Thank You for Your SolidarityThank you for showing your support of Witness Against Torture by
signing the solidarity letter.

Please now consider sending an email to your Representative to ask them to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison camps via the Center for Constitutional Right’s Guantánamo Action Center.

http://www.witnesstorture.org/?q=thank_you

http://www.demaction.org/dia/o…..gn_KEY=831

Shut Down Guantánamo

ItÂ’s time to shut down the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay once and for all. Guantánamo has become a symbol world-wide of the Bush administrationÂ’s arrogant disregard for the most basic of human rights. In a hard-hitting editorial on Sunday, June 5, The New York Times wrote: “The best thing Washington can now do about this national shame is to shut it down. It is a propaganda gift to America’s enemies; an embarrassment to our allies; a damaging repudiation of the American justice system; and a highly effective recruiting tool for Islamic radicals, including future terrorists.”

Please write your representatives in Congress and the members of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees and tell them to shut down Guantánamo and demand that the Administration come forward to justify the detentions in federal court or release the prisoners. The Center for Constitutional Rights was the first to launch the fight against Guantánamo from the day the government made clear they planned to ship prisoners there to keep them beyond the reach of law, indefinitely, and without any chance to challenge the legality of their detention. CCR won the fight in the Supreme Court one year ago and is leading a team of more than 400 attorneys from around the country representing the detainees in the courts, but the Bush Administration has defied the ruling of the highest court in the land and stonewalled detainees’ access to the courts and to counsel.

We urgently need your help. Please contact your representatives in Congress and tell them the time has come to shut down the Guantánamo prison camp once and for all and to end the Administration’s policy of indefinite detention in any facility without due process of law. And please help if you can with a donation to help us keep at this critical fight: CCR does cutting edge work, and we couldn’t do it without you. In response to increasing documentation of abuse and the now admitted intentional desecration of the Koran, Senator Arlen Spector (R-Pennsylvania) will be holding hearings in June on the treatment of the detainees, and Senator Joseph Biden, (D-Delaware) has proposed an independent commission to investigate the situation. CCR has long called for an independent special prosecutor with the power to prosecute the human rights abuses being committed in our name as Americans. And now we’re calling for the immediate closing of the Guantánamo prison camp.

The time has come to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and demand that the Administration immediately appear before a federal court to justify the detention of the remaining prisoners or release them. Guantánamo is a black eye on America’s reputation around the world and has become a symbol of the Bush Administration’s disregard for the most basic of human rights.

I join the Center for Constitutional Rights and The New York Times to say that if America is to represent democracy and freedom it cannot at the same time lock people away without due process and without access to courts or attorneys. Guantanamo Bay must be shut down and the Administration forced to justify the detention of the remaining 540 detainees before a federal court orto release them. The Administration must also be prohibited from shipping the detainees off to be tortured and abused in countries with appalling human rights records and no direct American accountability, as has already happened.

Guantanamo does not represent American values. Shut it down…Learn More

http://www.witnesstorture.org

I can’t believe we torture guys who cut peoples heads off…that’s just wrong….

how will they go after dana
priest, a car “accident” like
steve clemons, or a hefty
bill from the IRS like monk?

guys, unfortunately we are
going to need to make a list
of bloggers that have things
go strangely wrong.

sometimes paranoia is
justified. i work in eastern
europe and have some
experience with this.

So let me get this straight: We torture people who give us bogus information in an attempt to stop the torture, then we disappear more people based on the bad info and torture them in order to get more bogus information which we then use to….

OK, this is starting to remind me of Stalin for some reason.

Hi, kids, just wanted to share a little Fitzrap from one of my personal favorite sites, Sadly, No, which could use your vote in the category after FDL’s.

Alors. It looks like we have a ward heeler out working for us.

Norske, visions of Sen. Paul Wellstone’s plane come to mind when thinking about why Dick Durbin made his plea for forgiveness.
What really was beyond the pale was listening to American Family Radio for a brief moment the next day. These wingnut fundies went on and on about how no one should forgive Durbin because his asking for forgiveness wasn’t credible. This from Christians? The entire message of the Good News is about forgiveness….Then they launched into the simpleton’s guide to politics with let’s boost up Frist and McCain is BAD!
Geez no wonder they are afraid of the demon Democrats…they eat, sleep and breathe this type of nonsense all the while they are supporting the coming of the Apocalypse.

Whatever happened to make Durbin recant and fall on the floor for mercy from the Senate? It was clear then that the evidence was available for all to see…who put what screws to him?

