Flashback: Bush Says He Approved Torture. What About Sexual Torture?

Troutfishing
Dailykos.com
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:23 EDT

Axis of Evil Condracula 'proud' of illegal Iraq invasion, over 1 million deaths War Whore Condolizzard Rice Says She's 'Proud' of Decision to Invade Iraq Pentagon extends tour of Marines in Afghanistan US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico Guantánamo Trials: Another Torture Victim Gets Charged Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion

Read the whole thing here.

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A Friday ABC interview confirms: Bush "approved" of the torture techniques ABC's Wednesday story detailed. But ABC fails to mention even more severe torture techniques that were implemented by Don Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone - did George W. Bush give Rumsfeld the authority to implement what became known as "Copper Green" ?

Did George Bush sign an NSC document authorizing sexual torture methods, then delegate to Rumsfeld authority to implement those sex-torture methods ?

That's the real question, this new ABC story is only the prologue...

ABC news has developed a new component of the torture story almost in perfect sync with my Thursday post on torture which stressed that because Bush is head, as president, of the National Security Council, of course he would have known of the overall gist of the "NSC Principals" White House meetings on torture policy because, regardless of whether Bush sat in on all meetings or not, all major NSC decisions and policy formulations have go to Bush's desk for final approval, his signature. Bush is, indeed the "decider".

Once again, ABC News has pushed the White House torture program scandal further along and once again the story is embedded in a false frame.

And, the techniques discussed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Powell, Rice and Ashcroft were not the worst of the torture techniques in question. ABC's story discussed on level of torture severity but there was another level expressed through a secret program implemented by Don Rumsfeld and his operative Stephen Cambone: "Copper Green". That program resulted in, as After Downing Street details, child rape.

So here's the REAL question ABC's story fails to confront and which was raised almost four years ago in the New Yorker by Sy Hersh's may 15, 2004 story "The Gray Zone" : Did George W. Bush delegate authority to Rumsfeld to implement a second, even more severe torture regime ?

Did George W. Bush delegate to Donald Rumsfeld the authority to implement psycho-sexual torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere ?

As Sy Hersh's story described:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

In the March 2008 edition of Vanity Fair, in a story titled The Green Light, Philippe Sands lays out a very similar groundwork, and if George W. Bush is not directly implicated let me say this - I know of no major media publication in America that has, so far, run that charge up the flagpole.

As Sands writes:

"The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a "trickle up" explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration"

ABC's team, Jan Crawford Greenberg, Howard L. Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue, landed an exclusive interview with president George W. Bush, who seemed unperturbed and unrepentant about the torture program he had ultimately spawned. The story breaks little ground, past details revealed last Wednesday by ABC, except to make crystal clear the fact that George W. Bush "approved" of torture methods prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

RESOURCES:

An extensive torture timeline, courtesy of the Cooperative Research Commons

A deep history of psychological torture techniques, courtesy of dKos member Valtin

Torture is wrong & it doesn't work, says interrogation expert.

Here it is! The amazing speech by Noami Klein which was censored.

Posted by the fantabulously ONEderful Stimulator.

This is the RAW BOLD TRUTH as spoken by Naomi.

I've now invited Stim to be part of the WAR CRIMES conference.

Hip Hip Hooray!

Life is looking up for ALL of us!

(and btw, will be funny to meet Naomi Klein.)

Virginia

Naomi Klein’s controversial speech

Published

by

stimulator

on July 2, 2008

in the fuckin show

.

Naomi Klein’s speech at the National Conference for Media reform was not included on the conference website. subMedia contacted Free Press, the organizer or the conference, to ask why Klein’s speech could not be found online, and the person explained that Free Press is a non-profit organization and that I should reefer to the disclaimer on their website which reads:

"Despite our best efforts, we feel that some of our speakers encroached on electoral space during their remarks at the National Conference for Media Reform. It is not in our interest to disseminate these recordings. We are reviewing all of our video content and will add that which we determine to be free of electoral statements to this page."

I don’t quite understand how these things work, but whatever. Two sources have told me the reason Free Press did not include the speech was Klein’s criticism of Barack Obama. It would be pretty fuckin lame if it were true.

But fuck it, I got a hold of a copy of the speech and here it is.

Read Klein’s article "Obama’s CHicago Boys" published in "The Nation"

Download this Episode

Buy This Episode on DVD

And hey, fuck, boyz and grrlz, I knew that Conference would be bullshit, so I never posted about it! Imagine! Me who GREW UP there, can't even go there. Ain't that a buncha bs!! )

sickmaking Mexican "torture" videos cause uproar

Police `torture' videos cause uproar in Mexico

By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer Wed Jul 2, 1:19 AM ET

MEXICO CITY - Videos showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a U.S. adviser created an uproar Tuesday in Mexico, which has struggled to eliminate torture in law enforcement.

Two of the videos — broadcast by national television networks and displayed on newspaper Internet sites — showed what Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero described as training for an elite unit that must face "real-life, high-stress situations," such as kidnapping and torture by organized crime groups.

