Republican Party stoops to new low by comparing Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore of the James Bond films. So rather than dealing with Pelosi's substantive charge that the CIA lied to her the Republicans stoop to name calling. For they scream & shout how dare she say that the CIA would ever lie to a member of Congress. Well actually the CIA has been lying to Congress for decades about what it has been doing. Since the 1950s the CIA has become a separate branch of the government doing things that were illegal or unethical and once in a while as in the Iran Contra Scandal or the scandal over the Coup in Chile they get caught and there are investigations but for the most part nothing changes. The CIA is able to operate under the radar because those in power see nothing wrong with abusing & torturing or assassinating those deemed to be enemies of America. They also believe that if a foreign government does something that is against America's interests then it is OK to topple & remove that government by any and all means necessary.
RNC: Pelosi V. CIA
Hannity backs away from waterboarding while another conservative media personality accepts the challenge and admits after being waterboarded that the technique is torture.
Olbermann Rescinds Charity offer for Cowardly Hannity -
It appears that the neocons & Republicans believe that the embedding of the media with the US military did not go far enough in controlling media criticisms of the US military & US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. They believe that since America & NATO are now in a state of war against the "Terrorists " & the Taliban & Al Qaeda that the freedom of the press is a luxury we can no longer afford. This fits in with Dick Cheney's attack last week on The New York Times whom he accused of wantonly endangering US troops and America itself with their attacks on the former governments policies & actions. In particular he pointed out that the New York Times & other liberal media by publishing photos of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib or showing photos or video of the horrors of the on going conflict are in fact acting as a fifth column in the US to undermine America's war effort. And Obama has recently decide not to release more photos of abuse of detainees by US personnel because he claims that this would only enflame anti-Americanism and thereby give a boost to America's enemies.
US hypocrisy highlighted by its arrests and detention of journalists without laying formal charges while criticizing Iran , Korea & other countries for having a similar policy. Are the journalists now in US custody among those whom Obama wants to keep in Indefinite Detention based upon whatever fanciful rationalization he or the military or CIA can invent to claim that they pose a threat to the United States or to US forces or America's allies . Are these journalists connected to terrorists or to the insurgency or have they made the grave & unpardonable sin of writing unflattering stories about the US forces or its allies. According to Obama's latest comments anyone who in one fashion or another endangers US troops or its allies or gives aid & comfort to America's enemies could be held in Indefinite Detention since they might pose a future threat.Wasn't the Bush administration doing this all along. Oh of course Obama says he will create a more viable & rational legal framework which will provide a further justification or a more elaborate legal veneer for doing many of the same things that the Bush Regime did.
Since America is engaged in The War on Terror it is argued that there should be stricter censorship on what the media can print, or show or say . During the last eight years the media for the most part has been involved in self-censorship while promoting the government's policies. So all the News Networks in the US should become more like Fox News & CNN trumpeting the importance & necessity for the On-going perpetual War on Terror. Newspapers and other media should be extolling America's virtues and should offer stories which show America in a more positive light while attacking any journalists or group or individual who says anything negative about the United States or its military . So is Obama going to buy into this "Good News" only propaganda well it appears to a great extent he already has given his recent shifts in his promised policies and his recent speeches. There appears to be less and less a desire to overturn the draconian & criminal actions & policies of the previous government of Bush & Cheney.
...The Obama administration harshly criticized Iran for its imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, the U.S.-Iranian journalist who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison before being freed two weeks ago. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Iran's treatment of Saberi as "non-transparent, unpredictable and arbitrary."
Washington also has called upon North Korea to expedite the trial of two U.S. journalists being held there on spying charges.
Yet the United States has routinely used the arbitrary powers it assumed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks to hold journalists without charge in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
None of the detained journalists has been convicted of any charge, undermining the United States' reputation when it comes to criticizing other countries on issues of press freedom, committee executive director Joel Simon said.
"The U.S. has a record of holding journalists for long periods of time without due process and without explanation," he said. "Its standing would be improved if it addressed this issue."
...Sami Haj, a cameraman for the TV network Al Jazeera, was detained by Pakistani authorities as he tried to cross into Afghanistan in 2001 to cover the offensive against the Taliban. He was turned over to the U.S. military, which held him for six years at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was accused him of being a courier for militant Islamic organizations, but was never charged. He was released a year ago.
In Iraq, Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was held for two years without trial before being released in April 2008 on the orders of an Iraqi judge under the terms of an amnesty law. The U.S. military maintained that Hussein had links to insurgents, but the AP said the allegations were based on nothing more than the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs of insurgents that he had taken on the streets of Ramadi, in western Iraq.
In the era of embedded media, independent journalists have become the eyes and ears of the world. Without those un-embedded journalists willing to risk their lives to place themselves on the other side of the barrel of the tank or the gun or under the air strikes, history would be written almost entirely from the vantage point of powerful militaries, or – at the very least – it would be told from the perspective of the troops doing the shooting, rather than the civilians, who always pay the highest price.
In the case of the Iraq invasion and occupation, the journalists who have placed themselves in danger most often are local Iraqi journalists. Some 116 Iraqi journalists and media workers have been killed in the line of duty since March 2003. In all, 189 journalists have been killed in Iraq. At least 16 of these journalists were killed by the U.S. military, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The network that has most often found itself under U.S. attack is al-Jazeera. As I wrote a few years ago in The Nation:
"The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where al-Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad, and imprisoned several al-Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the U.S.-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq."
A new report for a leading neoconservative group that pushes a belligerent "Israel first" agenda of conquest in the Middle East suggests that in future wars the U.S. should make censorship of media official policy and advocates "military attacks on the partisan media" (via MuzzleWatch). The report for JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, was authored by retired U.S. Army Col. Ralph Peters. It appears in JINSA's "flagship publication," The Journal of International Security Affairs. "Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight," Peters writes, calling the media "the killers without guns."
So Obama has backed down on closing Guantanamo because of the pressure put on him not only by the Republicans and the Conservative Movement in America but also by Hawkish Democrats and the Hawks in his own administration who want to keep all of the supposedly rejected extremist policies of the Bush Cheney regime.This is not that surprising when even Obama refers to anyone who takes up arms against American forces not just as enemies but as "evil-doers". Using such a phrase as "evil-Doers" puts the conflict into a more far reaching Cosmic battle of Good versus Evil or God's Chosen People or Nation -America versus those who are anti-American as by definition being anti-God or anti-Christian and therefore acting on behalf of "Evil" & Satan as it were. So once someone is labeled a terrorists then why would anyone argue that their rights legal & human rights too should be defended. If they are "evil" then you arrest them lock them up and throw away the key. Things become a lot more complicated and messier once one sees these so called "terrorists " as being not demons but rather just human beings some of whom are extremists and dangerous while others act according to various all too human motivations. And others who have been incarcerated at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or Bagram are of a different category because they have been erroneously labeled as "terrorists" or "Enemy Combatants ". These are the innocent Folk who have been imprisoned and treated as if they too were guilty and they form a large segment of those imprisoned by the US & its allies who are unwilling to publicly admit that they made mistakes by incarcerating these people. So rather than admit to these mistakes they keep them in prison and abuse humiliate them and torture them til they make false confessions to their torturers and so be kept in prison even longer or released but told they could be rearrested at any time in the future if new evidence is found. As the saying goes "once a terrorist always a terrorist" .