Mrs. K8,

Thanx for the reminder about the college “hazing” incident. I think that all the published reports of his aborrhent behavior must be jest the tip of the iceberg. This guy was unqualified ta manage a rock garden but he was elected governor of Texas and installed as president of the US…my god what does that say about our country. Yes indeed, we have much in common with Weimar Germany 1931-32 and we’re gettin ta look more and more like Nazi Germany 1934-

HERE ARE FOUR LETTERS FOR CONDI RICE AND ONLY FOR CONDI

Storm Warning
October 25, 2005

Foot-dragging usually dirty one’s own pants cuffs but in the international scene such as the final autopsy of the detainees who died under United States interrogations gathers not dirt but a storm. In “Autopsies verify detainee abuse” by John Hendren the unacceptable comes to light. The final autopsy assessment of the dead 44 prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan revealed crimes against humanity that the Bush administration desperately trying to side-step its consequences. The ACLU makes clear that U. S. operatives had indeed tortured detainees to death during interrogations and the cover ups that follow. But according to Human Rights First the count comes to 141 prisoners who died in U. S. custody, including those who died of natural causes. Here where the storm picks up: How can anyone reconcile the fact that any detainee who is abducted out of nowhere without due process, get tortured and dies, is then referred as “death by natural causes?” I don’t believe one can or will distinguish between death by natural causes and being beaten to death while in custody. Regardless of the numbers or disposition of cause of death, when a family member is kidnapped, disappeared, or later found dead don’t expect civilized discourse or cooperation, expect a deluge of car bombings.

King of the Beast
November 5, 2005

In “Senate votes again to ban U.S. prisoner abuse” by Eric Schmitt faintly points to a showdown between the Republican Congress and the White House. Senator McCain’s tenacious stand against detainee abuse is breaking ground. The McCain amendment, inserted in the present military spending bill had stir quite a hornet nest between Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration. Now the real scoop: Dick Cheney now finds himself as the odd man out when he and CIA chief Porter Goss made attempt to dissuade McCain; it was disingenuous of Goss to joined Cheney to modify the McCain amendment since he publicly supported banning torture. In the advent of Libby’s indictments, Cheney no longer has the power to bend the will of others who oppose his authority; he couldn’t get McCain to back down. But there’s more: Bush’s excuse for the abusive treatment isn’t to protect America but his unilateral determination that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war shouldn’t apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Translation: that means anyone in Iraq and Afghanistan who oppose democracy, who oppose Bush’s conquest of the Middle East is toast.

Tall Tales after School

November 8, 2005

G. Robert Hillman’s “Bush to reporters: ‘We do not torture’ ” isn’t going to be rocket science: President Bush officially stated “We do not torture.” Further: “There’s an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants hurt America again.” I’ll stop right there. Mr. Hillman had skirt around one important item: Vice-President Dick Cheney desperately wants to exempt the CIA from the fallout of the McCain Amendment to ban torture in all the military and security branches. And Bush is okay with that. So the question that truly begs to be answer is: what country is the CIA part of? Either President Bush should go back to grade school to find that out or his position on torture gives the words “Two Faced” a bad name. Last note: the president should use a better verb than “hurt” when the enemies attempt to attacks America. The word “hurt” is more appropriate when you stub your toe while stumbling down, choking on a pretzel.

Quick and Dirty

November 16, 2005

Today’s news teetered between the Senate backing for a quicker transition in Iraq to the 173 detainees discovered in the basement of an Interior Ministry building had provide me with the inspiration in how to resolve the U.S.-Iraq conflict. Quick and dirty: first, the Bush administration must bring back the international community involvement; that means for the UN to establish a multinational interim security force in Iraq. Secondly, the U.S. must use diplomatic means as oppose to the present role as military occupier. In other words, give Iraq back to the Iraqis, working with them, assisting them in rebuilding their economy and infrastructure, and create real jobs; therefore, acing out Halliburton and the other parasites that the Bush administration and the Pentagon had infested Iraq with. And also involve the U.N. in overseeing the economic needs while renouncing the U.S. control of Iraqi oil and the maintaining of those “permanent” military bases. Thirdly, establish an international peace commission to help peace building and conflict resolution. Finally, the withdrawal of the U.S. military. This will end the war, no longer fueling the insurgency with our presence in Iraq as our generals on the field have ascertained.

the green lantern | 12.09.05 – 11:39 am

Agreed.

new thread (questions allowed)

zennurse: You never know when you’ll have an impact. I left Covenant House in Houston in 1990, and got a letter from a kid I worked with two years ago. He’s had a bumpy ride, but is getting his adult life together, and I’ve become a kind of pen pal for him.

You never know.

