogation practices. [And it "determined," what, exactly? Did the IG say?: "Yeah, sure, go ahead and destroy the only primary evidence of my investigation."] Beyond their lack of intelligence value-as the interrogation sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels [think about that -- the U.S. government claiming that video "lacks value" once it is described in detail in a written version. Let's just hope that's not business-as-usual at the CIA. Yup, Jim, I've written down what was in those photos; you can throw them out now."]-and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them [hmm . . . legal or internal . . . interesting use of adjectives], the tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qa'ida and its sympathizers. [Surely such identities could be redacted or hidden, no? Is it SOP for the CIA to destroy all its records containing agents' identification, because of the prospect that they might one day be leaked?]

These decisions were made years ago. [Note the passive voice.] But it is my responsibility, as Director today, to explain to you what was done, and why. What matters here is that it was done in line with the law. [And where, exactly, is that law explaining how an agency can destroy evidence of possible wrongdoing?] Over the course of its life, the Agency's interrogation program has been of great value to our country. It has helped disrupt terrorist operations and save lives. It was built on a solid foundation of legal review. [Oh, so that's what they call the August 2002 OLC torture memo.] It has been conducted with careful supervision. If the story of these tapes is told fairly, it will underscore those facts.

<h3>Mike Hayden</h3>
Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3969154
ABC News
Justice Asked to Probe Tape Destruction
Senate Official Seeks Investigation of CIA Destruction of Terror Suspect Interrogations
By PAMELA HESS
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat on Friday asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the CIA obstructed justice by destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.

A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois asked for a probe of "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."

In a speech on the Senate floor, Durbin dismissed the CIA's explanation that it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators.

"We know that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces" of those who appear on camera, Durbin said. "This is not an issue that can be ignored."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said his committee would conduct a full review of the matter. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y., also called for a full investigation.

"We've got to really clean house here and get to the bottom of what's been going on in the last years," she said Friday.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the work of all attorneys representing U.S. prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, says the CIA may have destroyed crucial evidence it requested in 2004.
I think that democrats who enabled the crimes of the Bush administration to be obstructed or covered up, should be prosecuted along with those who ordered and obeyed orders to commit crimes....abuse of prisoners, withholding of evidence from defense lawyers, and destruction of evidence are a few.

Do you think that the CIA videotapes could have been destroyed if Rockefeller and Harman were adequately representing "the rest of us"? Do you think that they have committed crimes by not objecting to a coverup and destruction of evidence? Weren't they aware that Moussaui was on trial and evidence used against him came from coerced interrogations?

Do "the politics of fear", created as a smokescreen and an excuse by the Bush/Cheney for their abuses of human rights, in any way exonerate Rockefeller and Harman?

Last edited by host; 12-07-2007 at 10:42 AM..
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Old 12-07-2007, 06:18 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
Do "the politics of fear", created as a smokescreen and an excuse by the Bush/Cheney for their abuses of human rights, in any way exonerate Rockefeller and Harman?
The only thing these Democrats feared was loss of their jobs. Their inaction cost many innocent people their freedom and lives. They're complicit in (some of) the crimes of this administration and as such they deserve to be locked up. They won't be, because nobody in government today has the balls to stand up for what's right; they're all afraid of looking "too soft" on terrorism.
__________________
And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.
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Old 12-07-2007, 08:41 PM   #3 (permalink)
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I love the way the Repugnants and their toadies are now trying to shift the blame for the Iraq debacle to the Democrats. Remember how the Repugs stated over and over: If you ain't with us, you are un-American, and how the public bought that tripe, making it impossible for anyone to vote against Mongo Bush's idiotology..and now they are using that same vote against the Democrats. Way to twist the truth.

The Intel at that time was fabricated to justify the invasion of Iraq, but no one, other than the Asses of Evil...Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld & Cuntalezza were privy to the real truth. They stirred the war frenzy, now they should pay.
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Old 12-07-2007, 10:20 PM   #4 (permalink)
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inBoil and angelic, Welcome!

Luckily, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) understands "the law", and serves on the Senate Intel Committee that Sen. Jay Rockefeller chairs:

Background: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/20...fter-john-yoo/

Quote:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/20...e-white-house/

Whitehouse Reveals Smoking Gun of White House Claiming Not to Be Bound by Any Law
By: emptywheel Friday December 7, 2007 8:49 am

Damn, I love me some Sheldon Whitehouse. He, like, actually knows the law. And he, like, is willing to actually read the stuff he is exercising oversight over..

About "emptywheel":
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/wa...5bloggers.html
Bloggers for Firedoglake.com.. share an apartment in Washington while covering the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr

By SCOTT SHANE
February 15, 2007

..With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial..

....Some bloggers at the trial have seen their skepticism about mainstream reporting confirmed.

“It’s shown me the degree to which journalists work together to define the story,” said Marcy Wheeler, author of a book on the case, “Anatomy of Deceit,” and the woman usually in the Firedoglake live-blogger seat.

Ms. Wheeler, a business consultant from Michigan who writes under the nom-de-blog “emptywheel,” believes that some trial revelations have been underplayed in the conventional media because “once the narrative is set on a story, there’s no deviating from it.”...
Quote:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1197...googlenews_wsj
Details From Justice Legal Opinions
Could Complicate Surveillance Push
By EVAN PEREZ
December 7, 2007 10:06 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- In the latest complication for the Bush administration's controversial surveillance activities, a key Democratic ally revealed what he said were secret Justice Department legal opinions that appear to undercut assurances from the government that it is protecting Americans' privacy....


..Sen. Whitehouse said ..."Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it."

That suggests the 1981 executive order limiting the government's actions could be ignored by the president.

Sen. Whitehouse said another section stated that the president's powers as commander in chief allowed him to unilaterally "determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority."

<h3>A Justice Department official said the opinions Sen. Whitehouse was quoting from were in line with past opinions issued under Democratic administrations dating back to the 1970s. The official disputed that the notes Sen. Whitehouse read were from secret documents.</h3> The official said, the "points noted by Senator Whitehouse represent basic and long-recognized propositions of law that flow directly from the Constitution's separation of powers. They are not the creation of this Administration, and they are fully consistent with" a landmark 1803 Supreme Court decision that serves as the basis for judicial review.

The 1978 FISA law was given a temporary update in August before Congress went on its summer break, but those changes are set to expire in February. President Bush and Republicans in Congress have pushed for broad changes to the law, saying it is necessary in order to allow intelligence gathering aimed fighting terrorism...

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/1...egal-opinions/

December 7, 2007, 8:18 pm
<h3>Sen. Whitehouse’s Statement on Justice Dept.’s Legal Opinions</h3>

In the latest complication for the Bush administration’s controversial surveillance activities, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a key Democratic ally, revealed what he said were secret Justice Department legal opinions that appear to undercut assurances from the government that it is protecting Americans’ privacy. A Justice Department official said the opinions Sen. Whitehouse was quoting from were in line with past opinions issued under Democratic administrations dating back to the 1970s. The official disputed that the notes Sen. Whitehouse read were from secret documents.

Below is the text of Sen. Whitehouse’s press release:

Press Release of Senator Whitehouse
In FISA Speech, Whitehouse Sharply Criticizes Bush Administration’s Assertion of Executive Power

Friday, December 7, 2007
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, delivered the following remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate today:
We will shortly consider making right the things that are wrong with the so-called Protect America Act, a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush Administration. It is worth for a moment considering why making this right is so important.
President Bush pressed this legislation not only to establish how our government can spy on foreign agents, but how his administration can spy on Americans. Make no mistake, the legislation we passed in August is significantly about spying on Americans – a business this administration should not be allowed to get into except under the closest supervision. We have a plain and tested device for keeping tabs on the government when it’s keeping tabs on Americans. It is our Constitution.
Our Constitution has as its most elemental provision the separation of governmental powers into three separate branches. When the government feels it necessary to spy on its own citizens, each branch has a role.
The executive branch executes the laws, and conducts surveillance. The legislative branch sets the boundaries that protect Americans from improper government surveillance. The judicial branch oversees whether the government has followed the Constitution and the laws that protect U.S. citizens from violations of their privacy and their civil rights.
It sounds basic, but even an elementary understanding of this balance of powers eludes the Bush administration. So now we have to repair this flawed and shoddy “Protect America Act.”
Why are we in Congress so concerned about this? Why is it so vital that we energetically assert the role of Congress and the Courts when the Bush Administration seeks to spy on Americans?
Because look what the Bush Administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.
For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.
To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.
1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
Let’s start with number one. Bear in mind that the so-called Protect America Act that was stampeded through this great body in August provides no – zero – statutory protections for Americans traveling abroad from government wiretapping. None if you’re a businesswoman traveling on business overseas, none if you’re a father taking the kids to the Caribbean, none if you’re visiting uncles or aunts in Italy or Ireland, none even if you’re a soldier in the uniform of the United States posted overseas. The Bush Administration provided in that hastily-passed law no statutory restrictions on their ability to wiretap you at will, to tap your cell phone, your e-mail, whatever.
The only restriction is an executive order called 12333, which limits executive branch surveillance to Americans who the Attorney General determines to be agents of a foreign power. That’s what the executive order says.
But what does this administration say about executive orders?
An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
“Whenever (the President) wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order,” he may do so because “an executive order cannot limit a President.” And he doesn’t have to change the executive order, or give notice that he’s violating it, because by “depart(ing) from the executive order,” the President “has instead modified or waived it.”
So unless Congress acts, here is what legally prevents this President from wiretapping Americans traveling abroad at will: nothing. Nothing.
That was among the most egregious flaws in the bill passed during the August stampede they orchestrated by the Bush Administration – and this OLC opinion shows why we need to correct it.
Here’s number two.