But many Mexicans saw a sinister side, especially at a moment when police and soldiers across the country are struggling with scandals over alleged abuses.

"They are teaching police ... to torture!" read the headline in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.

Human rights investigators in Guanajuato state, where Leon is located, are looking into the tapes, and the National Human Rights Commission also expressed concerned.

"It's very worrisome that there may be training courses that teach people to torture," said Raul Plascencia, one of the commission's top inspectors.

One of the videos, first obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man's nose — a technique once notorious among Mexican police. Then they dunk his head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats. The man gasps for air and moans repeatedly.

In another video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer has an exhausted agent roll into his own vomit. Other officers then drag him through the mess.

"These are no more than training exercises for certain situations, but I want to stress that we are not showing people how to use these methods," Tornero said.

He said the English-speaking man was part of a private U.S. security company helping to train the agents, but he refused to give details.

A third video transmitted by the Televisa network showed officers jumping on the ribs of a suspect curled into a fetal position in the bed of a pickup truck. Tornero said that the case, which occurred several months earlier, was under investigation and that the officers involved had disappeared.

Mexican police often find themselves in the midst of brutal battles between drug gangs. Officials say that 450 police, soldiers and prosecutors have lost their lives in the fight against organized crime since December 2006.

At the same time, several recent high-profile scandals over alleged thuggery and ineptness have reignited criticisms of police conduct. In Mexico City last month, 12 people died in a botched police raid on a disco.

The National Human Rights Commission has documented 634 cases of military abuse since President Felipe Calderon sent more than 20,000 soldiers across the nation to battle drug gangs.

And $400 million in drug-war aid for Mexico that was just signed into law by President George W. Bush doesn't require the U.S. to independently verify that the military has cleaned up its fight, as many American lawmakers and Mexican human rights groups had insisted.

The videos may seem shocking, but training police to withstand being captured is not unusual, said Robert McCue, the director of the private, U.S. firm IES Interactive Training, which provides computer-based training systems in Mexico.

"With the attacks on police and security forces in Mexico that have increased due to the drug cartel wars, I'm not surprised to see this specialized kind of training in resisting and surviving captivity and torture," he said.

Obama on Iraq, take two (0r three or four or .. )

(CNN) -- Barack Obama called a second news conference in a single day in North Dakota Thursday to reiterate that he is not changing his position on withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq.

Obama speaks on his Iraq policy during a news conference in Fargo, North Dakota, Thursday.

"We're going to try this again. Apparently I wasn't clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq. I have said throughout this campaign that this war was ill-conceived, that it was a strategic blunder and that it needs to come to an end."

"I have also said that I would be deliberate and careful in how we got out, that we would bring our troops home at a pace of one to two brigades per month and that at that pace we would have our combat troops out in 16 months," he said.

Earlier Obama met with reporters in Fargo, North Dakota, before holding a town hall attended by many military veterans and their families.

In the first meeting, Obama denied any suggestion he's shying away from his proposed 16-month phased withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq, calling it "pure speculation" and adding that his "position has not changed."

However, he told reporters questioning his stance that he will "continue to refine" his policies as warranted.

Don't Miss

• Analysis: Lack of message shakes up McCain camp
• Obama highlights plan for national service
• Coalition deaths in Afghanistan surpass Iraq

"We're planning to visit Iraq," Obama said, referring to his recently-announced trip scheduled for later this summer. "I'm going to do a thorough assessment when I'm there." Watch Obama insist that he has not changed his stance on troop withdrawal

He was asked if he would consider the removal of all combat troops within 16 months, the Illinois senator did not respond directly. He said only that he will continue to "gather information."

The Republican National Committee put out an e-mail statement saying that Obama was backing away from his position on withdrawal.

On April 10, Obama told an Indiana crowd it may take "16 months to two years" to remove combat troops. In recent speeches, he's left out the phrase "16 months" entirely.

Reporters challenged Obama, asking him if he would stick to his 16-month timetable. Obama said he would remove all combat troops within 16 months.

Obama placed some of the blame for the confusion Thursday on Sen. John McCain's campaign workers.

"I think what's happened is that the McCain campaign primed the pump with the press to suggest that somehow we were changing our policy when we hadn't and that just hasn't been the case," Obama said.

"I've given no indication of a change in policy. I haven't suggested that we're moving in a different direction. I think John McCain's going to have a much harder time explaining how he is willing to perpetuate a presence in Iraq for 10, 20, 50 years."

he McCain campaign responded following the second news conference with a statement accusing Obama of reversing his position on Iraq.

"There is nothing wrong with changing your mind when the facts on the ground dictate it," the statement said. "Indeed, the facts have changed because of the success of the surge that John McCain advocated for years and Barack Obama opposed in a position that put politics ahead of country."

Google Lawyers Look to Hide
YouTube-User Identification

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO and MERISSA MARR

July 3, 2008 8:49 p.m.