...Stop calling them terrorists. Take the word “terrorist” out of the equation and you level the playing field, with a chance the discussion might become a healthy and realistic legal debate, not a hyperbolic melee over wild-eyed evildoers breaking out of the local courthouse or worse, settling into the condo next door.
Instead, Republican senators upped the ante yesterday, introducing legislation prohibiting the release of any detainee – innocent or not — on American soil, because, as the sterling Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham pointed out, “immigration laws prohibit the release of a terrorist operative within the United States.”
Democrats reacted to this obvious stagecraft by denying Obama the $80 million he asked for to close the infamous facility by the end of year, employing the pathetic excuse that the administration didn’t have a “plan.” So they torpedoed the entire thing in one fell swoop. “The feeling was at this point we were defending the unknown,” [Democratic Sen.Richard] Durbin explained to the press. “We were being asked to defend a plan that isn’t announced.”
Go grab a tissue, Durbin, and a grip. This same crew has no problem handing over the rest of the $92 billion request for continued war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much has the administration been grilled about their plans for that? About as much as Democrats grilled President Bush every time he came calling for more war funding. Not much.
There you have it. Republicans winning by taking cheap shots, Democrats pathetically squeamish as ever. And Obama, transcending none of it, leaving the integrity and strength of the American spirit flagging, and compromised.
The Two Ways and the First Commandment. There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you. And of these sayings the teaching is this: Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what reward is there for loving those who love you? Do not the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy. Abstain from fleshly and worldly lusts. If someone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the other also, and you shall be perfect. If someone impresses you for one mile, go with him two. If someone takes your cloak, give him also your coat. If someone takes from you what is yours, ask it not back, for indeed you are not able. Give to every one who asks you, and ask it not back; for the Father wills that to all should be given of our own blessings (free gifts). Happy is he who gives according to the commandment, for he is guiltless. Woe to him who receives; for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless; but he who receives not having need shall pay the penalty, why he received and for what. And coming into confinement, he shall be examined concerning the things which he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last penny. And also concerning this, it has been said, Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give.
From The Didache The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations. at Early Christian Writings
There is an absolute prohibition on torture not because the impulse is alien to human nature but because it is so deeply familiar. When torture does not work, the urge is to turn up the voltage and to widen the dragnet. We do not allow torture in the ticking time bomb scenario because when the would-be torturer looks out on the landscape, he sees it littered with ticking time bombs and people who might know something about them. We do not balance the costs and benefits to see if torture works because there will always be some argument that can be made that it works or it might work or people believed at the time that it would. By refocusing on whether torture worked, Vice President Cheney wants to deflect attention from the fact that civilized legal systems make torture criminal precisely because we are ever tempted that it might work.
Anyway when it comes to the so-called War on Terror Obama offers no real change from the Bush/Cheney Regime. Whether Obama is adopting or adapting Bush and Cheney policies because he too believes that he must wage all out war against Terrorism or is doing so to appease the C.I.A. & the US military & the National Security Bureaucracy or to appease the fear mongering Republicans & conservatives this is uncertain but the end result is what matters.
And the end result is the continuation of the Long War or Perpetual war on terrorism & especially on Arab & Islamic terrorists in which everything is permissible. Obama like Bush & Cheney is determined to look Tough On Terrorism & so will fight terrorism by any & all means necessary.
In an effort to look tough Obama refused to release more photos of the proof of detainee abuse by US soldiers, the C.I.A. , Navy Seals & Private Contractors- his feeble excuse was that it might lead to blow-back & the deaths of US soldiers. But the real problem of Blow-back is the abuse & torture of detainees which is still taking place at prisons in Afghanistan & Iraq. And from what investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill asserts is that abuse & torture is still taking place at Gitmo with the use of the Goon Squads known as Immediate Response Force who like to beat the crap out of prisoners based on the flimsiest of excuses.
Obama has also reassured the C.I.A. & others who took part in the abuse & torture of detainees since he believes that they did so in "Good Faith" - they were " just following orders " and so Obama overturns unilaterally the Nuremberg judgement that claiming one is " just following orders " is no defense for War Crimes or Crimes Against Humanity .AKA The Oliver (Ollie ) North defense- ie My Country Right or Wrong & other Pathological Thinking.
Obama has also said he will re-work or tinker with the Military Tribunals to put some of the "detainees" at Gitmo on trial while others for various reasons of National Security will no be put on trial so they will be left to rot as it were. Others won't be tried it seems because the US government doesn't have a strong enough case against them to find them guilty so they will also be kept in jail til they confess or til they go insane I guess due to abuse & torture. We have been told over and over again that the majority of prisoners held in Guantanamo or in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan are innocent yet Obama so far refuses to deal with this issue.
In conducting the War in Afghanistan & Pakistan as we have seen Obama has appointed Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal who was known for leading an assassination squad which was basically a Death Squad & he was also known for his brutal tactics of abuse & torture of prisoners when he was commander of a notorious & infamous prison in Iraq. When we add to this the wanton & indiscriminate bombings & straffing by Gunship Helicopters and fighter jets on villages or towns where it is claimed there are suspected Taliban or Al Qaeda or insurgents or any who dare resist the US and Nato invasion & occupation of their countries. So the US uses the unmanned Drones & massive bombings including the use of White Phosphorus on civilian populations which of course are considered to be War Crimes under the Geneva Conventions. But as we have seen over the last eight years the US and even NATO has all but abandoned the Geneva Conventions.
So anyway in another major speech this week Obama critiques the Bush/Cheney Regime & then goes on to announce his own draconian ad hoc stitched together policy on "Combatants" or "detainees"- Pre-Crime arrests- Obama argues that those arrested or already being held need to be kept in prison because they may plan to commit crimes in the future. But President Obama following in Cheney's footsteps also wants to extend even further the powers of the president.Like Bush & Cheney Obama is going to make up a legal framework to justify his illegal & unconstitutional criminal acts.
In Britain for instance detainees can only be kept for 28 days before being charged, tried & sentenced. Obama wants to hold detainees for months or years before they are charged or tried or until the War on Terror ends but as many have pointed out there will always be some extremist or crack-pot somewhere who will want to attack the US or American troops or an American embassy so this is not just the Long War but is a perpetual war in which every time another innocent person is arrested or disappeared by American or NATO personnel & who is then abused & tortured this generates more anger and a new batch of so-called terrorists. As I have noted many times US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan tend to treat all citizens as potential terrorists or as Hostiles.
Rachel Maddow Criticizes Obama on Prolonged Detention- May 22, 2009
Republican & Conservative Fear Mongering over the closing of Guantanamo has worked as Obama back peddles on closing the prison & re-adopting Cheney' s Sham Show Trials known as Military Tribunals plus Obama has claimed that holding detainees in Indefinte Detention in the so-called War on Terror is a must. And Obama as far as we know has offered little solace to the thousands held in other prisons besides Gitmo in Afghanistan & Iraq & he has further said that extraordinary renditions are still needed. And for all of this Obama now talks like Cheney et al about creating a new legal construct to make sure everything is supposedly done by the book.