The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
<h3>Yes, that’s right. The President, according to the George W. Bush OLC, has Article II power to determine what the scope of his Article II powers are.
Never mind a little decision called Marbury v. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, establishing the proposition that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Does this administration agree that it is emphatically the province and the duty of the judicial department to say what the President’s authority is under Article II? No, it is the President, according to this OLC, who decides the legal limits of his own Article II power.
The question “whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II,” is to be determined by the President’s minions, “exercising his constitutional authority under Article II.”
It really makes you wonder, who are these people? They have got to be smart people to get there. How can people who are so smart be so misguided?
And then, it gets worse. Remember point three.
The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
Let that sink in a minute.
The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that “l’etat c’est moi” and “The King can do no wrong.” Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the “supreme leader.” Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors, “in this company the counsel’s office is bound by the CEO’s legal determinations.”</h3> The board ought to throw that lawyer out – it’s malpractice, probably even unethical.
Wherever you are, if you are watching this, do me a favor. The next time you are in Washington, D.C., take a taxi some evening to the Department of Justice. Stand outside, and look up at that building shining against the starry night. Look at the sign outside- “The United States Department of Justice.” Think of the heroes who have served there, and the battles fought. Think of the late nights, the brave decisions, the hard work of advancing and protecting our democracy that has been done in those halls. Think about how that all makes you feel.
Then think about this statement:

The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
If you don’t feel a difference from what you were feeling a moment ago, well, congratulations – there is probably a job for you in the Bush administration. Consider the sad irony that this theory was crafted in that very building, by the George W. Bush Office of Legal Counsel.
In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:
1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”
3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”
<h3>When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up.</h3> We should not even be having this discussion..
I have condensed the OP of the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108289"> President Bush: Honest Head of State, Who Observes/Upholds International Treaties,Or?</a>
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108289

IMO, it is important to discuss the admission by president Bush, in his speech yesterday, that the CIA did run "secret prisons", just as Dana Priest of the WaPo reported, last november, and the implications of this admission and the overall, secret Bush administration, "policy", that, as the second quote box here supports, seems to make a case for the accusation that the Bush admin. "program", is itself, a domestic and an international crime, in fact several felonies and an attack on international human rights treaty provisions that the US has long signed off on, upheld, and respected...until 2001:

News Report that broke this "story", last year:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101644_pf.html
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; A01

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement......
Quote:
http://civilliberty.about.com/b/a/257559.htm
Civil Liberties
From Tom Head,
Your Guide to Civil Liberties.

What the President Didn't Say
Category: War on Terror

...Let's examine relevant portions of <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html">the speech</a> carefully. First:<blockquote class=yes>One reason the terrorists have not succeeded is because of the hard work of thousands of dedicated men and women in our government, who have toiled day and night, along with our allies, to stop the enemy from carrying out their plans. And we are grateful for these hardworking citizens of ours.<br><br>

Another reason the terrorists have not succeeded is because our government has changed its policies -- and given our military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel the tools they need to fight this enemy and protect our people and preserve our freedoms.</blockquote>Note that what President Bush is saying here is very clearly that there is a connection between the amount of power given to his administration and the absence of post-9/11 terrorist attacks. He is arguing, in effect, that you can't have one without the other--that a more libertarian government would not be able to effectively fight terrorism.<br><br>He provides no tangible evidence to back up this assertion, but he doesn't really have to. The overwhelming memory of 9/11 hovers over his speech; he has delivered it less than a week before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, and even gone to the trouble of stocking the audience with the families of 9/11 victims, as he noted at the beginning of his speech:<blockquote class=yes>Thank you. Thanks for the warm welcome. Welcome to the White House. Mr. Vice President, Secretary Rice, Attorney General Gonzales, Ambassador Negroponte, General Hayden, members of the United States Congress, <b>families who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks on our nation</b>, and my fellow citizens: Thanks for coming.</blockquote>So the message here is undeniable: "When you hear me talk about these complex civil liberties issues, think of 9/11. Think of how much danger you're in, and how badly you want to be safe."<br><br>

<b>Politicians typically make that kind of blatant appeal to fear when they're asking for more power, or attempting to justify power that they already have.</b><br>

After reminding us that we're safe because his administration has been granted a controversial amount of power, President Bush goes on to say:<blockquote class=yes>The terrorists who declared war on America represent no nation, they defend no territory, and they wear no uniform. They do not mass armies on borders, or flotillas of warships on the high seas. They operate in the shadows of society; they send small teams of operatives to infiltrate free nations; they live quietly among their victims; they conspire in secret, and then they strike without warning.</blockquote><b>This is important because it is the same reasoning the Bush administration used in <a href="http://civilliberty.about.com/od/waronterror/p/hamdan.htm"><i>Hamdan v. Rumsfeld</i></a> (2006) to justify treatment of accused terrorists in a manner inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions.</b> The Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's argument and ruled that the Geneva Conventions do in fact apply to accused terrorists, but President Bush's statement here is a subtle reminder that he still regards terrorists as a class of enemy separate from enemy soldiers.<br><br>In other words, there are things that we wouldn't do to a soldier that we might do to a terrorist. Things that he alludes to in his very next sentence:<blockquote class=yes>In this new war, the most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists, themselves. Captured terrorists have unique knowledge about how terrorist networks operate. They have knowledge of where their operatives are deployed, and knowledge about what plots are underway. This intelligence -- this is intelligence that cannot be found any other place. And our security depends on getting this kind of information.</blockquote>If President Bush is talking about ordinary interrogations, then this statement is meaningless pap. After all, what would be the alternative? Arresting accused terrorists and then <i>not</i> interrogating them?<br><br>But President Bush is not talking about ordinary interrogations. Although he makes mention of military arrests in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the long-debated prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the real topic of his speech is a little more controversial...

..President Bush follows up this statement with a description of the arrest of Abu Zubaydah, and the most explicit concession yet that the CIA has used "torture-lite" as an interrogation method:<blockquote class=yes>We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking.... I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.</blockquote>And they gave us information we wouldn't have otherwise had, right? Well...not necessarily:<blockquote class=yes>Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that <b>helped</b> us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks -- a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided <b>helped</b> lead to the capture of bin al Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that <b>helped</b> in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.</blockquote>So we used controversial and secret interrogation techniques in secret CIA prisons, denied due process, violated the Geneva Conventions and very probably the War Crimes Act as well (see below), and we got information that...well, helped.<br><br>

Note that with Abu Zubaydah, President Bush states very clearly that the CIA tried conventional interrogation techniques, that they didn't work, and that the newer, more controversial techniques yielded information that was helpful but may or may not have been crucial. Fair enough. <br><br>The information obtained from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad using these methods <i>was</i> crucial, right? That's how it sounds on a first reading, but let's look at what the president <i>didn't</i> say:<blockquote class=yes>Once in our custody, KSM was questioned by the CIA using these procedures, and he soon provided information that helped us stop another planned attack on the United States. During questioning, KSM told us about another al Qaeda operative he knew was in CIA custody -- a terrorist named Majid Khan. KSM revealed that Khan had been told to deliver $50,000 to individuals working for a suspected terrorist leader named Hambali, the leader of al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate known as "J-I". CIA officers confronted Khan with this information. Khan confirmed that the money had been delivered to an operative named Zubair, and provided both a physical description and contact number for this operative.</blockquote>Please note that this is the paragraph that <i>immediately follows</i> the discussion of Abu Zubaydah. See a difference in the way these two interrogations are described? Zubaydah was interrogated in the normal way, didn't yield the necessary information, was subjected to "torture-lite," and yielded information that may or may not have been crucial to counterterrorism efforts. But Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was simply captured and questioned using "these procedures"--if we're to read this literally, he went straight from handcuffs to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(torture)">sweat box</a>.<br><br>That doesn't make much sense...unless by "these procedures" President Bush is referring collectively to <i>all</i> interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, without making it clear how much information was obtained through ordinary interrogation, or how successful or unsuccessful the CIA's use of more controversial techniques might have been.<br><br>President Bush does give an example of one instance where Khalid Sheikh Muhammad gave specific information about a terrorist attack:<blockquote class=yes>KSM also provided vital information on al Qaeda's efforts to obtain biological weapons. During questioning, KSM admitted that he had met three individuals involved in al Qaeda's efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent -- and he identified one of the individuals as a terrorist named Yazid. KSM apparently believed we already had this information, because Yazid had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM's arrest.</blockquote>...and the information was obtained through good old fashioned misdirection, something any good police detective could have used without violating the Bill of Rights, much less the Geneva Conventions or the War Crimes Act.<br><br>

Note that, despite the numerous examples President Bush has given, he fails to name <i>a single specific instance where the controversial interrogation techniques yielded any useful information that we didn't already have</i>. The information invariably "helped" in some non-specific way:<blockquote class=yes>Terrorists held in CIA custody have also provided information that <b>helped</b> stop a planned strike on U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti -- they were going to use an explosive laden water tanker. They <b>helped</b> stop a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi using car bombs and motorcycle bombs, and they <b>helped</b> stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf in London.</blockquote>These nightmare scenarios are supposed to make us more receptive to the idea of secret CIA prisons and controversial interrogation techniques, as are the consistent references to the 9/11 attacks.<br><br>The phrase "9/11" or "September 11th" is used 14 times in this short speech, which is actually about later attacks, if one wants to get technical, and not 9/11 itself. It is the specter of 9/11 that is supposed to make us amenable to...to...well, what, exactly?<br><br>President Bush mentions a proposal to ask Congress to approve military commissions to try suspected terrorists, but he has asked for that before--there's nothing new or controversial about this legislation, which has already been discussed and is expected to easily pass Congress. No, he's asking for something a little more controversial:<blockquote class=yes>So today, I'm asking Congress to pass legislation that will clarify the rules for our personnel fighting the war on terror. First, I'm asking Congress to <b>list the specific, recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes under the War Crimes Act</b> -- so our personnel can know clearly what is prohibited in the handling of terrorist enemies. Second, I'm asking that Congress make explicit that <b>by following the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act our personnel are fulfilling America's obligations under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions</b>. Third, I'm asking that Congress <b>make it clear that captured terrorists cannot use the Geneva Conventions as a basis to sue our personnel in courts -- in U.S. courts</b>. The men and women who protect us should not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists because they're doing their jobs.<br><br>...