Lawyers for Google Inc. Thursday asked Viacom Inc. for permission to better hide information that might help personally identify YouTube users before Google complies with a judge's demand that it hand over YouTube "user logs" -- the records of what videos people watch -- to Viacom.

The letter comes a day after a federal judge in New York ordered Google to give Viacom a database that links users of YouTube -- a Google unit -- with every video clip they have ever watched through the service in conjunction with Viacom's $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

A Viacom spokesman said Thursday that the data the company has requested from Google don't identify users personally and "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google." He added that the data "will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."

Viacom is seeking the data in order to bolster its copyright claims against YouTube and Google. In particular, Viacom is seeking to determine how often its copyright-protected videos are watched compared with other amateur content on YouTube. That data could bear on the plaintiffs' argument that their copyright-protected content helps draw users to YouTube, leading to a financial benefit for Google.

The discussion about the data comes amid a debate over just how much information can be gleaned from the YouTube database. The database pairs each instance that a video is viewed with the unique login identification code of the user who viewed it and the "Internet Protocol," or IP, address for that viewer's computer.

The database doesn't include identifiers like personal names or email addresses. But the court's decision to compel Google to share it drew immediate criticism from privacy advocates who argued that the data could expose the viewing habits of online video watchers. They note that users often put fragments of their own names in their IDs, for example.

Citing "the significant volume of public protest" generated by the court's demand, lawyers for Google Thursday wrote to Viacom requesting permission to redact user names and IP addresses from the data before turning them over.

A Viacom spokesman said in a statement that the company is working to address Google's concerns but declined to comment about the letter's specific requests. "We will continue to work together on this issue, and Viacom is committed to developing a framework with strong confidentiality protections," he said.

Google fought Viacom's request for user data on the grounds that it would allow Viacom to "be able to determine the viewing and video uploading habits of YouTube's users based on the user's login ID and the user's IP address," according to court papers.

Judge Louis Stanton wrote that the privacy concerns were "speculative" and argued that the database was the only existing record of "how often each video has been viewed during various time periods."

Privacy advocates also noted that the debate is a reminder of the vast repositories of data Google and YouTube keep about their users and the online services they use. A YouTube spokesman said the company hangs on to IP information in order to comply with laws than ban some types of content in some markets and to improve the user experience.

The judge also Wednesday ruled that YouTube was not obliged to turn over its "source code" -- the basic code that runs its site -- as part of the suit.

In a statement responding to the court's decision, Catherine Lacavera, Google's senior litigation counsel, said Google was "pleased the court put some limits on discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom to access users' private videos and our search technology." She added: "We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history."

Government seeks more time for Moussaoui briefs

By LARRY O'DELL – 3 hours ago

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Federal prosecutors want two more months to file their brief in Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui's (zak-uh-REE'-uhs moo-SOW'-eez) appeal.

They say they've received new information in a separate investigation of the CIA's destruction of videotapes of detainee interrogations. They can't say what the information is, but it may be relevant to Moussaoui's case.

Moussaoui is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida in the terrorist attacks. He says his plea should be thrown out because he was not allowed to see classified evidence, hindering his ability to prepare for trial.

The extension request means oral arguments scheduled for Sept. 22 will likely be postponed. His attorney couldn't comment because he'd just received prosecutors' motion.

Oh! The mob is hip to CHENEY! Comments on the WaPo

Bush Officials Condoned Regional Iraqi Oil Deal

Contract Contradicted State Dept.'s Public Stance

Ray Hunt of Hunt Oil was a member of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. (Natalie Caudill - Dallas Morning News) Enlarge Photo COMMENT washingtonpost.com readers have posted 415 comments about this item. View All Comments »

By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2008; Page D01

Bush administration officials told Hunt Oil last summer that they did not object to its efforts to reach an oil deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, even while the State Department was publicly expressing concern that such contracts could undermine a national Iraqi petroleum law, according to documents obtained by a House committee.

This Story

• Bush Officials Condoned Regional Iraqi Oil Deal
• More to the Story: Hunt Oil Deal Documents Raise More Questions

Last fall, after the deal was announced, the State Department said that it had tried to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the contract with Kurdish regional authorities but that the company had proceeded "regardless of our advice." Although Hunt Oil's chief executive has been a major fundraiser for President Bush, the president said he knew nothing about the deal.

Yesterday, however, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released documents and e-mails showing that for nearly four months, State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil's negotiations and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official even wished them "a fruitful visit to Kurdistan" and invited them to contact him "in case you need any support."

That guidance contradicted the administration's public posture. The Bush administration made an Iraqi national petroleum law, which has still not been adopted, a top priority last year in the hope it would more tightly bind the country's regions together and open the way for international oil companies to invest in much larger oil fields south of Iraq's Kurdish region. The State Department said, and continues to assert, that it opposes any contract with a regional Iraqi authority in the absence of a national petroleum law.

The Hunt Oil deal was seen by Kurdish officials as a key victory because the company's chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, was not only a major backer of Bush but also a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. After the deal was completed, a dozen other foreign firms signed oil contracts with Kurdish authorities.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday that "we continue to stand by our previous statements that the U.S. government made its objections to this arrangement known both to the company as well as to the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government]."