Once again Obama spoke very little about the thousands victims at Gitmo or other prisons who have been abused or tortured . Is it because like Cheney & Rumsfeld et al he believes that anyone arrested by US personnel must by definition be guilty of terrorists actions or are planning terrorists actions. Thousand over the last eight years have been imprisoned and denied their rights to be treated justly & with dignity to be free from abuse & torture to know what crimes they are charged with to have the right to legal counsel & that their families be notified about their incarceration & that they have a right to a speedy trial . Instead under the Bush/Cheney Regime so-called "detainees" were denied their rights and were abused & tortured often they have been treated like animals rather than as human beings. And now Obam wants to keep most of this horrible and inhumane treatment of prisoners in place.
Daisy - A Guantanamo Interpretation-RNC May 21, 2009
While we're enthralled by Obama's elegance and reason, Cheney waits like a troll under a bridge, watching for the slightest misstep.
In his speech, Obama sympathized with the quaking souls of his fellow Party members, saying, "These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct-mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it."
Get a grip, European-style socialists! There's plenty of evidence that the American people want to turn the page on all that fear and doubt. A vast majority desperately wants Barack Obama to be their knight in shining armor, hoping he will modestly rewrite the social contract in a way that eases their economic burdens, gets us out of wars we can't afford, and moves toward the universal health care that every other developed country takes for granted.
Larry O'Donnell on MSNBC: Cheney's Speech an Insult to One's Intelligence-May 21, 2009
FBI use dubious tactics to create & then arrest so -called terrorist who were supposedly belonged to an Islamic Terrorist organization though none of these peopler are muslims. and once again the Media reports on bogus Terrorist plot discovered by FBI or just cooked up by the FBI. So even with Obama at the helm of state the FBI & other agencies are trying to find non-existent plots to scare the American people & to justify draconian law enforcement programs. So little has changed when it comes to the War on Terror & keeping Americans in a hyper-alert fearful state to maintain the status quo post-9/11.
Turns out it is really the handiwork of a creepy FBI informant. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.
By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I've seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile.
...So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.
...Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.
It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.
The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.
Cheney keeps watering down his Iraq War justifications from specifics that Saddam had WMDS & helped Al Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks to Saddam had the potential, or the capacity for developing WMDs & was involved with some nebulous Mid East terrorists.
Maddow Dissects Cheney's National Security Speech-may 21, 2009
http://earth2obama.org/ May 21, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show
Olberman exposes Dick Cheney's fabrications & lies in his speech about the use of so-called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques which just code or a rebranding of "torture techniques" . Olbermann points out what should have been obvious to Americans after the 9/11 commission that Cheney & others were negligent in their duty by not addressing warnings by the intelligence community about Al Qaeda planning a major attack on US soil. Cheney makes the erroneous claim once again that Torture saved American lives though there is no proof of this. Cheney erroneously claims that the War on Terror did not go as well as it shouldhave because the "liberal Media" like the New York Times undermined the Bush Regimes efforts by publishing stories about the use of torture. Cheny claims that the techniques used were legal but that is only in the sense that hand-picked lawyers gave Cheney back the veener of legality which he saught.
Cheney also like Obama likes to characterize what happened at Abu Ghraib as an isolated incident which it was not and that the actions of a few bad apples which we know is not true since those US personnel got their orders from the Whitehouse. Olbermann calls these policies as going against the very principles upon which America was founded . I agree with Olbermann but the unfortunate facts so far are evidence that President Obama is also buying into this load of crap & equivocation. Well maybe water boarding is torture but sleep deprivation keeping someone chained to the bars of a cell or hanging them from the ceiling or threatening to sodomize them or kill them or kill and abuse their families or urinating on them or smearing them with human feces etc. these are torture according to most people outside the United States. But in America it seems the average citizen or even professionals such as doctors, medics, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers etc. seem to think these techniques may or may not be torture. But this I feel is just typical of the American view of the world they are the ones who know what is right or wrong or what is permissible and every one else ie those who are not American their views & opinions no matter how well grounded in research & reality don't matter.
Keith Olbermann Special Comment on Dick Cheney-May 21,2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney intervened in CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's investigation into the agency's use of torture against "high-value" detainees, but the watchdog was still able to prepare a report that concluded the interrogation program violated some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture.
The report, which the Obama administration may soon declassify, was completed in May 2004 and implicated CIA interrogators in at least three detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq and referred eight criminal cases of alleged homicide, abuse and misconduct to the Justice Department for further investigation, reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, "The Dark Side," and in an investigative report published in The New Yorker in November 2005.
In "The Dark Side," Mayer described the report as being "as thick as two Manhattan phone books" and contained information, according to an unnamed source, "that was simply sickening."
"The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, one of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized," Mayer wrote. "The source said, 'You couldn't read the documents without wondering, "Why didn't someone say, 'Stop!'""
Mayer added that Cheney routinely "summoned" Inspector General Helgerson to meet with him privately about his investigation, launched in 2003, and soon thereafter the probe "was stopped in its tracks." Mayer characterized Cheney's interaction with Helgerson as highly unusual
Cheney's "reaction to this first, carefully documented in-house study concluding that the CIA's secret program was most likely criminal was to summon the Inspector General to his office for a private chat," Mayer wrote. "The Inspector General is supposed to function as an independent overseer, free from political pressure, but Cheney summoned the CIA Inspector General more than once to his office."
"Cheney loomed over everything," the former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG's office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House."
...News reports have suggested that when Helgerson's report is declassified it will seriously undercut claims made by Cheney in numerous interviews that the systematic torture of "high-value" detainees produced valuable intelligence, thwarted pending terrorist plots against the United States and saved "hundreds of thousands of lives."
In addition to showing the inconclusive nature of the value of intelligence gleaned through torture, the report will likely show that Helgerson warned top CIA officials that the interrogation techniques administered to detainees "might violate some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture."
Obama wants to keep Preventive Detention as a tool in his War On Terror but doing so is not much of a change in policy from that of Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld. Obama is merely trying to rationalize why prisoners should be held indefinitely without trial. He is applying this to those already held at Gitmo or elsewhere. The idea that if someone has been arrested they therefore must be guilty of something is a dangerous policy open as we have seen under Bush & Cheney to a great deal of abuse. The fear Obama has is the same as the former regime that many of those held are actually innocent and those who may be guilty have been treated so unfairly & have been in many cases abused and tortures so Obama doesn't want the public to know how bad things were or are in Guantanamo or other US run prisons in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Anyone who was very critical of American policies in its war on terror might be seen as a threat to US security so is Obama's proposal a sort of "Police State Lite ". But for anyone who expresses their hatred of America because for instance the US & NATO forces have just bombed their town or village & killed some of their family or a couple of hundred civilians in order to try to kill or capture some so-called terrorist suspects. So all those Iraqis who rose up to fight against what they believed was an illegal & criminal invasion & occupation of their country would be considered " terrorists" or in Obama's rebranding "combatants" and so deserving of indefinite detention without any legal rights or even human rights as guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions.
Eventually in Iraq as is happening now in Afghanistan anyone who dares challenge the American & NATO occupiers is by definition a "terrorist" . Every time more innocent people are blown to pieces by US & NATO forces more Iraqis or Afghans join the " insurgents" or the " Resistance Movement" in those countries . Obama like many Americans seems to show little regard for other nation's Sovereignty.