Pach and Redd:

How about a little success story to balance your memories? My younger son, who is now nearly 22, came to live with me at age 13 (long story) after 8 years in another state with father and stepmother who had ID’d him as the scapegoat in the family. Conveniently, he looks exactly like me and was overwieght, so they satisfied thier dislike of me on him. Within a year of coming “home”, because he had been so silenced, he was damaging property in the woods near our house, starting fires, stealing things from the house and smashing them with an axe, all while he was in therapy. I suspect there were animals involved, but I don’t know. By freshman year in HS, he had stopped school, hiding the evidence from me for 3 months until the police came to my workplace and talked to me about it. I filed a CHINS that day, got as many services involved as I could find. He was hospitalized a couple of times for his severe depression; he went to a therapeutic group home and HS and graduated after missing fresman year for treatment. He is still disabled, but he is living almost independently nearby and has a life he is pretty proud of. What you contributed may just have been the thing that planted success seeds in those kids; I know there were some amazing folks along the way he will never, ever forget.
So thanks, from us and from them too!

I agree that fear, as a form of social psychology, can be used and may serve as a means to allow acceptance of heinous acts of torture.

But the “American psyche” that Sam refers to is not a post 9/11 phenomenon.

Acceptance of torture was widespread during the long, dark, history of racism that treated as a picnic the lynching and other forms of “inhuman” treatment of blacks in America.

Acceptance of torture (genocide even) was widespread in the treatment of Native Americans in the early history of this country. Witness the use of infected blankets by settlers to spread deadly disease among the Native Americans.

What is frightening about the present conjuncture is, first, the fervor of religious fundamentalism among Christian sects in America, representing the mirror image of its ounterpart in Islamic fundamentalism, which lends support to the effort to portray the “war on terror” as a kind of holy war without limits on the means used to pursue that war.

Second, prominent members of the intellectual class is openly aiding and abetting the process by advancing spurious ideological arguments about the fight against so-called “Islamofascism”.

Third, there is an obvious element of racial and ethhnic profiling involved in the process which arbitrarily pulls into the net innocent people for “rough treatment”.

The evolution of legal and political institutions in America has served to put a lid on the practices associated with torture. But it is still a fragile balance.

I view the Patriot Act as spearheading the attack against those very same institutions. ThatÂ’s why we must fight to oppose this effort to institutionalize measures that attack freedoms and rights of all prople, not only American citizens.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenew…..98570L.htm

Red Cross in intense talks with US over secret jails
09 Dec 2005 18:56:25 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Dec 9 (Reuters) – The Red Cross is pushing the United States to give it access to prisoners held in secret jails as part of the U.S. war on terror, it said on Friday.

“We have said that undisclosed detention is a major concern for us,” Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told a news conference.

“We are already visiting very many detainees under U.S. authorities in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan … We continue to be in an intense dialogue with them with the aim of getting access to all people detained in the framework of the so-called war on terror,” he said.

Human rights groups accuse the CIA of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting detainees. They say incommunicado detention often leads to torture.

John Bellinger, the U.S. State Department’s legal adviser, acknowledged to reporters in Geneva on Thursday that the ICRC does not have access to all detainees held by U.S. forces, but refused to discuss alleged secret detention centres.

The ICRC has been pressing the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for two years for information about and access to what the agency calls “an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations”.

Uh-oh, wonder if I should short…

From Seesdifferent at Daily Kos at 2:22 EST

“okay, this is called how to waste my one diary of the day on a rank speculation. What I can tell you is that the prices on Rove indictment contracts just tripled in the space of 15 minutes at Intrade.com. In essence, the odds went from 17% to 50/50. I will not bother to recap the recent news but you know that Fitz has been getting statements and met with the GJ yesterday. I suspect that something is up, like Fitz calling a press conference, but I havent seen anything yet in the media.

You heard it here first. Please give me a big fat 1 if this doesn’t pan out. But if it does, you’ll be seein me in Vegas, cause this will pay for my trip.

Go Fitz !!!”

It is a very disturbing reality to realize that
our country resembles more and more Fascist
Germany. Let’s don’t just blame Bush and his
mother. We just may have a large number of
people in this country who support soft-torture, who are authoritarian, who are mean,
who have anti-social personalities, liars, and
sociopaths. Can you imagine having Russ
Limbaugh, Ann Coutler and O Reilly in your
living room as part of your extended family
and trying to “reason” with them on policy
issues? Quite a difficult proposition. I
would want to send them to an island where
they could do no harm. Unfortunately there
are too many Americans who are of their ilk.