But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Waxman said documents his committee had obtained "tell a different story about the role of Administration officials."

The documents show that as early as June 12, 2007, Hunt Oil officials met with members of the State Department's Regional Reconstruction Team for the Kurdistan region in Erbil and on June 15 specifically asked whether there was a policy about companies entering contracts with Kurdish authorities. According to notes taken by Hunt Oil officials, they were told that the "U.S. has no policy, for nor against."

The documents also include an e-mail from Hunt Oil's general manager for the region stating, "There was no communication to me or in my presence made by any of the 9 state department officials with whom I met . . . that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen."

The State Department officials in Erbil sent summaries of Hunt Oil activities to the embassy in Baghdad and to Laird Treiber, the economic coordinator in the State Department's office of Iraq affairs in Washington.

Separately, Ray Hunt on July 12 and again on Aug. 30 wrote letters to Stefanie R. Osburn, the executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, describing his contacts with Kurdish officials.

On Sept. 5, three days before the Hunt Oil contract was signed, the State Department's regional coordinator and deputy team leader in Erbil informed Treiber in Washington that the deal was imminent. The note recounts a conversation with Hunt Oil's regional manager, David McDonald. "Asked about concerns over potential conflicts between the recently passed KRG hydrocarbon law and an [sic] national law, he said the 'significant opportunity' outweighs the legal ambiguity," the note said.

Treiber replied, "Thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the KRG will make big news back here. Please keep us posted."

It did make big news, and Bush himself was asked about it. On Sept. 20, he said, "Our embassy also expressed concern about it. I knew nothing about the deal." He continued, "I need to know exactly how it happened. To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with a oil revenue-sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously I'm -- if it undermines that, I'm concerned."

Later, at a State Department briefing, Casey said, "We certainly are discouraging individuals and companies, as well as the government of Kurdistan, the regional government of the Kurdish region, to engage in these kinds of contracts." Referring specifically to Hunt Oil, he added that the "company decided to sign a contract regardless of our advice, but that is their decision."

Some of my favorite comments !!

1. Maybe he's just implimenting the Benjamin Franklin doctrine: Oily to bed, and oily ro rise..,

2. W=Wide Cut Gas
M=Motor Fuels
D=Diesel

B=BP-AMOCO
U=United Refining Company
S=Saudi Arabian Oil Company
H=Hunt Oil

C=ConocoPhillips
H=Halliburton
E=ExxonMobil
N=Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
E=ENSCO International
Y=Yukos Oil Company

It is that simple.

3. speedyo wrote: "Is Ray Hunt the same Hunt who tried to corner the Silver market in the 1970's during Carter's administration?"
-----------------------------------------------------
Same crooked family, but I think Ray is the son of porky Bunker and/or his brother, Not-Bunkie. But it was in the Reagan Administration that they got their True Justice as Republicans - A government-guaranteed bailout!

Yes,folks, when one of Reagan's buddies got caught trying to screw the entire world by cornering silver, then lost his a$ doing it, YOU paid to bail him out, Mister Sucker Taxpayer. Just like YOU paid the $850,000,000,000 that was stolen by Neil Bush, Jebby Bush, Charles Keating, and their cronies in the Savings and Loan swindles.

But don't worry, it'll be a new Morning in America any time now.

4. What is so disgustng is that these guys are so rich they could solve world hunger and poverty in 10 minutes. But they had to go and start a war and let thousands of people die so they can get bigger yachts.

Congress - do your job and IMPEACH this administration NOW.

5. To be a true patriot today you have to follow. You have to believe every word your leaders say. You have to set aside the evidence before your eyes and deny the facts you hear and believe with all your heart that your leaders know better than you do what is good for you, what is right, what is just, and what is real. If your leaders tell you that the law is wrong, you have to get rid of the law. If your leaders tell you to live with fear, then you have to surrender to fear. Being an American now means being a follower. It means being obedient.

This is liberty: the liberty to have no liberty.

This is freedom: the freedom to give up freedom.

This is patriotism: the strength to be weak and compliant.

Thinking for yourself is subversive. Questioning your leaders is unpatriotic. The truest patriots today are the ones with their hands over their eyes and their ears stopped up. It is better to be fooled for the good of the nation than to question and dissent.

You angry leftist socialists aren’t Americans anymore. We are building a new reality while your old angry one gets left behind. In the new America, people will understand their place. The press will support the leaders and the people will be happy.

Gott mit uns.

6. OOOOH, . . a real Patriot! Are you writing form Iraq, where you are "defending our freedom'?

Well, starsandstripes, the decent Americans are tired of you scaredy-cats giving away MY Constitutional rights just because your fools in office couldn't protect us on 9/11 despite repeated warnings. This is the land for which I enlisted and fought, Mr. Patriot, and I'm not going to be bullied around by anyone.

Do you like what you have done to America? How do you like our economy? How about the nice little job the Republicans have done on our Armed Forces? Yessirree, that's the way to "support" our troops, . . just send them to kill sons and daughters of folk in other countries.