..So President Bush's message to the international community is simple: The CIA secret prisons, their existence long suspected by conspiracy buffs, really do exist. "Torture-lite" techniques, which the Bush administration has been long accused of using, really have been put to use. And, in an ultimate display of chutzpah, President Bush has asked Congress to pass legislation that would essentially legitimize both.<br><br>

This is a very big deal, and the international human rights community <a href="http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/09/06/usdom14139.htm">recognizes it as such</a>. Here's hoping the mainstream U.S. media will follow suit.<br><br>
Quote:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=36597
09.07.06

BUSH LIES ABOUT RAMZI BIN AL SHIBH, ABU ZUBAYDAH AND TORTURE:

Not that it should surprise anyone anymore, but yesterday's <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html">stomach-churning Bush speech</a> defending torture contains this little number:

We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. ..... But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.

Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks--a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

First, <a href="http://www.ronsuskind.com/theonepercentdoctrine/">according to Ron Suskind</a>, Abu Zubaydah didn't clam up because he was "trained to resist interrogation," but because he has the mental capacity of a retarded child. Second, the idea that Abu Zubaydah's interrogation tipped off the U.S. to the existence of Ramzi bin Al Shibh is just an outright lie. A Nexis search for "Ramzi Binalshibh" between September 11, 2001 and March 1, 2002--the U.S. captured Abu Zubaydah in March 2002--turns up 26 hits for The Washington Post alone. Everyone involved in counterterrorism knew who bin Al Shibh was. Now-retired FBI Al Qaeda hunter Dennis Lormel <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/06/attack/main511244.shtml">told Congress who Ramzi bin Al Shibh was in February 2002.</a> Abu Zubaydah getting waterboarded and spouting bin Al Shibh's name did not tell us anything we did not already know.

Of course, most Americans don't have access to Nexis..... Bush is exploiting that ignorance to tell the American people an outright lie in order to convince them that we need to torture people. As Bush once said in another context, if this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.
--Spencer Ackerman

An "oldie", posted on this forum 12-14-2005 by raveneye :
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=59
The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)

December 14, 2005 Wednesday
London Edition 1

SECTION: THE AMERICAS; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1275 words

HEADLINE: Cheney leads fight for presidential power. Caroline Daniel argues that the vice-president's efforts to prevent Congress from outlawing torture should be seen as a battle in the war over executive muscle

BYLINE: By CAROLINE DANIEL

Dick Cheney used to be portrayed in cartoons as the ventriloquist of the administration, his hand inserted into a George W. Bush puppet. Now the cartoons of the vice-president have a darker tone, with his hands controlling various instruments of torture.

The image reflects his dominant role in efforts to prevent Congress from outlawing the use of any interrogation methods deemed to be cruel, inhumane or degrading. After he lobbied senators to dismiss the amendment a Washington Post editorial dubbed him: "Vice-President for Torture".

Mr Cheney's advocacy, however, is best understood not as a defence of torture but as a key battle in the war over presidential power. His views of executive power were forged during the US retreat from Vietnam at a time of congressional assertiveness on foreign policy. After September 11 2001 he saw a chance to implement ideas about expansive executive power that he had long embraced and swing the pendulum back towards the president.

In an ABC interview in January 2002, Mr Cheney set out his philosophy: "In 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. One of the things that I feel an obligation on - and I know the president does too - is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them."

His interest in the issue can be traced to his formative political years as chief of staff to President Gerald Ford from 1975. His promotion came amid growing public unease over Vietnam. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, forcing the president explicitly to consult and report back to them when committing troops overseas. In 1974 the Church committee flexed its authority over intelligence activities, sparked by revulsion against CIA dirty tricks in the 1960s and 1970s.

"He saw the power of the presidency emasculated under his watch, particularly with the inability to stay the course in Vietnam," says Vin Weber, a Republican strategist who has known him for 25 years. "He's been determined to reverse this ever since from the energy taskforce to national security. I believe the current issue is less about the value of torture than about an imperative to preserve and strengthen the presidency."

Even as a congressman, Mr Cheney's loyalties lay with the White House. According to Congressional Quarterly, in 1981, 83 per cent of his votes backed Ronald Reagan, and in 1982, it was 87 per cent, making him the second strongest supporter in the House. His instincts were reinforced by Iran-Contra. The scandal was caused in part by Reagan's efforts to get around a congressional prohibition on giving aid to the Nicaraguan Contras by using the proceeds of secret arms sales to Iran. Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, says Mr Cheney's role as minority chair of the Iran-Contra committee crystallised his views. "The minority report is a sophisticated analysis of the separation of powers and Dick Cheney's staff wrote that section."

One conclusion of the minority report, published in 1987, was that Iran-Contra could be traced to a boundless view of congressional power in the 1970s, and the "state of political guerilla warfare over foreign policy between the legislative and executive branches."

Elected in the wake of Iran-Contra, George H.W. Bush led a deliberate, co-ordinated effort to redraw the lines between the different branches of government. Dick Cheney, as his defence secretary, griped about reporting requirements to Congress, and in 1989 set out his own ideas in a paper to the AEI, called "Congressional Over-reaching in Foreign Policy". He denounced presidential paralysis by congressional indecision. "When Congress steps beyond its capacities, it takes traits that can be helpful to collective deliberation and turns them into a harmful blend of vacillation, credit claiming, blame avoidance and indecision," he warned. "The presidency in contrast, was designed as a one-person office to insure it would be ready for action. Its major characteristics, to use the language of Federalist No.70, were to be 'decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch'."

George W. Bush continued the strategy of his father. Mr Cheney has led the charge. The first sign was in 2001 when he refused to give the names of advisers to his energy taskforce to Congress. His aim was to establish a right to confidential consultations, using legal trench warfare to set precedents that will outlast his term in office.

<h3>It is in the "war on terror" that the administration has been most vigorous and successful in reclaiming authority in foreign policy. It marked an astute recognition that congressional power tends to be greatest at times of peace and presidential power at times of war.</h3>

A key player has been David Addington, who got to know Mr Cheney in the 1980s when he worked as a lawyer for the CIA and the congressional intelligence committee. The two men shared the same views of Iran-Contra. He became Pentagon general counsel under Mr Cheney and later his legal counsel. Mr Addington helped draft a controversial August 2002 Justice Department memo that redefined torture so narrowly that it seemed to permit the abuse of detainees and also noted that the president could legally order torture in his role as commander in chief.

In spite of the damage to the US international image over torture claims, Mr Cheney has shown no signs of backing down. The priority he places on these legal issues rather than quick political payoffs was shown when he picked Mr Addington as his new chief of staff when the incumbent was indicted for his role in the CIA leak case.

This defiant public image on issues such as torture and Iraq has come at a price. His approval ratings slumped to 19 per cent in a CBS News poll. "Cheney has become an obvious target, and he wears the bulls-eye very well to anti-war critics and those concerned with torture," says Paul Light, a professor at New York University. "He is a vice-president in reverse. In the past vice-presidents, who become players become more powerful over time. Dick Cheney started not as a junkyard dog but as a father-figure, a mentor."

Part of his insouciance comes from the fact that he is unusually free to speak his mind. He has no plans to stand for president, so feels no need to court popular or congressional approval. He sees himself as accountable to the president. "He has got into a bubble," says Professor James Thurber of American University. "It is all about building coalitions and he doesn't seem to be thinking as he was in the first six months of the first term about congressional liaison."

There are few signs that Mr Bush is distancing himself from his closest and most powerful counsellors. Yet there are dangers that his effort to expand executive power could be jeopardised by over-reaching and a failure to pay attention to the politics. The amendment over torture from Senator John McCain - backed by 90 senators to 9 against - is clearly one sign of this.

As history has shown, congressional attacks on presidential power have typically followed executive branch scandal. Moreover, there is a danger that by embracing torture it shores up the legal powers of the presidency but erodes an equally critical aspect: its moral authority.

So far Mr Cheney has resisted making concessions over the torture issue..
From 11-29-2005:
[quote]http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=51
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
....Well really none of us has a clue what Cheney 'learned' in the Nixon presidency. Thats way to hypothetical and speculative to even dream of answering, but luckily you provided us with a 'article' to lead us along.


Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal thwarted his designs for an unchecked imperial presidency. It was in that White House that Cheney gained his formative experience as the assistant to Nixon's counselor, Donald Rumsfeld. When Gerald Ford acceded to the presidency, he summoned Rumsfeld from his posting as NATO ambassador to become his chief of staff. Rumsfeld, in turn, brought back his former deputy, Cheney.

From Nixon, they learned the application of ruthlessness and the harsh lesson of failure. Under Ford, Rumsfeld designated Cheney as his surrogate on intelligence matters.