Redd — but that’s intrinsically what separates progressives from the neo-conservatives; we see that small investments in humanity pay off enormous dividends. It haunts you, but wow, you can be such an advocate.

HeadStart, for example; more funding in HeadStart may yield far more healthy, self-supporting tax-paying citizens in 15 to 20 years. It beats paying for more police and prisons in that period of time, at much greater expense to our economic and societal bottom line.

Yet Karl Rove makes fun of this kind of opportunity analysis, deliberately distorting it and saying we’d rather give a terrorist therapy…what a crappy businessman and a crummy human being.

“I deleted the comment that was making things go all wonky. I think it was an accident.
jane hamsher | Homepage | 12.09.05 – 11:11 am | # “

OK, miss jane, now can you come over and fix my coffeepots??? Diet Coke just isn’t the same!

Let’s not forget the trouble Georgie got into as an undergrad at Yale for the BRANDING incident.

Our favorite “compassionate conservative” took metal coat hangers, fashioned them into makeshift “brands” in the shape of the Greek letter delta, held them in the flames of the fireplace at his frat house, then branded the new pledges, who were blindfolded.

George got an early start on torture. It even made the NYTimes back in the day (as his dad was a congressman at the time).

Hi, kids, just wanted to share a little Fitzrap from one of my personal favorite sites, Sadly, No, which could use your vote in the category after FDL’s.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/002116.html

Yah, Redd, it’s no biggie. Just a technical point.

I used to see mental illness everywhere when I was in the clinical world, and when I moved out of it, I learned to see the world as more than a collection of people with problems and deficits. But being in that clinical world definitely reenforces seeing things a certain way, because you see so much of it, day in and day out.

The same happens to people in the criminal justice system, and I have enormous respect for people like you who get through that without being cynical and negative, and who rather take from it a greater dedication to helping others, to be kind, even merciful.

By the way, I know what you mean with those kids. I spent two years as a full time volunteer counselor at Covenant House in Texas, working with homeless and runaway kids, who often ended up before a prosecutor.

I spent a year running the 3-11 shift in a group home for boys placed by either protective services or probation. That was all before my doctoral training specializing in family violence. We been around some of the same types of folks, you and I, though yours were probably further gone.

Minor point, anyway.

Oh–the “cable” was a State Dept. message to Saudi Arabia.

My, My, look at this from Reuters:

US told Saudis about Qaeda plane threat pre-9/11

The cable said three U.S. officials had met with Saudi officials at Riyadh’s King Khaled International Airport on June 16, 1998, “to discuss the Osama bin Laden threat, and press for enhanced vigilance by Saudi security screeners and police patrols around the airport.”

“We noted that while we have no specific information that indicates bin Laden is targeting civilian aircraft, he made a threat during the June 11 ABC News interview against ‘military passenger aircraft’ in the next ‘few weeks,”‘ the cable said.

The cable is the latest of several signs made public that U.S. officials had concerns, long before the 2001 hijacked airplane attacks on New York and Washington, that al Qaeda might be targeting aircraft.

Others include a highly classified President’s Daily Brief report to former President Bill Clinton dated December 4, 1998, which was titled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.”

The CIA has also said it had told the Federal Aviation Administration in 1999 that “Osama bin Laden remains interested in targeting U.S. interests including on U.S. territory. He is well prepared to consider kidnappings and hijackings as well as bombings.”

Pach — often, I was dealing with advanced stages of all of this with violent juvenile offenders. Unfortunately, we rarely saw things in the early, more treatable periods except in abuse and neglect cases where we could mercifully intervene and get the child help. Depressing, but true, we spend vast sums of money on the back end of things for incarceration and punishment when treatment is more difficult rather than working on helping children before they ever get into the criminal justice system. It’s one of the things that haunted me about my job — and still does. Thanks for the technical info., Pach — I think my perspective is tainted by seeing so many kids who were so far down the road toward sociopathic personalities.

Of all the thousand sins of this Fortunato, the one that strikes me as most sociopathic is Bush’s apparant and comfortable indifference to the suffering of innocents. The examples spill out like seeds from a pommegranate: children killed or orphaned in Iraq, prisoners unjustly accused in Guantanamo, victims of Katrina, families of soldiers. It doesn’t seem to me he has even a passing inclination to ever grieve or mourn or care and any effort to do so is scripted and/or clumsy.

I agree with you Redd, that blowing up frogs was just the start of his behavior issues. It’s just that, to froggermarch here, it hit a little close to home.

I deleted the comment that was making things go all wonky. I think it was an accident.