Like the Justice Department? I was on a federal criminal grand jury when Gonzales perverted that department, watching as the slow rot corrupted its mission and its abilities to perform.

How about our international reputation? How do you like being voted "The Biggest Threat to Woprld Peace" repeatedly in international polls? Do you think everyone on Earth is wrong but you and Dubya and Cheney?

No, you are not going to question my patriotism, and you are not going to intimidate me. We've had enough of the phony macho put out by Republican wannabe soldiers/militia/gun nuts. It's time for the grownups to take over.

7. Now Im really getting scared.....
WaPo hasn't put Obama in today....
WHY?......
It' all about OIL...

McCain is trying to move away from Bush...
Obama is moving closer to Bush......
WHY?.......

Since we all count on the media (all the media), to get our information, it's hard to tell what the truth really is......

But it IS easy to tell which candidate the media prefers......
What will they do when they HAVE to tell us what the heck Obama is up to??????

From where I sit, his magnificant* team keeps him away from orating about the issues he's been running on, sort of.....

Looks like HE chooses subjects that gets free airtime, and he doesn't talk about the REAL issues like he used to do.....

Since he keeps changing and his followers don't seem to mind, it appears that they would follow him to hell and back.....

So it MUST be the MAN rather than the issues that seem to matter......
If he keeps up the 'change', sooner or later, the people will realize that he's just another politition , but one who gets to choose what issues he will talk about......

Count on HIM for late breaking news very soon....

He would never let a long week-end pass by without something controvercial that will keep him the TOP news story for days.....
And don't think he'll be the one to do it, it will likely be a 'source' from his campaign.....as, that way, his hands will stay clean and allow him to make another sermon.....

I've always been a democrat since the 1960 election and we really do need a democrat in the WH, but it's getting harder every day to keep him an ORIGINAL...

He's lost the 'freshness' that we hungered for....

Delegates are allowed to change their minds......
If he keeps moving too close to the middle.....it just may hurt him in the general election......
Right now, I feel he is a 'shoe in'....without even talking about foreign OIL.......
OIL is like a 4 letter word.....and we NEED it, we WANT it, we HAVE it, but won't help ourselves drill for it....

Have a very nice July 4th week-end and keep safe.....
God bless our troops and God bless America........

8. Finally, Mission Accomplished!!!!

9. WHAT?! The Bush administration lied about Iraq and Oil, killing thousands and bankrupting the economy?

WAIT!...look over here--Obama got a sub-prime loan for his house! OMG!!! What a sleazeball!

10. Douglas J. Feith has a piece in the Wall Street Journal op-ed today called:

Why We Went to War in Iraq

God! What does that say when six years into a war they are STILL trying to explain why?

11. And the beat goes on.
I'm not even going to bother reading the comments here because I just don't want to be even further disgusted by the twenty-five percenter's talk of "Nothing to see hear, liberal media, but Clinton got a ...."
It boggles the mind that there are still Americans who presumably can read, who think the invasion of Iraq was about "our freedoms". (This had the highest rankings of all )

12. Exactly why did Ms. Pelosi take impeachment off the table so qjuickly? If you can do it for a president's personal life, surely it can be done for violation of national interest, massive fraud, corruption of the Justice Department and so forth.

Obama can't do it alone -- the Democratic Party must rebuild itself and reconsider its leadership.

13. as an ex-president I wonder what kind of "speaking fees" he will get from the oil industry... Bet it will start at $1 million for him to show up and speak for 5 minutes with that dumb smirk of his.

14. Unfortunately, they will probably get away with everything because while many of the American people know they were duped, but they also know they were willing accomplices.

They were frightened after 9/11, their government exploited that fear to frighten them more, and lie to them so they could push forward their pre-9/11 agenda.

Hitting SOMEONE with American military might made people feel powerful again, and if it was the wrong country, they didn’t really want to know about it!

The Media loved it because it brought in viewers. Remember, the mood was almost festive, lacking only the foam finger, and chants of "USA! USA!"

Now the people know the truth, and they are ashamed, and just want to look away.

To indict the Whitehouse would mean indicting the congress, the media, AND ourselves:
Better to just see what Brittany’s doing, instead.

15. Texas+Oil+Admin=Record Gas Prices+Unbriddled profiteering by the chosen few + Gullible, suffering, foolish populace = 2+2 = 4.

Mathematical Expectancy.

16. I can't even find words anymore to describe how I feel about this morally bankrupt administration so I won't even try.

What I will say is that all of us should be watching to see if the media, print & TV, actually followup on this story. Will we see the president asked repeatedly about this until we get a truthful answer or will the media ignore this and let this adminstration lie about the original lie they told the public? Will we have media covering up for them yet again?

Every time this administration has been caught lying, whether about torture, illegal wiretapping, starting a war, etc., etc., etc., they spin another lie about why they are not guilty and the media let them get away with it every single time.