Why is it that Americans & NATO believe that the people of Iraq or Afghanistan have no right to defend themselves against an illegal invasion & occupation of their countries.
Of course Obama claims that these Combatant prisoners would at some point be tried in his " Kangaroo Courts " or "Show Trials" at some future date a year from now five years or twenty five years since they are to be held indefinitely.
It's important to be clear about what "preventive detention" authorizes. It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding. That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, "preventive detention" allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally "dangerous" by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they "expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden" or "otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans"). That's what "preventive" means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be "combatants."
Once known, the details of the proposal could -- and likely will -- make this even more extreme by extending the "preventive detention" power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a "combatant." After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based -- namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain "dangerous" people even when they can't prove they violated any laws -- there's no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly "dangerous" combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.
...As I said yesterday, there were some positive aspects to Obama's speech. His resolve to close Guantanamo in the face of all the fear-mongering, like his release of the OLC memos, is commendable. But the fact that a Democratic President who ran on a platform of restoring America's standing and returning to our core principles is now advocating the creation of a new system of indefinite preventive detention -- something that is now sure to become a standard view of Democratic politicians and hordes of Obama supporters -- is by far the most consequential event yet in the formation of Obama's civil liberties policies.
President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have to be held without trial indefinitely, siding with conservative national security advocates on one of the most contentious issues raised by the closing of the military prison in Cuba.
"We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country," Obama said. "But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States."
Some human rights advocates criticized Obama for adopting the idea that some detainees are not entitled to a trial. Others said the president was boxed in by cases inherited from the Bush administration in which possible prosecution had been irretrievably compromised by coercive interrogation.
...Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said employing preventive detention simply because some cases at Guantanamo are too difficult to prosecute would involve the kind of legal expediency that Obama said was a hallmark of his predecessor's policies.
"My question is not only what happens to those people who may be perpetually in prison but what kind of precedent does that set for the future?" Ratner said. "It's not one I find constitutional or acceptable. Opening that door even for a few Guantanamo detainees is anathema. He is closing Guantanamo physically, but he's repackaging it with a little more legal gloss."
Obama did not lay out the legal underpinnings of preventive detention yesterday, speaking only of "a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight." He could hold detainees under a law-of-war theory that they are combatants or, more radically, create a national security court under domestic legislation to back such a detention system. The Supreme Court has already ruled that detainees are entitled to a judicial review of their detention.
also see detailed account in article in McClatchy Newspapers pointing out the lies & misinformation in Cheney's speech:
Dick Cheney Still Lying -Cenk Uygur The Young Turks -May 21,2009
Watch more at http://www.theyoungturks.com
Cheney claims the use of torture was legal & prevented attcks. But there is no evidence that torture prevented any attacks. But if you keep repeating Cheney's Talking Points that torture prevented was legal & prevented attacks & the American conservatives & their Media Echo-chamber will repeat it til many Americans take it as a fact.
Cheney naming names as he goes after The New York Times for reporting on the abuse & torture of detainees & on illegal wiretapping . So the reason the War on Terror has not been going as well as it should have is that the UnAmerican Liberal Media helped to sabotage the Bush/Cheney policies & actions . So according to Cheney and the conservative Echo-chamber there is a fifth column in the US which is working against the US military & the US government. So it has all been a conspiracy to tarnish the reputations of Cheney ,Bush et al.
President Obama by refusing to go ahead with investigations & indictments this seems to give tacit approval of Cheney's position & policies when he was Vice President.Cheney in one sense in creating this narrative is just appealing to the real American Patriots who believe that whatever the US or its military or the C.I.A. does is for America's benefit that is to keep America secure by any & all means necessary. Based upon the belief in American Exceptionalism & that who ever is President & Vice President is not merely a matter of votes but is rather an issue of Divine Providence therefore whatever America does this is part of Divine Providenc. The more secular belief is that America is superior to all other nations and its system of government is the best in the world & again superior to all other nations therefore America can do no wrong.
Anyway Nancy Pelosi accused the C.I.A. of lying to her about the interrogation techniques they were using on Gitmo detainees. The C.I.A. of course claims they didn't lie. The Republicans & the conservative echo-chamber is attacking Pelosi for making such allegations against the C.I.A. which they believe can do no wrong & is always working hard to do what's best for America & to keep America safe. So it has become this sort of nonsense about he said & she said tabloid style journalism.
There are several issues here which include the fact that Obama has not come to Pelosi's defense because he himself has shown himself to be a "true Believer " in the C.I.A. & the " National Security Bureaucracy " as well as a defender of the "Military Industrial complex" . Obama told the C.I.A. that in the matter of abuse & torture of detainees that he would ensure that C.I.A. agents who took part in abuse & torture of detainees would not be indicted or brought to trial nor would he permit anyone to file civil suits against them for damages in an attempt to get some form of compensation.
Another issue is that Obama is going to continue the policies of abuse & torture of so called " detainees" but not in Gitmo but in other prisons in Iraq & Afghanistan and allow the various secret prisons run by the US military or the C.I.A. or private contractors to continue to operate. He is also allowing for the use of torture by proxy in which "detainees" are sent to countries which engage in torture.Obama has refuse to grant these prisoners their basic protections under the Geneva Conventions & the Special Convention on the Prohibition on Torture .
Obama refuses to release the photos of abuse by US personnel claiming National Security and protecting the troops in the field which is just a lot of nonsense . Obama has also said he will continue with the sham trials of detainees by the Military tribunals which have been describes by many as Kangaroo Courts in which everything is set up in order to make sure that the "detainees " are found guilty whether they are guilty or not is irrelevant. The problem with properly reviewing the detainees cases or having fair trials is that if a number of these "detainees " are not found guilty this would be an embarrassment for the US military & the C.I.A. & would lead to more people insisting that the Bush /Cheney Regime's policies should be investigated & Obama claims he wants to go forward & not open up old wounds.
The problem is that those wounds have not yet healed & will not until justice is done and is seen to be done. These issues are not partisan but rather have to do with the American core values of Justice, democracy, human rights & human dignity. The other problem is Obama himself since it appears that he is more concerned with protecting the guilty in the US government at various levels including members of Congress, members of the Judiciary,the medical professionals & others who took part in this policy of systematic abuse and torture of detainees & an investigations may also discover that many of these abuses have been going during Obama's presidency.
Anyway part of what I have been discussing for your consideration is the rather shady history of the C.I.A. Given their notorious history it is not surprising that they agreed to abuse & torture prisoners for Cheney & Bush or that they were willing to force false confessions out of tortured detainees.
The C.I.A. over the last fifty years has been involved in various criminal activities such as overthrowing democratically elected governments . They have used various means to accomplish their goals from using assassinations to death squads & backing military Coups which have led to the deaths of thousands as in Chile , Iran, Iraq etc.