This is just speculation, and based on the tone of the article and the source, we can assume that objectivity was not high on the authors list.
Do you SEE where you went wrong and why this thread is so utterly pointless?
Research does wonders for a truly curious mind...

Quote:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB142/

Washington, D.C., November 23, 2004 - President Gerald R. Ford wanted to sign the Freedom of Information Act strengthening amendments passed by Congress 30 years ago, but concern about leaks (shared by his chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and deputy <b>Richard Cheney</b>) and legal arguments that the bill was unconstitutional (marshaled by government lawyer Antonin Scalia, among others) persuaded Ford to veto the bill, according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive to mark the 30th anniversary of the veto override.

The documents include President Ford's handwritten notation on his first legislative briefing document after succeeding President Nixon in August 1974, that "a veto [of the FOIA bill] presents problems. How serious are our objections?" White House aide Ken Cole wrote Ford on September 25, 1974, "There is little question that the legislation is bad on the merits, the real question is whether opposing it is important enough to face the political consequences. Obviously, there is a significant political disadvantage to vetoing a Freedom of Information bill, especially just before an election, when your Administration's theme is one of openness and candor."

On November 20, 1974, the House of Representatives voted to <b>override Ford's veto by a margin of 371 to 31;</b> on November 21, <b>the Senate followed suit by a 65 to 27 vote,</b> giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today with judicial review of executive secrecy claims.[i]

Footnotes

[i] Memorandum for President Ford from Ken Cole, "H.R. 12471, Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act," September 25, 1974 Source: Gerald R. Ford Library. Document 10.
One thing you are right about, ustwo, is that there is much that we cannot know for certain. Bush and Cheney have worked O.T., to insure that!
Quote:
http://hnn.us/comments/10377.html
24 March 2003)

<h3>1. REP. OSE INTRODUCES BILL TO REVOKE PRA EXECUTIVE ORDER
On 27 March 2003, Rep. Doug Ose (R-CA) along with a bi-partisan group of
seven other members of the House Committee on Government Reform, introduced
legislation (H.R.1493) that revokes President George Bush's Executive Order
13233 of November 2001. That order, "Further Implementation of the
Presidential Records Act" imposed new procedures and restrictions on the
implementation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).</h3>

This is one of the shortest and simplest bills on record -- under 100
words: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, Section 1. REVOCATION OF
EXECUTIVE ORDER OF NOVEMBER 1, 2001. Executive Order number 13233, dated
November 1, 2001 (66 Fed. Reg. 56025), shall have no force or effect, and
Executive Order number 12667, dated January 18, 1989 (54 Reg. 3403) shall
apply by its terms."

In his floor statement introducing the bill
(http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/h032703.html) Ose stated that Bush EO
"is inconsistent both with the Presidential Records Act itself and with
NARA's codified implementing regulations." Furthermore, it "violates not
only the spirit but also the letter of the Presidential Records Act. It
undercuts the public's rights to be fully informed about how its government
operated in the past. My bill would restore the public's right to know and
its confidence in our government."
Quote:
Quote:
http://www.smh-hq.org/gazette/volumes/142/ncc.html
BUSH ISSUES NEW SECRECY EXECUTIVE ORDER

On 25 March 2003 President George W. Bush signed a 31-page Executive Order "Further Amendment to Executive Order 12958, As Amended, Classified National Security Information" (EO 13291) replacing the soon-to-expire Clinton-era E.O. relating to the automatic declassification of federal government documents after 25 years. With a handful of exceptions, the new EO closely corresponds to a draft obtained by the National Coalition for History and distributed via the Internet earlier in March (See "Draft Executive Order Replacing EO 12958 Circulates" -- NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol. 9, #11; 13 March 2003).

The announcement of the president's signing the EO appears to have been carefully orchestrated by the White House to minimize public attention to the new order. One press insider characterized the strategy employed by the White House as "advance damage control." <b>The administration tactic managed to short circuit a repeat of the public relations disaster that followed the release of the Presidential Records Act EO in 2001.</b>

Around 7:00 pm on 25 March, copies of the signed EO were released to select members of the Washington press corps. Recipients were connected via conference call to a "senior administration official" who provided a background briefing on the condition of anonymity (see: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2003/03/wh032503.html). Because of copy deadlines, <b>the timing of the briefing made it difficult for reporters to consult experts in disclosure and government secrecy who could provide meaningful comment. Also, because the president was scheduled to be on the road the next day, no routine press briefing was anticipated, making it impossible for reporters to pose timely on-the-record questions to administration officials.</b> Nevertheless, hastily put-together yet generally accurate articles appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times, and over major news wires such as the Associated Press. Feature stories also were broadcast on National Public Radio, Pacifica radio, and through other non-print media outlets. Regardless of the "advance damage control," reporters are expected to ask administration officials probing questions during the next regularly scheduled White House press briefing this Friday morning.

The new EO retains the essential provision of the Clinton order -- automatic declassification of federal agency records after 25 years -- but with some notable caveats. In general, the government now has more discretion to keep information classified indefinitely, especially if it falls within a broad new definition of "national security." ...
Quote:
http://www.archivists.org/statements...in2.asp?prnt=y
Statement for the Record on the Nomination of Allen Weinstein to Become Archivist of the United States

July 22, 2004

Although the Society of American Archivists (SAA) would have preferred a process in which we were permitted to testify at the hearing regarding the appointment of Allen Weinstein to become the next Archivist of the United States we thank the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs for the opportunity to comment. The choice of a qualified nominee to become the Archivist of the United States is an important decision that ultimately benefits all Americans by ensuring that our history will be preserved and that our citizens will be able to hold their government accountable for its actions and decisions through the careful and impartial management of the records of government.

To that end, we express our intent to cooperate with Professor Weinstein and to work with him if he is appointed Archivist of the United States.

However, we also wish to convey again the strong reservations that the Society of American Archivists and thirty other archives, history, and library organizations have expressed about the manner in which this nomination was made. As noted in a Statement developed by SAA, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, and the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators (issued shortly after the April 8, 2004, announcement of Professor Weinstein’s nomination), Congress created the National Archives and Records Administration—and the position of Archivist of the United States—to be both independent and non-partisan. In the National Archives Act (Public Law 98-497), Congress intended that filling the position of Archivist of the United States should involve an open process, with consultation with appropriate professional organizations that could speak from knowledge and experience concerning the qualifications of nominees. Attached are copies of the “Statement on the Nomination of Allen Weinstein to Become Archivist of the United States”(including the names of the organizations that supported it), as well as “Joint Statement on Selection Criteria for the Archivist of the United States” and “Joint Statement on Questions to Ask the Nominee for Archivist of the United States.” We ask that these documents be entered into the permanent record of these hearings.

<b>It is our view that this nomination was undertaken outside both the letter and the spirit of the law.</b> We believe that the evidence is clear that the White House effectively removed John Carlin when it asked him for a letter of resignation in December 2003 after having already identified a replacement in the fall of that year. <b>It is within the power of the President to remove the Archivist, but if he takes this action, the law calls for him to provide Congress with an explanation of his reasons for doing so. To date, no such explanation has been provided.</b> We hope that the Committee will ask the White House to fulfill its obligation under the law rather than create another precedent that erodes the power and authority of the United States Congress.

We also hope that the Committee will begin working with interested professional associations to establish a more formal procedure that can be used for future nominations. ...

..But we do believe that the failure to follow the process outlined in law threatens the tradition of independence and non-partisanship that enables the Archivist of the United States to fulfill his obligations effectively to the benefit of all Americans.
roachboy....how long do you predict that it will be until these folks adopt a policy of airbrushing out, the faces of people in official photos who have offended our "leaders"?
The POINT is that Cheney lived for "his moment", ever since he was Gerald Ford's white house chief of staff in 1974 to '76. Bush appointed him, in 2000, to lead a search for a Bush running mate. He picked himself. After taking office, an initial act of the two was to issue an executive office sealing presidential records until after they were dead....then they "went to town", against our system of accountability and the "rule of law".

Key democrats Rockefeller and Harman were told more about the abuses to our constitutional rights, international human rights treaties, and to "due process" of persons arrested by US authorities, and they did not do enough to object.
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Old 12-07-2007, 11:03 PM   #5 (permalink)
Pissing in the cornflakes
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by angelica
I love the way the Repugnants and their toadies are now trying to shift the blame for the Iraq debacle to the Democrats. Remember how the Repugs stated over and over: If you ain't with us, you are un-American, and how the public bought that tripe, making it impossible for anyone to vote against Mongo Bush's idiotology..and now they are using that same vote against the Democrats. Way to twist the truth.

The Intel at that time was fabricated to justify the invasion of Iraq, but no one, other than the Asses of Evil...Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld & Cuntalezza were privy to the real truth. They stirred the war frenzy, now they should pay.
Damn if you only used sheeple I'd have had BINGO in my liberal buzz word card
__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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Old 12-08-2007, 06:15 PM   #6 (permalink)
Gentlemen Farmer
 
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Location: Middle of nowhere, Jersey
Quote:
Originally Posted by angelica
...Repugnants...toadies...the Repugs...Mongo Bush's idiotology...

...Asses of Evil...Cuntalezza.
I especially like "Cuntalezza." It just oozes class and sophistication.

-bear

BTW...pretty much agree with hosts assessment of the current democratic chair of the Senate Intel Committee.
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Old 12-08-2007, 06:59 PM   #7 (permalink)
Getting it.
 
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OK. Here's the thing. Regardless of how we feel about various public figures (on either side of the issue) giving those organizations and people cute names is counter-productive.

All it does it make your post easy to dismiss. If you want to be taken seriously, please refrain from using them.