Everyone in the media has known for a long time that it wasn't just a few bad apples that tortured our prisoners yet when Maj. Gen. Taguba came out and accused the administration of war crimes, something that should have been on the front page of every newspaper and on every TV channel, there was a collective yawn in the media. We must demand that the media coverup stops right here, right now.

NO MORE LIES! NO MORE COVERING UP LIES! NO MORE PASSING RETROACTIVE LAWS THAT LEGALIZE ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR COMMITTED BY THIS ADMINSTRATION AND THEIR PARTNERS IN CRIME. NO MORE APATHY! NO MORE STUPID STORIES ABOUT WHAT GENERAL CLARK SAID WHEN THE MEDIA SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT WHAT GENERAL TAGUBA SAID!

17. Unreal.

The Bush Jr Administration took us into a totally unnecessary "war" and disastrous, self-defeating occupation all for the sake of rewarding powerful campaign contributors, of which this one was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Geez, what are the odds Ray Hunt also sat in on those still-classified energy task force meetings with Cheney before the Iraq invasion?

Just when you think our vile, warmongering chickenhawk of a President & Vice President can't possibly sink any lower than they already are.....

18.
IMPEACH THE SON OF A B*TCH BUSH.

HOW MANY THOUSAND VIOLATIONS OF ABUSE OF POWER DOES HE NEED TO COMMIT???

MAYBE NANCY FANCY PANTIES PELOSI WHO HAS FOR />> 2 YEARS << style="font-weight: bold;">19. What is amazing is that this comes as a shock to the usually uninformed americans.
Here in Europe everyone following the situation in Kurdistan have known about this link.

As usual no american media has bothered to get the Kurdish point of view,either official or unofficional.
Imperial hubris.

Facts:
Kurdistan is more secure than any big city in the US.
30 000 Kurdish Peshmerga is controling the borders.
Unlike the US,Kurdistan is booming.
Hospitals,schools and other infrastructure is constructed and tempo is increasing.
Several international airports are running and the kurdish diaspora are vacationing at home and investing in their areas.
All income from oil exports from kurdistan goes to Baghdad for redistribution,and all new exports must be approved from Baghdad.
Kurdistan will get about 18 % of the oil export income as negotiated,whether it is exported from Kirkuk to Ceyhan or from Basra to tankers.
Iraq will export oil for 100 Billion USD this year,too much for Iraq to spend safely because of lacking security in areas outside of Kurdistan.

Meanwhile in the US:
1) The country is going broke.
2) The military is out of control.
3) Standards of living are falling.
4) Criminal facists are ruling the land.

Buy gold.

- Recent news on interrogators -

CACI Denies Use of Torture in Iraq

CACI International, an Arlington-based provider of interrogators to the U.S. military in Iraq, said it "rejects and denies" allegations from four Iraqi men who said they were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. The "unfounded" claims filed in lawsuits are a "rehash of the previous slanderous lawsuits," CACI said in a statement. Similar lawsuits filed in the past four years await trial.

The four men say contractors hired by CACI and L-3 Communications Holdings beat and humiliated prisoners.

Let's get HONEST about waterboarding and TORTURE

Warning From The Best - Must Read - chart below

By Dazeylin

Categories: Abuse, Detainee Abuse and Torture Tags: No Tags.

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

Related

Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From the Air Force Prisoners of War (pdf)

Documents Released at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on SERE Tactics(pdf)

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”

The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interviePublish Postw that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.

“It saddens me,” said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called “thought reform” and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a “180-degree turn.”

The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.

Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani’s treatment.

Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.

Rebuttal of "communist" assertion . . .

These techniques Did Not originate with the Communists:

The techniques were diagrammed and spelled out earlier, in Gestapo manuals (View a photocopy online of an original at GW University’s National Security Archives) produced in the 30’s, are identical (except for the sexual perversion) to all of the torture techniques used by the CIA (and who knows what other agents of the US gov) since the disastrous National Security Act was passed under Truman. The Gestapo’s favorite techniques (yielding terror and false confessions, not accurate info) included a combination of sensory deprivation (with or without sensory overload), self-inflicted pain (stress positions etc), environmental stress (hot, cold etc), sleep deprivation, controlled starvation, with or without asphyxiation techniques(such as water boarding). Remember the Abu Ghraib photos of thugs torturing with asphyxiation by sitting on the board sandwiched chests of their civilian prisoners. Many die from asphyxiation techniques. One of the few convictions for U.S. torture in Iraq was for the asphyxiation torture death of uniformed Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush (the heavy set officer that officially surrendered to Gen Schwarzkopf at the end of Gulf War I) who had turned himself in for questioning while the U.S. was holding members of his family. He had been water-boarded but died while tightly bound head-first in a sleeping bag. Celebrities and pundits, who undergo fake water-boarding, help to trivialize one of the worst tortures in history.