So here's a clip from Costas Gavras ' powerful and difficult to find film "Missing"- some Americans and even some Canadians didn't like this more accurate & realistic portrayal of America & its military & the C.I.A & their dirty tricks & brutality. I guess many people are like Peggy Noonan they don't want to see the atrocities of which they cold- heartedly approve. In this scene the formerly true believer patriotic American Mr. Horman (Jack Lemmon)finally realizes that the US Ambassador in Chile and other US officials have been lying to him all along and that the US military & C.I.A. etc. were deeply involved in the coup in Chile & approved the Kill order issued against his son because they feared he knew too much.
also see my discussion of films by Costas Gavras at my website gordscafe
Missing (part 12)- the rest is available at YouTube
Gen. Stanley McChrystal who is fond of assassinations , deaths squads & torture & Abuse another winner picked by Obama guarantees more of the same or much worse. Besides leading assassination squads he ran a prison in Iraq notorious for its abuse & torture of detainees.
Yes, Stanley McChrystal is the general from the dark side (and proud of it)So the recent sacking of Afghan commander General David McKiernan after less than a year in the field and McChrystal's appointment as the man to run the Afghan War seems to signal that the Obama administration is going for broke. It's heading straight into what, in the Vietnam era, was known as "the big muddy."
General McChrystal comes from a world where killing by any means is the norm and a blanket of secrecy provides the necessary protection. For five years he commanded the Pentagon's super-secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which, among other things, ran what Seymour Hersh has described as an "executive assassination wing" out of Vice President Cheney's office. (Cheney just returned the favor by giving the newly appointed general a ringing endorsement: "I think you'd be hard put to find anyone better than Stan McChrystal.")
...All of this offers more than a hint of the sort of "new thinking and new approaches" -- to use Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's words -- that the Obama administration expects General McChrystal to bring to the devolving Af-Pak battlefield. He is, in a sense, both a legacy figure from the worst days of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era and the first-born child of Obama-era Washington's growing desperation and hysteria over the wars it inherited.
And now we are getting more info on Rumsfeld's own personally run special ops group of Assassins operating like your typical C.I.A. Death Squads.One of the commanders was Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal who was appointed recently to run US operations in Afghanistan & Pakistan. Again one is at a loss trying to explain why Obama would allow such an appointment except that Obama is now taking his orders from the Pentagon & the National Security Bureaucracy etc.
Special Forces group implicated in three incidents that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians / MarSOC was set up by former defence secretary despite opposition from within the Marine Corps
" --- A single American Special Forces group was behind at least three of Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents, The Independent has learnt, raising fundamental questions about their ongoing role in the conflict.
Troops from the US Marines Corps' Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, were responsible for calling in air strikes in Bala Boluk, in Farah, last week – believed to have killed more than 140 men, women and children – as well as two other incidents in 2007 and 2008. News of MarSOC's involvement in the three incidents comes just days after a Special Forces expert, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, was named to take over as the top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. His surprise appointment has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle to beat the Taliban.
MarSOC was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community. An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as "cowboys" who brought shame on the corps.
Americans keep asking why do these foreigners hate them and then they go into a sovereign nation and bomb entire villages or wedding parties in the hope of killing a couple of suspected "terrorists" or Taliban or "insurgents" and those who survive then take up guns and begin fighting the Americans and the US's unfortunate allies which includes troops from my country Canada- eventually the people who feel they are being unjustly targeted no longer see any difference between America & other Western Nations who are occupying their land.And so day by day this insane war is becoming Obama's war as Vietnam became Johnson's War and then Nixon's war which could not be won no matter how many bombs and no matter how much Napalm they dropped on Vietnamese civilians.That war ended with over 50,000 Americans dead & 2,000,000 (two Million )Vietnamese dead.
FARAH, Afghanistan — The number of civilians killed by the American airstrikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.
...The bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. Several villagers said that they could not distinguish all of the dead and that they never found some of their relatives.
...It is bombings like this one that have turned many Afghans against the American-backed government and the foreign military presence. The events in Granai have raised sharp questions once again about the appropriateness and effectiveness of aerial bombardment in a guerrilla war in which the insurgents deliberately blend into the civilian population to fight and flee.
--- The journalists Gall & Sanger two years ago were warning that the war in Afghanistan was going badly for NATO:
What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war. Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.
The civilian deaths are also exposing tensions between American commanders and commanders from other NATO countries, who have never fully agreed on the strategy to fight the war here, in a country where there are no clear battle lines between civilians and Taliban insurgents.
...But it is not only the Americans whose practices are being questioned. NATO soldiers have frequently fired on civilians on the roads, often because the Afghans drive too close to military convoys or checkpoints.
The public mood hardened against foreign forces in the southern city of Kandahar after British troops fired on civilians while driving through the streets after a suicide bombing last year, and Canadian soldiers have repeatedly killed and wounded civilians while on patrol in civilian areas.
Air Power and Popular Anger
The reliance on air power has led to a string of prominent episodes recently involving the deaths of large numbers of civilians, who often cannot escape, caught between NATO forces and the Taliban and its sympathizers.
Meanwhile things are worsening in Afghanistan & Pakistan as Obama approves of more massive bombings and killings as the solution to the problem of the Taliban, Al Qaeda & now like Iraq (or Vietnam decades ago )the rising numbers of Insurgents who once were the citizens who were cooperative but are no longer :
...After the Special Forces units started raiding homes, the villagers were so angered, they said, they fought the Americans themselves. They insisted that no Taliban were here, an area that has been mostly calm.
“NATO was coming regularly, and the Afghan Army and police, and we were cooperating with them,” said Muhammad Alef, 35, a farmer who was tending to his wounded cousin in the provincial hospital in the city of Herat.
“But when the Americans came without permission, and they came more than once and disturbed the people,” he said. “They searched the houses, and the second time they arrested people, and the third time the people got angry and fought them.”
The American forces searched the tribal chief’s house and arrested two of his staff members, the villagers said. One, a watchman named only Bahadullah, 45, said he had been handcuffed, covered with a hood and taken to the nearby American base at Shindand.
He said he had been strung up by his feet for what seemed like an hour and a half as American soldiers swung him about. When he was let down the soldiers kicked and beat him, he said. In an interview this week, he said he was still passing blood and in pain from the beatings.
... But a villager, Abdul Waheed, said the Americans had searched his family compound and found no weapons and certainly must have seen the women and children. Two days later they bombed the compound, killing six children, he said.
“The Americans should leave Afghanistan because this is my own home,” he said. “I am sitting here and they come and just order a bomb to drop.”
So anyway let's begin with a little music. Richie Havens performs Jackson Browne 's Lives in the Balance
Anyway here's a bit more information on how the C.I.A. began and what its agenda was and how it acts as a separate branch of the US government.The C.I.A. is used by Presidents or by the Pentagon or other branches of the National Security Bureaucracy to do those things which others are not permitted to do. The C.I.A. unflinchingly breaks US laws & acts contrary to the stated ideals of the US Constitution & the Bill of Rights.