Thanks
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Old 12-08-2007, 07:04 PM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by angelica
I love the way the Repugnants and their toadies are now trying to shift the blame for the Iraq debacle to the Democrats. Remember how the Repugs stated over and over: If you ain't with us, you are un-American, and how the public bought that tripe, making it impossible for anyone to vote against Mongo Bush's idiotology..and now they are using that same vote against the Democrats. Way to twist the truth.

The Intel at that time was fabricated to justify the invasion of Iraq, but no one, other than the Asses of Evil...Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld & Cuntalezza were privy to the real truth. They stirred the war frenzy, now they should pay.

Nice, Repugnants? Cuntalezza? And host just sucks up to the new dems by the welcome, where is this board fark?

Dont forget about Hellery, she was privvy to the "real" truth for 8 years and she voted for the action also, or did the info that slick willie had suddenly change when they left office with the Lincoln china?
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Old 12-08-2007, 07:13 PM   #9 (permalink)
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Reconmike... what part of my post did you not read?

Let it go.

Tit for tat doesn't help.


I really don't want to do this as I am convinced you are mature enough to do this on your own. If this continues, I will have to hand out warnings and close threads.

Thanks
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Old 12-08-2007, 07:48 PM   #10 (permalink)
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Another welcome to new folks, and a big wave to j8ear. You've been missed.

errr, back on topic.

host, I don't expect much from the Dems for now. 2008 will likely reveal them for what they are which is just another variety of money dependent politicos. There are some heros among the bunch that deserve credit, but those responsible for Intelligence are your topic.

Harmon got kicked by the Speaker for being too weak in her position prior to 2006. Good move in my opinion. Reed gave Rockefeller the benefit of the doubt, and I am as irritated as you that he remains passive in his majority role responsibilities. He AGREED to delaying Phase I of the 911 report until after the 2004 election, and has made no effort to bring forward Phase II since then! (Sorry, he makes my shout).

The only ones covering the country's back and the constitution are those that forced the publication of the recent NIE. They promised they would reveal the information knowing they would go to prison, and best case they now have given up their careers in intelligence.

These unknown people may have prevented the Bush/Cheney bunker buster nuclear attack against Iran. Fuck the Democrats and Republicans until they represent something other than their own self interests.
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Old 12-09-2007, 10:51 AM   #11 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Another welcome to new folks, and a big wave to j8ear. You've been missed.

errr, back on topic.

host, I don't expect much from the Dems for now. 2008 will likely reveal them for what they are which is just another variety of money dependent politicos. There are some heros among the bunch that deserve credit, but those responsible for Intelligence are your topic.

Harmon got kicked by the Speaker for being too weak in her position prior to 2006. Good move in my opinion. Reed gave Rockefeller the benefit of the doubt, and I am as irritated as you that he remains passive in his majority role responsibilities. He AGREED to delaying Phase I of the 911 report until after the 2004 election, and has made no effort to bring forward Phase II since then! (Sorry, he makes my shout).

The only ones covering the country's back and the constitution are those that forced the publication of the recent NIE. They promised they would reveal the information knowing they would go to prison, and best case they now have given up their careers in intelligence.

These unknown people may have prevented the Bush/Cheney bunker buster nuclear attack against Iran. Fuck the Democrats and Republicans until they represent something other than their own self interests.
There are ten pages of comments to the following article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn..._Comments.html

Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...801664_pf.html
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.

GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.

U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.

Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.

In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer

"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."
Waterboarding Used on at Least 3

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.

U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.

Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.

The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.

Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.

In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."

Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Democratic congressional leaders need to recuse themselves on the issue of impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Who does that leave to bring impeachment investigations that truly serve the peoples' interest, when those with constituionally mandated responsibility to determine if it warranted and to carry it out, are themselves, implicated in the crimes to be investigated?

I would suggest a bipartisan committee of Kucinich and Paul, but Paul would probably object to the constitutionality of such an unprecedented assignment.
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Old 12-09-2007, 01:57 PM   #12 (permalink)
Upright
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Damn if you only used sheeple I'd have had BINGO in my liberal buzz word card
I'm not one to disappoint..Repugs are Sheeple.

Quote:
Originally Posted by reconmike
slick willie had suddenly change when they left office with the Lincoln china?
Post proof...oops sorry, I forgot, I'm talking to a Repug, the liars of the US...no proof necessary. What is Bush's motto, just believe what I say, proof is just what we can manufacture!

Last edited by angelica; 12-09-2007 at 02:05 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 12-09-2007, 02:11 PM   #13 (permalink)
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Someone is suffering from poor reading comprehension it seems.

It would be a shame if TFP lost such intelligent and insightful discourse, but alas, it appears that such is the direction.
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Old 12-09-2007, 02:39 PM   #14 (permalink)
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Angelica, please read the rules for this forum. You will quickly learn that there is zero tolerance for ignoring the rules if you don't alter your manner.

If you can follow the rules, you will find yourself most welcome no matter your political leanings.
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Old 12-09-2007, 02:45 PM   #15 (permalink)
 
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well, ustwo, i actually agree with you on something.
this would be, i am told, a sign of the apocalypse.

at this point, i'm changing color:


we collectively have the option of cranking up the level of discourse.

so why dont we?

start with your own posts.

you want to see more interesting discussion, make more interesting points.
there's plenty of blame to go around for one-dimensional debates.
so work a little harder.
think a little more.
try changing your style of writing.
it's not that hard--just do it.

and the cheap name-calling stops here.

charlatan posted two warnings already here.
this is the last.


it's not that difficult.
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Old 12-09-2007, 03:03 PM   #16 (permalink)
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Oh but it's totally cool and acceptable when the "in" members attack the conservative or non-popular opinions./vent

You will find an unbalanced and inordinate amount of "warnings" and chastisements will go to the Repug-er conservative set here. Which is why so many have been driven away or "banned". Angelica, you have definitely found your crowd here.
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Old 12-09-2007, 03:54 PM   #17 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgelito
Oh but it's totally cool and acceptable when the "in" members attack the conservative or non-popular opinions./vent

You will find an unbalanced and inordinate amount of "warnings" and chastisements will go to the Repug-er conservative set here. Which is why so many have been driven away or "banned". Angelica, you have definitely found your crowd here.
jorgelito, please click on the link to the WaPo reader's comments
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn..._Comments.html

about the reporting displayed in my last post. My "handle" om the discussion at WaPo is
"TopTenPercentOwn70PercentOfUSassets"

Read my posts in the most recent two pages in that discussion and then tell me how valid your observations about what goes on here are. It's the "same ole shit", here...and in the WaPo discussion. Who is it that cannot discuss and support their opinions?

Here is the text of my most recent post in the WaPo article discussion, responding to a group of recent posts there from "others"...look familiar?
Quote:
TopTenPercentOwn70PercentOfUSassets wrote:
I am suspecting that you all listen to rush or hannity, or watch foxnews, or read drudge or visit townhall.com, or listen to some of their talkshow hosts on their 1200 station Salem Radio network, or a combination of all of the above, because you all post the same parroted repetitive insults and you attempt to pass it off as "discussion". Are you reading washingtontimes, or newsbusters.org or powerlineblog or LGF, or reading Joseph Farah's worldnetdaily, or David Horowitz's frontpagemag? ...BEcause you all post the same limited repetitive insults. You live in a tiny, insular world, persuaded as you are to shut out the flow of information from major news outlets around the world. You prefer to let the above mentioned, "filter" your "news", and you end up all believing exactly the same twisted propaganda and parroting the same partisan talking points, over and over:

FelipeV wrote:
BFD. Another tempest in teapot. <h3>The libs are sniveling</h3> that some mass murdering jihadis had their feelings hurt.
12/9/2007 6:19:27 PM

tobias2012 wrote:
dane1: You talk about right wing rants, you must be reading the comments out of one eye. <h3>Left wing rants are plentiful and so tired and boring:</h3> Bush, Hitler, Nazis, blah, blah, blah.

WmJLePetomane wrote:
komoco2: <h3>If you and your leftist kind</h3> saved half of your disgust for the terrorist scumbags instead of immediately belieiving unproven allegations that we are the bad guys, we'd all be better off. <h3>Disgusting? That's you.
</h3>
ricardo4max wrote:
It is good to see there are still Americans like Virginia Conservative. <h3>As for you other left wing liberal anti_Americans, How does it feel to be so against the freedoms, the Constitution, and the citizens of our country</h3> and the protection and preservation thereof, yet continue to live here, <h3>spew your @$%#^$*$@, and have your fellow citizens offer the lives to protect you? Does the phrase ungrateful hypocrite ring a bell?</h3>

algibbs wrote:
How would one respond to comments like "frankdiscussion" , and "sandralong" except to wonder how they have managed to remain outside of the loony bin?
Comments like these make the commenter appear to be mentally challenged . The sad thing is that people like this can actually vote.....

algibbs wrote:
Virginia Conservative,
I have kept up with the thread all day and you have done a magnificent job of using logic , common sense , and patriotism <h3>to counter the America hating liberals on this thread.</h3>
I congratulate you and salute you.
Rest assured , they are vociferous , but in truth they are a relatively small minority in the overall country.
Expect them to be screaming that we stole another election in 08..
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!"

This is "news"...it contains no shrieking barbs about lefties or righties, or accusations of "hating" AMerica. Grow Up!!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090801575.html
New Army Manual Recalls Abuse
Explicit Interrogation Guidelines Are Meant to Deter Missteps

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 9, 2006; Page A08


...."Use of torture by U.S. personnel would bring discredit upon the U.S. and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort," the manual says. "It also could place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at a greater risk of abuse by their captors. Conversely, knowing the enemy has abused U.S. and allied POWs does not justify using methods of interrogation specifically prohibited by law, treaty, agreement, and policy."