Through “Operation Paperclip”, the US secreted many Nazi war criminals to the US, not just rocket scientists, but sadistic torturers (among multiple other categories) so as to learn what they knew. It was therefore obvious from the very beginning (starting in 2001 at Bagram) to those with even a cursory knowledge of this history, that the 1st accounts coming out of Bagram air force base in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and all the rest meant not just isolated, rogue or poorly trained soldiers being cruel but the top-down institution of the Gestapo’s techniques as the policy of the Bush administration. It has been reported in the last several months that Bush is now “rendering” and torturing 10’s of thousands of people on a world-wide network of prison ships. (He stole that idea from the British).

The Soviets had their own version of “Operation Paperclip” and learned from the Germans as well. The big joke after World War II was that the US could brag that “our German scientists are better than the your (the Soviets) German scientists”.

It is quite curious that those who should know better would claim that these techniques were studied scientifically and perfected by the fascists, not the communists. That is not to say that all of the powerful democracies (including the U.S.) have used torture (and terrorism) extensively for over a century. The U.S. killed and tortured the people of the Philippines by the hundreds of thousands at the turn of the last century.

No need to blame the Communists on this one.. Makes you wonder what the source of the story was.

Peace, JK

BANKING DOSSIER: The Continuing Bear Sterns saga

Bear Stears deliberately broken via Goldman Sachs

July 2, 2008 — Stefan Fobes

The last days of Bear Stearns

March 31, 2008

Robby Boyd/Fortune

You could detect a trace of fear in his voice. Mostly he seemed stunned. It was March 6, and one of Bear Stearns’s top bond executives had dialed me up unprompted. The executive had dished about competitors in the past, but he had never initiated a discussion, much less one about his own firm. Now he explained that financial institutions that he dealt with - firms he had traded with for years - were suddenly asking him whether Bear had the cash to execute their trades.

Such news had yet to surface in the press, but the investment bank’s shares had dropped nearly 20% in the previous ten days, and there were murmurs that short-sellers were circling. The executive asked whether I’d heard rumors of trouble, and he tried to preempt them. “We’re making money,” he said. “Our counterparties are getting paid, trades are clearing, business is picking up. It doesn’t seem to be the likely scenario for an investment bank’s collapse.”

Ten days later Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) was swallowed by J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500). But all the brouhaha over the deal - were the shares worth $2 or $10? should the Federal Reserve have intervened? - has obscured how astonishing Bear’s collapse is. It’s a reminder that in a business based on confidence, when that confidence evaporates, so does the business. A reconstruction of the week before Bear Stearns agreed to be funded, and then acquired, by J.P. Morgan Chase, reveals the speed at which Bear’s longtime customers and counterparties lost their faith in the investment bank and undermined its ability to continue.

It also reveals a psychological gap. Bear had survived one liquidity challenge, in the summer of 2007, when two of its hedge funds cratered after the subprime mortgage collapse. The firm had labored to repair its balance sheet and improve its financing. “Our capital position is strong,” said Bear’s CFO, Sam Molinaro, at an investors’ conference in February. “Balance-sheet liquidity has continued to improve throughout the course of the year. We spent an awful lot of time trying to reduce our higher-risk asset categories.”

However much Bear Stearns saw itself as strengthened by its struggles, customers thought otherwise, and that hastened Bear’s fall. Molinaro’s comments notwithstanding, some had begun inching away months earlier. Bob Sloan, whose S3 Partners finances and advises hedge funds, says he counseled clients last summer to seek other prime brokers because he saw a “30% to 35% chance” that Bear would collapse. By March, Sloan’s clients had pulled out $25 billion in assets. Others, of course, would desert only when the panic hit. And a few days would be all it took to show just how shallow the reservoir of trust for the firm was.

MONDAY, MARCH 10: WE DON’T COMMENT ON RUMORS

If there’s one thing that companies hate to do, it’s comment on rumors. Such statements, the thinking goes, only confer legitimacy on unfounded gossip. But there it was in a Bear press release on March 10: “There is absolutely no truth to the rumors of liquidity problems that circulated today in the market.” At that moment, it appeared to be true. The firm had some $17 billion in cash. Of course, Bear was noted for its addiction to leverage even at a time when Wall Street, which runs on debt, was drunk on the stuff. Bear had $11.1 billion in tangible equity capital supporting $395 billion in assets, a leverage ratio of more than 35 to one. And its assets were less liquid than those of many of its competitors.

But by March 10, the problem had metastasized into something more dire than a rumor. Late the preceding Friday, a major bank - accounts differ on which - had rebuffed Bear’s request for a short-term $2 billion loan. Such securities-backed repurchase (or “repo”) loans are crucial for investment banks, which borrow and lend billions to fund their daily business. Being denied such a loan is the Wall Street equivalent of having your buddy refuse to front you $5 the day before payday. Bear executives scrambled and raised the money elsewhere. But the sign was unmistakable: Credit was drying up.

TUESDAY, MARCH 11: IF I KNEW WHY, I WOULD DO SOMETHING

Confidence continued to ebb, and Bear again tried to reassure investors. “Why is this happening?” CFO Molinaro asked rhetorically on CNBC. “If I knew why it was happening, I would do something to address it.” The rumors were “false,” he said. “There is no liquidity crisis. No margin calls. It’s nonsense.”