The C.I.A. operates in the shadows cloaked in secrecy with little or no oversight or accountability except when they get caught in some way by downing a civilian plane over Peru with a US missionary aboard.Or as they got caught during the Bay of Pigs Fiasco or after the fact they had to face a Congressional committee about their quite considerable role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile or their role in the Iran Contra scandal. So why would Obama go to the C.I.A. with hat in hand assuring these thugs who operate outside the law that they would never be prosecuted for torture or any other wrong-doing on his watch. Other presidents felt the need to also pay tribute to the C.I.A. ie President Reagan & Bush I & Clinton etc. So the chances are Obama will do little to rein these folks in because Obama may need them at some point to carry out some illegal or unethical actions on his behalf? Some experts argue that Obama feels the need to have the C.I.A. on his side because they could make things quite difficult for him But the C.I.A. in their attacks on Nancy Pelosi & others shows they are not keeping their heads down and staying out of Obama's way which show how naive Obama really is or that he never had the intention to dismantle the Bush/Cheney Regimes illegal & questionable if not immoral tactics in the War on Terror. Once the C.I.A. made the excuse that it was fighting evil Communism now its the Evil Terrorists, the Evil Insurgents, the Evil Arabs & the Evil Muslims, the Evil Taliban and every other week a new group is added to the list.
The C.I.A. ignores the sovereignty of other nations as it goes about its business toppling governments it does not approve of and supporting by any means necessary those governments no matter how brutal or anti-Democratic as long as they serve in some fashion America's interests , American corporations or by crushing so called Communists. socialists and liberals who might want a better life for all the citizens of that country and not just for the rich & powerful. So any one striving for social justice & human rights and such rights as freedom of speech or freedom of speech are simply labeled Communists or Marxists or these days terrorists & insurgents as a catch all for any who dare criticize a government which is an ally of the United States. These states America then rules by proxy by having only those in government of whom the US & the C.I.A. approve.
Secrets of the CIA Part 1
Part 1: "The Introduction" The United States CIA declassified. Retired CIA agents tell their stories of the horrific actions committed by the CIA.
Iran 1953 Guatemala 1954 Cuba 1961 Vietnam Laos 1962 Indonesia 1965 Bolivia 1967 Cambodia 1970 Chile 1973 Afghanistan 1979 Nicaragua 1981 Honduras Panama 1989 Venezuela 2002 secrets
And here is a summary of the 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Frank Church Church Commission which held hearings into the circumstances surrounding the Coup D'etat in Chile in which they conclude that without the help of the US government & military and the C.I.A. the 1973 coup would not have been successful in putting the Brutal General Pinochet into power.Anyway this gives one at least a glimpse of these ruthless people which Obama is now defending unconditionally.
I copied this from a website dedicated to keeping a detailed record of the criminal activities of the C.I.A. And yes the C.I.A. has quite a habit of lying to Congress, the Senate & the American people.Virtual Truth Commission 975: The Church Commission
Discoveries
U. S. Involvement: In the mid-1970's, revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," prompted a major scandal...and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate...
The 1970s hearings established that the Nixon administration adopted a secret, two-track strategy to ensure that Allende, a Socialist, was defeated in his fourth bid to the Chilean presidency in the 1970 elections. The first track, primarily a political and psychological campaign targeted against Allende, was little different from previous, multi-million-dollar efforts by the CIA to prevent his election in 1958, 1962 and 1964.
The second track, so secret that even the US ambassador in Santiago was not informed, was launched after Allende narrowly won a three-way race on Sep 4, 1970. "On September 15," wrote the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "President Nixon informed CIA Director Richard Helms that an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable to the United States and instructed the CIA to play a direct role in organizing a military coup d'etat in Chile to prevent Allende's accession to the Presidency."
...Conclusions
# 1975: Frank Church, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded that the CIA, in a shadowy alliance with U.S. corporations, carried out "massive covert operations within a democratic state, with the ultimate effect of overthrowing [the] duly elected government."
The highlights of "Project FUBELT" were cited in both the newly released CIA documents and in papers uncovered by the 1975 congressional inquiry. Covert funds were funneled into Chilean congressional campaigns; CIA agents stayed close to disgruntled Chilean military officers; to keep the military on edge, the CIA planted false propaganda suggesting that the Chilean left planned to take control of the armed forces; and the CIA secretly poured $1.5 million into one of Chile's leading newspapers, El Mercurio...
Pinochet: An Image Problem
( especially since two American citizens in Chile were executed by Pinochet's Military the incident was made into the film "Missing " by Costas Gavras with Jack Lemmon & Sissy Spacek )
The administration fretted about an image problem in the United States, too, because two Americans -- Charles Horman and Frank Terruggi -- were among those executed at the National Stadium. Their deaths constituted a "difficult public relations situation," one cable reported on Oct. 21, 1973. The Kubisch report to Kissinger cited "heavy" media criticism and congressional inquiries on the two executions. In February 1974, Kubisch delicately raised the American deaths with Chilean Foreign Minister Manuel Huerta, according to a newly declassified memorandum of the conversation. The topic was broached "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult," the memo said...
But the first wave of executions was only the start of atrocities in Pinochet's Chile. Human rights violations kept complicating U.S.-Chilean relations, especially after Nixon's Watergate resignation in August 1974. By 1975, human rights advocates were challenging the Ford administration's continued support for Pinochet. A confidential NSC memorandum dated July 1, 1975, revealed a mutiny even inside the U.S. Embassy. "A number of officers in the Embassy at Santiago have written a dissent," according to the memo prepared for national security advisor Brent Scowcroft.
The dissent was "strongly supported by the Policy Planning office in ARA [State's Latin American division], calling for cutting off all economic and military assistance to Chile until the human rights situation improved." The memo said the embassy staff was overruled by then-Ambassador David Popper who wanted to continue support for the junta while making stronger protests on human rights. Popper met with the Chilean minister of economic coordination, Raul Saez, on April 6, 1975, to discuss the concerns. Popper said "the most difficult problem we had in our embassy had to do with allegations of torture," according to an embassy cable. "The root of the problem seemed to me to be the absolute power of DINA [Chile's intelligence service] to do whatever it desired in detaining and handling suspects."
also see my discussion of the film "Missing " by Costas Gavras which deals with the Coup in Chile & the disappearance of the US citizen Charles Horman who was exectuted by Pinochet's people with the approval of the C.I.A. & the US government at my website gordscafe
Rumsfeld Memos With Bible Quotes -The Christian Evangelical Crusades Continue In Iraq & Afghanistan
UPDATE: 9:31 AM,12:05 PM, May 20, 2009
The Torture Paradigm
Over the past 60 years, victims worldwide have endured the CIA's "torture paradigm," developed at a cost that reached $1 billion annually, according to historian Alfred McCoy in his book A Question of Torture. He shows how torture methods the CIA developed from the 1950s surfaced with little change in the infamous photos at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. There is no hyperbole in the title of Jennifer Harbury's penetrating study of the U.S. torture record: Truth, Torture, and the American Way. So it is highly misleading, to say the least, when investigators of the Bush gang's descent into the global sewers lament that "in waging the war against terrorism, America had lost its way."
None of this is to say that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld et al. did not introduce important innovations. In ordinary American practice, torture was largely farmed out to subsidiaries, not carried out by Americans directly in their own government-established torture chambers. As Allan Nairn, who has carried out some of the most revealing and courageous investigations of torture, points out: "What the Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under U.S. patronage. Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so."
Obama did not shut down the practice of torture, Nairn observes, but "merely repositioned it," restoring it to the American norm, a matter of indifference to the victims. "[H]is is a return to the status quo ante," writes Nairn, "the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more U.S.-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years."