None of the techniques in the manual is classified despite more than a year of discussions that nearly culminated in at least one tactic remaining cloaked, Gandy said. Officials opted against secrecy, he said, because they feared it could fuel suspicion that the Pentagon was hiding abusive tactics.

The list of things interrogators cannot do includes abuse alleged at various facilities and some that appear to come directly from Abu Ghraib photographs: forcing a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over a detainee's head or putting duct tape over his eyes; beatings, electric shocks, burns or other painful tactics; "waterboarding"; using military working dogs; using extreme cold or hot temperatures; mock executions; and depriving a detainee of food, water or medical care.

The manual also specifies that military police are not to be involved in interrogations.

Gandy said the narrow definitions should not affect most U.S. military interrogators, who rely on direct questioning for 90 percent or more of their successful efforts. President Bush this week said an alternative set of standards for the CIA -- which is not public -- has been necessary for interrogating top terrorist suspects, but Gandy and other Army officials said aggressive tactics are not required.

"These tools, used effectively, are adequate to meet our needs," he said of the techniques in the new manual.....

Last edited by host; 12-09-2007 at 04:10 PM..
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Old 12-09-2007, 04:26 PM   #18 (permalink)
Deja Moo
 
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Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA
This topic will be locked if we don't get back on topic. It's a good subject and I would like to see the discussion continue.

host, isn't it true that congressional members cannot reveal top secret information even to their own collegues? In the single party control that we had in 2002, what should or could the opposition members do to halt the practice of torture? The mainstream press had proven it's lack of interest in the role of watchdog of the administration. I don't see the opportunity for a "Pentagon Papers" type of intervention that has been used in the past.
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Old 12-09-2007, 04:37 PM   #19 (permalink)
 
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you can't necessarily rely on the press to function as a critic of the administration if the problems generated by it are understood as potentially big enough the issue into a political crisis--the press is a loyal opposition, so it's function is internal critic in a context understood as stable or legitimate.

i say this while still being confused about the articles that appeared the day after the nec report came out on iran that seemed geared around defusing their implications. the following day came the information about the cia destroying tapes of some potentially---um---problematic interrogations, which was not followed by the same kind of management infotainment--so i assume that what's happening is (rather, what could appear to be happening if you assume co-ordination of information) a kind of extended damage control operation--first the nec, then those curious articles about how "complicated" everything is in terms of information-gathering, then a hit on the cia under goss--legit in itself, worth invetigating in itself--but if you add it up, it also can be read as a distancing move (why now regarding the tapes given that they were destroyed a couple years ago)..a kind of "then it was bad, now it's better--see, we're self-correcting thing.

this without information about the infotainment streams behind this series of stories, and so without any particular guess as to whether there *is* in fact co-ordination of infotainment.

but it does seem a bit odd, don't you think?

as for the democrats, you know the division of power in congress hasn't changed and so paralysis 6 months ago is still paralysis now.

so if pressure is to come on the administration, it would have to come from outside conventional politics---but of course its xmas and its cold out and there's no-one organizing anything and besides, there are commodities to buy in order to express how one feels about family members and all that.

strange business all the way round.
not good, either.
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Old 12-09-2007, 05:03 PM   #20 (permalink)
Deja Moo
 
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Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA
I am not following the mainstream press so I am unable to speak to what they might be doing as a group to diminish the importance of recent revelations. Alternative media sources are not so reticent, but the audience isn't sizable.

I just had an "aha" moment on Pelosi and her day one refusal to put impeachment on the table. I had assumed that her objectives would be suspect, given the possibility of stepping into the presidency. I now wonder if her certain knowledge of many possible illegal activities would make her complicit in the wrong doing?

I doubt I will live long enough to see all of these machinations come to light. I'm still waiting to find out who had Kennedy killed.
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Old 12-09-2007, 05:13 PM   #21 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
This topic will be locked if we don't get back on topic. It's a good subject and I would like to see the discussion continue.

host, isn't it true that congressional members cannot reveal top secret information even to their own collegues? In the single party control that we had in 2002, what should or could the opposition members do to halt the practice of torture? The mainstream press had proven it's lack of interest in the role of watchdog of the administration. I don't see the opportunity for a "Pentagon Papers" type of intervention that has been used in the past.
Elphaba, I only got to "lick the spoon" of the syrup from the whole bottle that Daniel Ellsberg summoned the courage to swallow, but when you decide to object, the process of deciding is similar. You say "no", and then you act on the "no" decision.

It is about wrestling with your conscience...deciding where to "draw the line", what it will cost you. I was 18. All I had to do was quietly make the decision not to turn myself in to selective service. I was already "in college", and I had an automatic deferment, but I had made up my mind to keep myself off their list of names, because I thought that "they" had forfeited their legitimacy...

I've never met with or discussed what I decided to do, with anyone else who did the same thing.

All I had to do was lie low....I had convictions, and I believed that if everyone did what I decided to do....the war would end, but I could not bring myself to do what Ellsberg decided and what the four members of congress should have decided to do in this instance....become a martyr:

From the Times article in post #10
Quote:

.....Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday....
Daniel Ellsberg:
Quote:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/peo...sberg98-6.html
The Decision to Protest Publicly

<h3>You remained for many years part of the government, part of the team, willing to live with the elements of this decision making process. After much frustration with Vietnam, after reading the Pentagon Papers, you reached a different conclusion about what is acceptable and what is moral. Explain how that change in your thinking came about.</h3>

I learned in Vietnam nothing very new about the lack of good prospects for success. I went to Vietnam pretty much with that perspective, or certainly I had it in 1964, and I had it 1961. I did learn the faces of the Vietnamese. I learned to be concerned for what happened to Vietnamese people in a way that my colleagues back in Washington probably didn't feel. They had a reality for me. They weren't just numbers and they weren't just abstract ciphers of some kind, as they were for other people. And as I would have to say probably for myself, people in other parts of the world that didn't have that same friendly awareness in my mind. And I wasn't aware of them as friends and associates and so forth. That was a consideration.

What I particularly learned, though, in 1969, and from the Pentagon Papers, was that Nixon, the fifth president in a row now, was choosing to prolong the war in vain hopes that he might get a better outcome than he could achieve if he'd just negotiated his way out and took what he could get and accepted, essentially, a defeat. He hoped to do much better than that. In fact, he hoped to hold on to control of Saigon and the major populated areas indefinitely for the United States, that these would be subject to our will and our policy and not be run by communists. And he hoped to do that, actually, in ways similar to the way Johnson had hoped -- by threatening escalation of the war, threatening bombing of North Vietnam. He was making such threats and then he was prepared to carry them out.

I did not believe the threats would succeed, so I foresaw a larger war. He was fooling the public about what he was doing at this time for the same reason Johnson had in 1964. The public would not, at that time, have supported a continuation of the war, let alone an expansion of the war. But he was successfully fooling the public, who didn't want to believe that any president could be so foolish and so narrow minded in his own interests as to keep that war going after the Tet offensive of 1968. So I saw a replay of 1964 and 1965 coming again. I saw once again a president making secret threats, almost sure to carry them out, and deceiving the public as to what he was doing.

By reading the Pentagon Papers, which I finished doing in the fall of 1969, in September 1969, I now had a historical sweep sufficient to reach a conclusion that I would have been very unlikely to reach without reading them, and that was that there was very little hope of changing his [the president's] mind from inside the executive branch, for example, by giving him good advice or by giving him realistic estimates of what was happening in Vietnam. Because what I saw by reading the earliest days of the Pentagon Papers, going back to 1945 and 1946, was that every president had had such advice, as early as Truman. Truman had seen predictions of an indefinitely prolonged guerrilla war facing him and yet had gone ahead in supporting the French in this effort. And this had happened year after year. It happened year after year for Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson. The fact now that Nixon was embarked on a new course held out very little hope that he would be more responsive just to good advice about getting out than any of his predecessors had been.

<h3>That meant that if his decision was going to be changed -- and because I cared about Vietnam and this country, I felt quite urgently that I wanted the United States to stop bombing them and stop killing Vietnamese -- the pressure would have to come from outside the executive branch.</h3> It would involve a variety of things, but it probably required better information outside the executive branch, in Congress and in the public, about the past and about the present, than they had. If I had had documents on what Nixon was planning, on what I'd been told he was planning by colleagues who were working for Nixon, I would have put those out at that time to Congress to warn them of what was coming. I probably would not have bothered with the thousands of pages of history that involved the earlier presidents; <h3>I would have shown what Nixon was doing. But I didn't have those documents. And at that time, it was very hard to get the public to believe or to act on the possibility that a president was lying to them or deceiving them.</h3> That was not in the American consciousness, and it was a very unpopular notion even to put forward.

<h3>I once said in a courtroom, in defense of people who were on trial for resisting the draft, that the president had lied.</h3> This was in early 1971, before the Pentagon Papers had come out. The judge stopped the proceedings, called the lawyers up to the bench. I could hear what he was saying because I was in the witness box next to him. "If you elicit testimony like that again," he said to the defense lawyer, <h3>"I will hold you in contempt. I will not have statements about the president lying in my courtroom." This was in a trial of people who were resisting the war nonviolently. And they weren't allowed, in effect, to have witnesses who said anything like that, that the president was lying. The Pentagon Papers changed that.</h3> Seven thousand pages of documents of presidential lying did establish forever, and they were confirmed of course by Watergate a couple of years later, that presidents all lie.


http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/peo...sberg98-7.html

Morality and Risk

<h3>You mentioned your awareness of what was happening to the Vietnamese people, you mentioned your awareness of what Nixon was contemplating doing but which you couldn't talk about.