Still, momentum was turning against the firm. That morning Goldman Sachs’s credit derivatives group sent its hedge fund clients an e-mail announcing another blow. In previous weeks, banks such as Goldman had done a brisk business (for a handsome fee, of course) agreeing to stand in for institutions nervous, say, that Bear wouldn’t be able to cough up its obligations on an interest rate swap. But on March 11, Goldman told clients it would no longer step in for them on Bear derivatives deals. (A Goldman spokesman asserts that the e-mail was not a categorical refusal.)

“I was astounded when I got the [Goldman] e-mail,” says Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital. He had a colleague call Goldman to see if it was a mistake. “It wasn’t,” says Bass, who is a former Bear salesman. “Goldman told Wall Street that they were done with Bear, that there was [effectively] too much risk. That was the end for them.”

It was ominous, but it wasn’t yet the end. Bear continued absorbing blows. The cost of insuring $10 million in Bear debt via credit default swaps, which had hovered near $350,000 in the month before, shot past $1 million. By the end of March 11, the rate was irrelevant: Banks refused to issue any further credit protection on Bear’s debt.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12: HOW LIQUID IS BEAR?

When word of the Goldman e-mail leaked out, the floodgates opened. Hedge funds and other clients, eventually running into the hundreds, began yanking their funds.

Dave Hendler, an analyst at research boutique CreditSights, called a Bear contact to find out what was going on. The contact said that all was fine. But then Hendler asked about a $4 billion credit facility due to expire in April. If Bear needed cash, Hendler reckoned, that was probably more than enough. Hendler says he was told that the facility had actually expired in February and several banks had backed out, reducing the credit line to $2.8 billion. Bear, he was told, was waiting until the release of its quarterly earnings to reveal the status of the loan. Neither Bear’s liquidity nor its lenders’ confidence, it appeared, was what it had seemed. (A firm spokesman declined to comment.)

Bear continued to maintain publicly that all was well. This time it was CEO Alan Schwartz - who hadn’t seen the need to return to headquarters, and conducted the interview from Palm Beach - who went on CNBC. “We’re not being made aware of anybody who is not taking our credit as a counterparty,” he said, adding, “We don’t see any pressure on our liquidity, let alone a liquidity crisis.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 13: CALL JAMIE DIMON

By March 13, the gravity of the situation had finally registered at Bear. Schwartz returned to New York and convened a meeting of the top leadership. Liquidity was plummeting; according to published reports, it had fallen to $2 billion at week’s end. Desperate, Schwartz contacted J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon that evening.

Even as the firm frantically negotiated a rescue package, Bear executives continued to try to convince the world that everything was under control. That evening Schwartz contacted a well-known New York hedge fund manager (a longtime Bear prime brokerage client). He pleaded with the manager to appear on CNBC the next morning and express his confidence in Bear. The hedge fund manager declined politely but wondered why Bear needed a client to convince the world of its health. He wouldn’t wonder long.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14: IT’S ALL GONE NOW

AT 9 A.M., Bear announced $30 billion in funding provided by J.P. Morgan and backstopped by the government. In a conference call Schwartz sounded as if he was still fighting reality. “Bear Stearns has been subject to a significant amount of rumor,” he explained. “We attempted to try to provide some facts to the situation, but … the rumors intensified.” He said customer requests to cash out “accelerated yesterday … [and] at the pace things were going, there could be continued liquidity demands that would outstrip our liquidity resources.” The new loan facility, he said, would restore calm.

Of course, that didn’t pan out. Bear’s stock dropped nearly 40% in the first half-hour of trading. Within days, Bear’s 85 years as an independent entity were at an end.

At Maggie’s bar that Friday evening, directly across from Bear headquarters on 47th Street, the sense of shock was complete. A crowd of frazzled Bear employees thronged the bar. Some traders, clearly well past their first round at 6 P.M., expressed amazement at having to navigate camera crews to cross the street to the bar.

Soon after, I happened to sit next to a Bear Stearns managing director on the 6:35 express from Grand Central Station to Greenwich, Conn. “I worked eight years at a firm that promoted me from the back office to investment banking,” he told me as he sipped a Budweiser tall boy. “I had thousands of shares and thought I could afford to send my kids to private schools and college. It’s all gone now. I think I’ll probably move to Pittsburgh, see if the Federal Home Loan Bank needs anybody.”

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Doris Burke contributed to this article.

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Posted in Created problems and preplanned solutions. Tags: bear stearns, finance, financial news, goldman sachs, news.

CACI Denies Use of Torture in Iraq

CACI International, an Arlington-based provider of interrogators to the U.S. military in Iraq, said it "rejects and denies" allegations from four Iraqi men who said they were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. The "unfounded" claims filed in lawsuits are a "rehash of the previous slanderous lawsuits," CACI said in a statement. Similar lawsuits filed in the past four years await trial.

The four men say contractors hired by CACI and L-3 Communications Holdings beat and humiliated prisoners.