Sometimes the American engagement in torture was even more indirect. In a 1980 study, Latin Americanist Lars Schoultz found that U.S. aid "has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens,... to the hemisphere's relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights." Broader studies by Edward Herman found the same correlation, and also suggested an explanation. Not surprisingly, U.S. aid tends to correlate with a favorable climate for business operations, commonly improved by the murder of labor and peasant organizers and human rights activists and other such actions, yielding a secondary correlation between aid and egregious violation of human rights.
Anyway here are some items for your consideration:
Oliver North & the C.I.A. & the Iran/Contra scandal -only following orders North claims he was doing his duty for God & country
Cheney's thugs are still operating their brutal Goon Squad at Guantanamo even though Obama is now the Commander in Chief according to Jeremy Scahill.
Is abuse & torture becoming now part of Obama's legacy Is the misguided brutal Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan & Pakistan slowly but surely becoming Obama's War which has no real set goals or an exit plan-
Why are Americans & the US Media not just outraged over the abuse & torture of detainees but rather talk about it as if it were a reasonable policy & strategy?
Why are the same people unwilling to talk about the larger issue about the use of torture to fabricate intel & phony confessions to justify the war in Iraq ?
Why is the media since the 1980's so concerned with refusing to consider the dark side of America's government & its foreign policies and the various scandals involving the US government & its intelligence community ?
In the clip below Bill Moyers in the documentary, which is available at YouTube ,details the creation of the C.I.A. and how it has operated as if it were a separate arm of the US government only answerable to the President & more recently the Vice President ( Dick Cheney).Moyers sees the C.I.A. as a direct threat to the US constitution and at times undermining US foreign policy & helping to inflame anti-Americanism & promoting the stereotype of "The Ugly American".
According to US law Soldiers are only to follow lawful orders & it is their duty to not follow orders which are illegal- Oliver North hasn't a clue when he is confronted with this notion since he believes that no matter how insane or immoral or illegal an order is that as an American soldier it is his duty to follow that order- integrity to him is merely following orders - and it did not matter to him that the Contras acted more like terrorists than Freedom Fighters - the Contras like the C.I.A. trained and backed death squads of El Salvador terrorized innocent citizens kidnapping , torturing , murdering in order to make life difficult for the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua.
Subvert Our Society to Save it
Jeremy Scahill on Gitmo Thugs known as "Immediate Response Force"( IRF & IRFING) set up under the Bush Regime which is continuing to brutalize detainees at Guantanamo during Obama's Presidency.
Obama/ Pelosi: What Torture ?- Obama continuing Cover-up of the abuse & torture of "detainees" May 19,2009
Democracy Now: Jeremy Scahill reports on the ongoing torture program at Guantanamo. An elite torture squad formed during the Bush Administration continues it's work under the Obama Administration. A Judge in Spain is assembling a case against the U.S. that addresses the continued violation of the International Treaty against Torture which the U.S. is a signatory.
How is it that we read one article after another explaining that torture is not effective and that its blow back effect makes it at the least bad policy yet conservatives & Republicans still claim that torture works and that approving the use of torture is a good & sound policy decision ?
Is this just part of their attempt to silence or change what the conversation should be about- did it work? or What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it? Or that it is just a small extreme left wingers who are interested in gining up the issue of torture?
Part of what is disturbing about the legacy of the Bush/Cheney Regime is that members of the media are just repeating the Cheney "talking Points " & lies about torture ie that it was effective, that it kep America safe. it was only used on a small number of people maybe 3 up to a dozen, that these techniques were & are legal. Average Americans are sitting around talking about "torture " as if it were just a policy decision and they leave out the legal & moral implications of torture. They also leave out the concern that if America abuses & tortures detainees this adds fuel to stoke up even more anti-Americanism. Its odd or hypocritical of those who condemned Saddam because he abused & tortured prisoners but now the Republicans & Fox News & the rest of their echo-chamber are arguing that torture is effective & justifiable & not that big of a deal. Has the mindset of the American media gone so far to the right that they can no longer make a judgment about what is or is not justifiable. The attitude in much of the Media is that if a journalist dares to say that the Cheney techniques are in fact torture and that these techniques shouldn't be used by US personnel that journalist is afraid of being characterized as being unpatriotic & soft on terrorism.
Scarborough: 'How Dare You Come On This Set' And Say Torture Doesn't Work?
Michael Steele unable to say whether or not the " Enhanced Interrogation Techniques " approved & used by Cheney & Bush were in fact "torture Techniques". But he agrees to having a truth commission or special prosecutor set up to investigate the allegations. He tries to bring it back to the Republican/conservative "talking Point" of what Nancy Pelosi knew or didn't know. Pelosi is not the issue the issue is whether or not the C.I.A. & the military & other US personnel engaged in the abuse & torture of detainees.
Steele Gets In Trouble For His Thoughts On Torture-May 18, 2009 Watch more at http://www.theyoungturks.com
Meanwhile : Torture Complaint Seeks Bush Lawyers Disbarment-May 18, 2009
Two groups have filed complaints against Bush administration lawyers linked to memos on harsh interrogation techniques of detainees asking that the attorneys be disbarred. (May 18)
CIA a terrorist organization the insidious effect of avoiding the unpleasnt side of war. Sanitization of war treating a war like a video game Journalists begin to believe that the public should only be told the good news about its country's policies so reporting truthfully the ugly side of war or writing about government scandals became a no no
What is most disturbing about the refusal to release the photos is the broader pattern into which it fits -- a pattern of decisions that effectively preserve the framework of Bush's War on Terror, with all the violations of our constitution that it entails.
...Obama never promised he would transform the entire architecture of the American system -- he's a pragmatist, not a revolutionary. But he did say he would restore balance and the rule of law to the existing system. For that, the Bush/Cheney "War on Terror" paradigm must be dismantled. Disclosing the photos and mandating an independent prosecutor to investigate those responsible for torture would be one step in signaling a genuine break with this endless-just war paradigm, and ensure the terrible violations it made possible will never again be perpetrated by agents of the United States.
And that a horrible precedent will not be set for future US state crimes.
We can't whitewash institutionalized torture, trash any conceivable notion of the rule of law, and call that 'looking forward.'
The situation in which we now find ourselves is so bizarre, it's hard to fathom. New revelations continue to surface -- we learn that Vice President Cheney's office ordered and specified how a man was to be tortured, and mounting evidence suggests the United States tortured to extract false confessions that would justify preemptive war on Iraq. Yet a Democratic president leads a Democratic congress to whitewash institutionalized torture and in effect trash any conceivable notion of the rule of law, all in the name of "looking forward."
And now we hear that the administration will block the release of new evidence in this hideous criminal conspiracy. Now you, the president who came to power with promises of transparency and change, say you don't want to release the photos because they "will further inflame anti-American sentiment" and endanger U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
...Releasing all the photos depicting detainee abuse and initiating an independent inquiry and prosecution of those responsible at the highest level is the only way forward.
This is not an issue of partisan politics. It's a police matter... the investigation of a crime scene in which many more of us are complicit than is comfortable to recognize.
It is apparent that regardless of who is in power, conservative ideals are firmly entrenched not simply in the American psyche, but are an integral part of U.S. policies. One could blame liberals for not having a backbone when combating conservatives, but chances are that the real reason may be even more onerous; one likely explanation is governmental psychological warfare.