Were you also affected by the demonstrators and the moral positions that they advocated?</h3>

Less so by the demonstrators, actually, than by people that I'd met who were paying a much higher price in their lives to make a very strong message than people who were in a demonstration. People who were going to jail rather than go to the draft and Vietnam, and rather than go to Canada or become conscientious objectors or go in the National Guard like Clinton made an effort to do, and so forth, or Quayle or others. They had a number of options to avoid combat in Vietnam, including being a conscientious objector. But they chose, actually, to make the strongest statement that you could that the war was wrong, that it should end, and that they would not cooperate with it in any way, even by accepting CO status. And they accepted prison as a result.

I met one in particular named Randall Keeler in late August of 1969, and when I understood to my amazement that he was on his way to prison shortly, that he was about to be tried for draft resistance and expected to go to prison, where he did go for two years, it had a shattering effect on me to realize that we were in a situation where men as attractive in their intelligence and commitment as Randy Keeler found that the best thing they could do was to accept prison to try to raise a moral issue to their countrymen. And I realized that was the best thing he could do. He was doing the right thing and that defined the situation we were in. What a terrible situation! I felt that we were eating our young. Like cannibals -- or worse than cannibals: we were eating our own children. We were relying on them to pay the price for somehow getting us out of this war, sacrificing them like canon fodder in the war itself. And they should be joined by people who were willing to do what they were doing, and that was do everything that one could, truthfully and nonviolently. These were Gandhians in effect. And I had by this time, it so happens, been reading Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and now I was meeting people who had been living the life that I'd been reading about. And with the constraints, then, of truthfulness and nonviolence, I realized that following their example I was prepared to do anything I could, and that meant giving up a career and meant going to prison.

So I asked myself for the first time, what could I do to help end the war if I were willing to go to prison? Now it wasn't at all clear that putting out the Pentagon Papers, which I thought would send me to prison, would be one of the better things I could do. It was history. It didn't prove what Nixon was about to do; it only suggested that he might do the same as all these other presidents. And I was trying a number of other paths that looked more promising. They were less dangerous, but more importantly they looked more powerful. I was trying to arrange that I could testify before Congress. I was trying to get hearings started. I was participating with others in writing letters from Rand. It's a small measure, but it was an unusual thing for people in the Rand Corporation working with the government to say bluntly that we should get out of Vietnam. It was, in fact, a rather powerful move, as such things went. More promising than putting out the Pentagon Papers, actually.....

<h3>Any other factors that can help us understand? I'm interested here in a kind of inner strength; it's not the easiest choice to make for any individual.</h3>

No, good questions really. It so happens I've been thinking about this recently because of something I'm writing. So some thoughts have even come into my head just recently that I wouldn't have pressed as much before. I mentioned reading the Pentagon Papers, which was crucial to my understanding of what needed to be done, and that was [to exert] pressure from outside the executive branch, and I'll get to the point you just raised in just a moment. Another point, though, was that reading the Pentagon Papers burned out of me the desire to work for the president. I saw five presidents in a row, now including Nixon, who had been mistaken in this stubborn, selfish, foolish way year after year after year for what was, at this point now, twenty-four years.

The idea that I'd had since I was a boy, and that most Americans had, was to get the opportunity to work for the president. (We talk about growing up to be president but not many of us, other than Clinton, who is a rare example, had this seriously in his mind.) When I was a marine lieutenant, I already thought of myself as working for the president because the marines tended to think of themselves as a fast reaction force that was at the president's disposal, kind of a presidential guard......


<h3>Reading the Pentagon Papers and reflecting on Vietnam revealed to me, first of all, that presidents could go terribly wrong despite the best advice they could get, and that therefore the best way of helping the country was not necessarily helping the president do what he wanted to do, because the best way might be keeping him from doing what he wanted to do. And that had to be done outside the executive branch, by Congress, by courts, by voters, by the public. So that actually, you could do more for the country outside the executive branch.</h3>

....I no longer wanted to be a president's man. The idea of life outside the executive, I think, suddenly had a possibility for me, or alternatively, it looked just as good or better than working for a president......

...They can conceive of leaving a particular president. They can't conceive of doing something that would keep future presidents from relying on them or trusting them or calling them in again. So that was crucial.

And finally, we come to the point that one of the things I was doing -- by the way, pretty much everything I was doing in terms of working with Congress was compromising my ability ever to work for a president again. That was going too far. But one thing I was doing was likely to put me in prison; in fact, I thought, certain to put me in prison. How could I do that?

Actually, I'd been in the marine corps, I'd been in Vietnam, I'd been in combat. Three million men who went to Vietnam as soldiers exposed themselves to losing their legs, their bodies, their lives to a mine or to a sniper, or to a mortar round. And they were not regarded as heroes just because they accepted that role, or crazy. Nobody did a psychiatric profile on them, as was done on me, to ask why did they do that? They were doing it for the president or for the country. The president, however, was who decided what was good for the country. He was deciding very badly. And not just he, but five of them, were deciding very badly here and that wasn't even too hard to see. But you did what the president said, what he wanted you to do. And to do that is sensible, as you say rational, even if it involves your death, even if it involves your killing people, in what is in fact a bad cause. A bad cause by any other standard but the fact that the president has endorsed it. And this was a bad cause.

So dying, killing in a bad cause, all of that is regarded as very reasonable. And I had done it. I had been over there. Even when I didn't believe in the cause I served the president. I was learning from the inside about the government. I had various reasons, which didn't seem, in retrospect, good enough to justify what I was doing. But that's what I was doing. And the point was that what Randy Keeler revealed to me was that there were other ways of being conscientious than serving the president. There are other kinds of courage. And I had to ask myself, well, if I was willing to be blown up in Vietnam or captured, as friends of mine were, when I accepted the cause or supported it, should I not be willing to go to prison or risk my freedom? And when I faced that question, it was quickly answered.

When you ask me how could I be willing to face that, I was the kind of guy who had been willing to go to Vietnam. That didn't make me unique. It put me not with everybody in the country but with a lot of people. Oliver Stone had volunteered to go to Vietnam remember, as did lots of other people. The connection, however, that not many of them had occasion to make was between doing that sort of thing and making the same kind of commitment against the president's will and policy, against what he wanted to do, against what he was demanding. And to put yourself in the position of a dissenter, or of, let's say, a congressman who opposed the war.

So, one shift was from the executive branch to helping the Congress and working in the public. A major shift of identity very, very difficult for an executive official to make. Another one, of course, was a willingness actually to go to prison for what I was doing. And that was because I made the connection with what I myself had done in Vietnam or in the marines. But I wouldn't have done that without the example of thousands of Americans. Actually, Esquire magazine called me just last month. They're doing an issue on heroes and they asked me if I would say if I had a hero that I wanted to name. And I mentioned Randy Keeler as a person who had changed my life by his example.


http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/peo...sberg98-8.html

The Responsibility of the Insider

<h3>What then, briefly, is the responsibility of an individual in a democracy on matters of war and peace like we've been discussing?</h>

....Any of those executive officials, I'll take McNamara as an example, could have or could in the future, in a situation like Iran - Contra for example, think of informing Congress, with or without the approval of the president. They would do this, by the way, with almost no legal risk. There are many ways they could do this with no legal liability. In fact, to the contrary, it often involves simply telling the truth instead of committing perjury, which is what they actually do do. So it involves obeying the law rather than violating the law, and obeying the Constitution. But it's in a way that they hardly think of doing because it involves crossing the man who appointed them. They could then, take McNamara, could have encouraged hearings by Fulbright, could have told him what questions to ask, could have provided witnesses for him. Could have testified himself truthfully instead of falsely under oath, which is what he did do, and could have provided the Pentagon Papers in a timely fashion. Could have given him the documents, told him what documents to ask for. In short, work with Congress to change the situation. That's a very powerful and very practical way, which almost nobody ever dreams of doing. It would certainly keep them from ever being hired by a future Republican or Democratic president. But, as I say, there is life outside the executive branch.

Second, they really could conceive of taking risks with their own career that are comparable to the risks they routinely ask of draftees and volunteers that they are sending to war. They could contemplate, in other words, paying a price in their own lives by telling the truth, by informing the public, by acting conscientiously, in a committed way, outside the executive branch to tell the truth, to inform the public. Again, at great cost to their future careers but a cost that they should be willing to pay. In short, they would find that they had much more power as individuals than they imagine they have if they were willing to pay a price in their own lives.

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Old 12-09-2007, 05:42 PM   #22 (permalink)
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host, I did miss the last part of the article you posted. So they did all that they could legally do by issuing a top secret letter of protest (years after acquiring the knowledge), and chose not to risk their political butts in any way.

The Ellsberg testimony is so compelling and I thank you for taking the time to post it. There are "insiders" now that are leaking information to prevent this administration from attacking Iran. I wonder if they could trust this Congress to provide the opportunity to tell the truth? It seems the answer is "no" because they have already risked prison and their careers by insisting on the publication of the NIE.

They are the patriots in this story.
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Old 12-09-2007, 06:04 PM   #23 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
host, I did miss the last part of the article you posted. So they did all that they could legally do by issuing a top secret letter of protest (years after acquiring the knowledge), and chose not to risk their political butts in any way.

The Ellsberg testimony is so compelling and I thank you for taking the time to post it. There are "insiders" now that are leaking information to prevent this administration from attacking Iran. I wonder if they could trust this Congress to provide the opportunity to tell the truth? It seems the answer is "no" because they have already risked prison and their careers by insisting on the publication of the NIE.

They are the patriots in this story.
I don't think that I can be unwavering in my criticism, although the democrats were in charge of the senate in 2002. I think that this is as close as we got to having a "referendum" on the appropriateness of what the democrats were briefed about, within the same year. These are political creatures, not patriots. They were motivated by which way the wind was blowing at the time, and in this context:

Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20010916.html
amp David, Maryland
September 16, 2001

The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert


...MR. RUSSERT: When Osama bin Laden took responsibility for blowing up the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. embassies, several hundred died, the United States launched 60 tomahawk missiles into his training sites in Afghanistan. It only emboldened him. It only inspired him and seemed even to increase his recruitment. Is it safe to say that that kind of response is not something we're considering, in that kind of minute magnitude?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm going to be careful here, Tim, because I--clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world's finest military. They've got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the--one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we'll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There's--if you're going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you're not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you're going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I'm convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission. ....
In that same 9/16/01 interview, the veep also said:



Quote:

...MR. RUSSERT: When the president went to the World Trade Center on Friday he said, "The people who did this will hear from all of us soon." There's an expectation in the country that we're about to pay back big time, quickly. What should the American people think or feel about that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think the important thing here, Tim, is for people to understand that, you know, things have changed since last Tuesday. The world shifted in some respects. Clearly, what we're faced with here is a situation where terrorism is struck home in the United States. We've been subject to targets of terrorist attacks before, especially overseas with our forces and American personnel overseas, but this time because of what happened in New York and what happened in Washington, it's a qualitatively different set of circumstances.

It's also important for people to understand that this is a long-term proposition. It's not like, well, even Desert Storm where we had a buildup for a few months, four days of combat, and it was over with. This is going to be the kind of work that will probably take years because the focus has to be not just on any one individual, the problem here is terrorism. And even in this particular instance, it looks as though the responsible organization was a group called al-Qaida. It's Arabic for "The Base."




...VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I think he seriously misreads the American people. I think the--I mean, you have to ask yourself, why somebody would do what he does. Why is someone so motivated? Obviously he's filled with hate for the United States and for everything we stand for...

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: ...freedom and democracy.



....MR. RUSSERT: He has stated unequivocally that he wants the United States out of the Middle East. He no longer wants the United States to be the ally of Israel. Will our relationship with Israel change in any way, shape or form because of this event?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. The fact of the matter is that the--we'll not allow him to achieve his aims. <h3>We're not about to change our policies or change our basic fundamental beliefs.</h3> What we are going to do is aggressively go after Mr. bin Laden, obviously, and all of his associates, and even if it takes a long time, I'm convinced eventually we'll prevail....
The "9/11 changed everything" line is still the theme of all republican 2008 candidates except Ron Paul, the line " they hate us for our freedom and democracy" became a caricature, <h3>and the terrorist did win.</h3> Cheney broke his commitment not to "to change our policies or change our to change our policies or change our basic fundamental beliefs.."

What are "our basic fundamental beliefs" and the principles for which we stand, today....vs. during the 2000 presidential election?

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Old 12-09-2007, 06:40 PM   #24 (permalink)
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The Cheney response says that the use of torture was right in front of us all along.

Just to be clear, you do know that the patriots I refer to are the unnamed insiders somewhere within the 16 intelligence agencies that forced publication of the NIE?
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Old 12-12-2007, 12:05 AM   #25 (permalink)
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Why can't the white house do a better job avoiding it seeming that whenever the president answers a questions, he seems to be giving "hard to believe" answers.?

Doesn't it seem implausible that one of his closest "favorites", Harriet, would NOT have impressed "the tapes" issue on Bush's mind....maybe even asked him for direction on the issue....for him to remember, and not answer ABC's "Marhta", the way he did on Tuesday, Dec. 11?

Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/wa...rssnyt&emc=rss
C.I.A. Was Urged to Keep Interrogation Videotapes

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 8, 2007

....The first notification to Congress by the C.I.A. about the videotapes was delivered to a small group of senior lawmakers in February 2003 by Scott W. Muller, then the agency’s general counsel. Government officials said that Mr. Muller had told the lawmakers that the C.I.A. intended to destroy the interrogation tapes, arguing that they were no longer of any intelligence value and that the interrogations they showed put agency operatives who appeared in the tapes at risk.

At the time of the briefing in February 2003, the lawmakers who advised Mr. Muller not to destroy the tapes included both Mr. Goss and Representative Jane Harman of California, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Ms. Harman described her role on Friday. Mr. Goss’s role was described by former intelligence officials.

According to two government officials, Mr. Muller then raised the idea of destroying the tapes during discussions in 2003 with Justice Department lawyers and with Harriet E. Miers, who was then a deputy White House chief of staff. Ms. Miers became White House counsel in early 2005.

The officials said that Ms. Miers and the Justice Department lawyers had advised against destroying the tapes, but that it was not clear what the basis for their advice had been.

A message left at Mr. Muller’s law office on Friday was not returned, and White House officials would not comment about Ms. Miers’s role.....
Quote:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalra...-didnt-kn.html

December 11, 2007 11:48 AM

ABC News' Martha Raddatz Reports: In an exclusive interview with ABC News President Bush said Tuesday he did not know about the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations.

The President said he was told just a few days ago.

"My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when [CIA Director] Michael Hayden briefed me," Bush said.

"There's a preliminary inquiry going on and I think you'll find that a lot more data, facts will be coming out," he said, "that's good. It will be interesting to know what the true facts are."

The President made the remarks to ABC News as part of a day-in-the-life series ABC News' White House correspondent Martha Raddatz is shooting with the President. ....

....Perino told reporters this week that the President has no recollection of hearing about the tapes' existence or their destruction before being briefed about it last Thursday......
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Old 12-14-2007, 06:30 AM   #26 (permalink)
 
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Yesterday, On party line vote of 222-199, the House passed the Intelligence Authorization for FY 2008 with three important provisions:
It prohibits the intelligence agencies (and contractors) from using interrogation techniques (ie waterboarding and others) that do not comply with the Army Field Manual prohibitions against torture

It creates a statutory, Senate-confirmed Intelligence Community Inspector General with the authority to inspect, audit and investigate activities across the intelligence community.

It requires Senate confirmation for the first time of two agency heads - the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the nation's spy satellites, and the National Security Agency, which conducts warrantless wiretapping on American phone and computer lines in what the White House calls the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Bush quickly threatened to veto because of these provisions, among others.
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Old 12-14-2007, 09:28 AM   #27 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
Yesterday, On party line vote of 222-199, the House passed the Intelligence Authorization for FY 2008 with three important provisions:
It prohibits the intelligence agencies (and contractors) from using interrogation techniques (ie waterboarding and others) that do not comply with the Army Field Manual prohibitions against torture

It creates a statutory, Senate-confirmed Intelligence Community Inspector General with the authority to inspect, audit and investigate activities across the intelligence community.

It requires Senate confirmation for the first time of two agency heads - the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the nation's spy satellites, and the National Security Agency, which conducts warrantless wiretapping on American phone and computer lines in what the White House calls the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Bush quickly threatened to veto because of these provisions, among others.
'dux...it is increasingly difficult to tell if the "gang of the 199" are the bigger sycophants of our "War prezzdent", or if the press corps are.

(RE:...the last quote box in my immediately preceding post here..)

I started "the ball" rolling, yesterday, in this post:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=33

....I just did the following, and considering the information contained in the timeline, if it is all accurate, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't...please point me to contrary info of the same or similar standing, what I did is reasonable. Can the same be said for the last sentence in your post?

<h3>I just sent this email to ABC News:....</h3>
....and, after reading this:

Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/co...ory&id=3983948
Exclusive: Inside the White House
ABC News' Martha Raddatz Spends a Day in the Life With President Bush

Long before much of Washington, D.C., came to life this morning, ABC News got a glimpse of the president few ever see. In the darkness, President Bush stopped to toss a few balls to his dog, Barney, on his short walk from the White House residence to the Oval Office. "Coming with me, Barney?" he asked his Scottish terrier. Just after 6:30 a.m., Bush was in the Oval Office, reviewing overnight intelligence, signing a few photographs and putting the final touches on a speech. At 7:30...
<center><img src="http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABC_BUSH_RADDATZ_SERIOUS_INTV_071211_mn.jpg"><br><i>ABC News' Chief White House correspondent Martha Raddatz interviews President Bush for an exclusive ABC News report. (ABCNews)</i></center>
(Is it just me...or is he looking more and more "Nixonian" in his demeanor?)

I followed up on the email that I sent to Brian Ross's investigative "team" at ABC news, by posting this at the "comments" section that followed the assault on my senses "by Martha Raddatz" in her "day in the life". She should have been broadcasting from a former US president's cell in the Hague, not from the white house:
Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/co...ory&id=3983948

I am concerned that ABC news and Martha Raddatz have made a deliberate decision to pursue "access" to Bush, a president who clearly has pursued "aggressive war", illegal under the standards described by SCOTUS Justice and Chief Nuremberg prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, by Bush's policy of invading and occupying Iraq, a sovereign nation that did not attack the US.How else can Raddatz and ABC explain how they proceeded from this:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169<br>http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1<br>
Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas LabCalls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab<br>By John McWethyW A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)<br>President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaedaoperatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according toadministration officials........<br><p>and this:<br>http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html<br>Sept. 15, 2006......MARTHA: Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda.A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And yet a month ago, you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that?Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror,and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan.I never said there was an operational relationship..........<h3>Yet end up with an "exclusive access" "puff piece", instead of demanding Bush's resignation.</h3>

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Old 12-14-2007, 09:41 AM   #28 (permalink)
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"It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 12:04 PM..
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