Why did Congress last week quietly approve almost another $100 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Why are displaced Mexican migrants scapegoated for all the ills of U.S. society? Why does the United States escape blame for its insatiable thirst for drugs [in fueling the drug wars in Mexico]? Why is the United States always supposed to side with Israel, without ever having a debate? Why does “war as peace” continue to be U.S. policy?
With President Obama, things were supposed to be different; the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were supposed to come to a screeching halt. Guantanamo would be immediately closed down and torture would unequivocally be denounced and those flouting U.S. and international laws would finally be held to account in a court of law.
Instead, we see vacillation or escalation on virtually every front. Just on economic grounds alone, one would think that shutting down both wars would be a no-brainer. So the question is logical; with Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, why do conservative ideals and policies – such as the right to permanent war – continue to be entrenched throughout the U.S. political landscape?
(Media & government propaganda as part of a concerted effort to get the public to accept "torture" as an acceptable policy which they argue does not go against America's core values & that those who were tortured deserved it. Further the argument is that most Americans became by the media blitz to sell Bus & Cheney's War in Iraq.GORD.)
This confirmed what I had always suspected; this would explain how the Iraq War was sold – through an unquestioning media that simply acted liked stenographers – repeating complete fabrications, affirmed by “military experts” (in the employ of Defense contractors) that even grade school children could see through. Yet that would not have been enough to have convinced a skeptical public.
For such a special operation to work, fear, hate and ignorance had to be thrown into the mix, helping to advance the nonsensical argument that Iraq constituted a grave threat to the world. Yet, on the heels of the Cold War – in which the United States was pitted against a superpower that actually had a nuclear arsenal of thousands – Americans were supposed to be afraid of a country that, in effect, used slingshots as part of its air defense. While fear, hate and ignorance usually work in any society, all this was not enough to sell this war.
To sell the war – in fact, to sell the notion of a right to permanent worldwide war (The so-called War on Terror) – required bringing in three additional factors: God, hyper-nationalism and a “homeland.” If Bush could convince the public that God was siding with the United States against fanatical Arab/Muslim terrorists who were responsible for 9-11, then all that remained was to convince the public that it was their patriotic duty to support the president in this God-inspired civilizational war to protect the Fatherland against infidels. This civilizational Jihad or Crusade included warring against Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11 and that had not ever been a threat to the United States (see Rumsfeld’s “religious” memos to Bush in this week’s issue of GQ.)
...While we discuss the proprieties of torture and other enhanced interrogation techniques – we never get around to discussing illegal wars that have resulted in the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands and the displacement of millions. Within this context, we ignore the larger crimes against humanity by the Bush administration and instead debate whether torture works or not.
Indeed, one could argue that the sanitizing of war by both U.S. politicians and the press over the last couple of decades - supposedly for "the good of the country" - has contributed to the deaths of many more U.S. soldiers and foreign civilians than any disclosure might have.
For instance, during the first Gulf War in 1991, grim photos of charred victims of U.S. aerial bombardments appeared in Europe and elsewhere but not in the United States. The U.S. news media chose to withhold the most gruesome images out of a concern that the pictures might dampen the happy national celebration as war again began to seem like fun.
By self-censoring the photos - and downplaying civilian casualties in and around Baghdad - the U.S. news media also repositioned itself as "patriotic," thus deflecting the Right's longstanding criticism of the U.S. press corps for supposedly undermining American resolve to win the Vietnam War.
The "feel-good" editorial decisions in the first Persian Gulf War surely made career sense for the well-paid talking heads. They could sit around with retired military officers and analyze the war as if it were a bloodless video game.
...Unpleasant Truths
In my three decades-plus in Washington journalism, I have witnessed the creeping opportunism behind this claim of doing "what's good for the country," which usually translates into keeping unpleasant truths from the American people and spares politicians and journalists from the difficult task of having to speak ill of some U.S. government actions.
This tendency extends beyond the battlefield, too. For instance, in early November 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson felt he was on the verge of negotiating an end to the Vietnam War, he learned that Richard Nixon's political operatives were trying to sabotage the peace talks as a means of ensuring Nixon's electoral victory.
When Johnson considered exposing Nixon's "treason," the President was dissuaded by then-Defense Secretary Clark Clifford who feared that the disclosure might undermine Nixon's legitimacy if he won the election anyway.
...There was a sense that getting to the bottom of the Iran-Contra scandal - and facing up to the roles of President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush in violating the Arms Export Control Act, engaging in criminal money-laundering and defying Congress on its prohibition of military aid to the contras - would not be "good for the country."
The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war.
It was a decline into permanent war, not Islam, which killed the liberal, democratic movements in the Arab world, ones that held great promise in the early part of the 20th century in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls-the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads - personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.
...Citizens in a state of permanent war are bombarded with the insidious militarized language of power, fear and strength that mask an increasingly brittle reality. The corporations behind the doctrine of permanent war-who have corrupted Leon Trotsky's doctrine of permanent revolution-must keep us afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear means that we will be willing to give up our rights and liberties for security. Fear keeps us penned in like domesticated animals.
Mellman, who coined the term permanent war economy to characterize the American economy, wrote that since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current, and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. The military industrial establishment is a very lucrative business. It is gilded corporate welfare. It comes with guaranteed profits. Defense systems are sold before they are produced. Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Massive profits are always guaranteed.
...Our permanent war economy has not been challenged by Obama and the Democratic Party. They support its destructive fury because it funds them. They validate its evil assumptions because to take them on is political suicide. They repeat the narrative of fear because it keeps us dormant. They do this because they have become weaker than the corporate forces that profit from permanent war.
The hollowness of our liberal classes, such as the Democrats, empowers the moral nihilists. A state of permanent war means the inevitable death of liberalism. Dick Cheney may be palpably evil while Obama is merely weak, but to those who seek to keep us in a state of permanent war it does not matter. They get what they want. another reason for taking action against Cheney et al is because it helps to embolden those who support Dick Cheney & Torture and create various rationalizations to defend the invasion of Iraq.
Four days before trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell was ready to scrap dubious allegations about Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda but was dissuaded by top CIA officials who cited a new “bombshell” that now appears to have been derived from torture, a top Powell aide says.
So some argue that only a fringe group of Americans are actually interested in the issue of torture.This is just another attempt by the establishment Media to down-play the whole issue of Torture . Are they afraid that they too will be seen as enablers of the renegae criminal Bush/Cheney Regime ?
While at least 40% to over 50% of Americans want more information released on torture & also want some form of independent investigation there are those who claim very few Americans are interested in the issue. As Glenn Greenwald notes there are even democrats making such an erroneous claim.
And Neocons such as Bill Kristol extols the virtues of Dick Cheney as a spokesperson for the Republicans and the Conservative movement in America. This illustrates another reason for investigating & prosecuting Cheney & his co-conspirators for their crimes from torture to BSing America & the world into supporting the invasion & occupation of Iraq.Not taking action against them merely emboldens their supporters who believe that if these people are not investigated or brought to trial it therefore means that what they did was not illegal or immoral but rather a mere policy decision & that the use of torture kept America safe over the last eight years.