I had run a tally on number of deaths that are attributed to this regime and it is quite shocking. I threw in his old man for good measure. From Texas, 150 executions to 9/11 an asleep at the switch 3,000 to the civilians in Iraq, 30,000 to 100,000 to US troops 2,100 to Panama in the 80’s 3,000 civilians..Lots of dead folks…

It is getting wierd again, now with the shrill right, ala Dildo O’Rielly and Coulter and others dropping the Nazi bomb on the left. The more pressure they come under the more they project and lash out.

I am struck by the strange right wing logic that posits the left as weak, ineffectual, effeminate, unwilling to fight, ready to surrender at any moment on one hand and then on the other all powerful, dangerous, psychotic, always on the attack, threatening, violent, and ready to destroy all things conservative.

I hope to write a nice piece one day…Just one of the more strange paradoxes pushed by the neoconeheads and wingnutsies as of late.

-GSD

Redd: minor point. . .

The childhood behaviors you list are symptoms of conduct disorder, which often presages adult antisocial personality disorder. But serial killers are a very small subset of those with antisocial personality disrder.

As I said, minor point, but a clinical one.

Well, I hope justice isn’t just an epitaph for the victims of Bushco.
IOT—-Hurry up, FITZ!!!

The deeds of this misadministration have been appalling. They have laughed in the face of true justice at every bend in the road. But Justice has a way of catching up with eeryone, and someday they will pay.

In a way, the news regarding the prisoner tortured and giving false testimony which led us into this accursed war is evidence of how cool and detatched the plumb line of blind justice can be. We all are paying for the easy decisions made to prop up false powers. Some have paid with their lives. But we all will pay, unless we can find the way to set the Bush misdeeds aright.

How shall arrogance be brough low? How shall the wrongs of our age be redressed?

Redd,
I think Babs can say “mission accomplished” on that score.

In my former life as a prosecutor, we called the sort of child who blew frogs up with firecrackers a big red flag for sociopathic behavior and antisocial tendencies. If you add in firesetting and other cruel behavior to animals and young children, you get a serial killer in the making. I’m just saying…

Depphyne reminds us of the shocking truth, :

“What would you do if your neighbor’s child did things like put “firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up”?

Egad! Could no one stop this monster?!

Someone on another site wrote a few weeks ago in the Gore for Porn scandal that many Germans were more than willing to go along with Hitler and mentioned the book Hitler’s Willing Executioners.

Germany was in a fear state at the lack of help after the devastation of WWI and the destruction of their infrastructure and the war reparations that they could not pay.

“The starving Hun babies” that the English who lost loved ones in WWI didn’t want to help according to Vera Brittain in her book Testament of Youth, the ones that did survive became Nazis 20 years later.

The squeeze on Americans doing the work of 2 or 4 people even under Clinton when the economy got better was not just corporate greed but part of a plan to have Americans so utterly exhausted, they could not pay attention to what the PNAC/Bilderbergers were doing.

Mario Cuomo said in an interview under Clinton that the HMOs would not have been able to get away with destroying health care if American’s were not forced to work 24/7 just to survive.

I would feel better about McCain’s language and any other legislation against torture, if I thought the Rethugs would follow the law. But then again, there’s the Fifth Amendment:

. . . nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, . . .

and that hasn’t slowed them down a bit.

It’s bordering on hopeless.

Please sign petition against torture:
http://action.truemajority.org…..ure_motion
Support a Full Vote on Torture

America’s principles of decency and rule of law have always been an example for the world. Senator McCain’s amendment making clear that Americans do not torture people is not only smart policy, it’s also the right thing to do.

Please support Rep. John Murtha’s (D-PA) “motion to instruct the conferees” to include Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) language outlawing torture in the defense bill. I urge you to act to stop torture and restore America’s international reputation for honor.

Your Action Can Stop Torture

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who recently called for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, wants to bring the torture issue out of the committee room and into the light of day. Murtha wants to hold a vote in the entire House of Representatives on the torture ban, forcing lawmakers to face the issue head-on. His move is called a “motion to instruct the conferees” – it sounds like parliamentary jargon, but the idea is simple: the entire House of Representatives will send an instruction to the legislators holed up in that committee room that they should keep Senator McCain’s anti-torture amendment.

Representative Murtha’s motion to stop torture deserves an up-or-down vote. We send our representatives to Congress so their – and our – voices can be heard. Don’t let a few rogue politicians thwart the will of Congress – and of the American people – with a parliamentary trick.

TELL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE TO SUPPORT REP. MURTHAÂ’S MOTION AND DEMAND ACTION ON THE TORTURE BAN.

Shall America Torture People? Congress will vote soon…
Date: 12/7/2005
From: alerts@truemajorityaction.org

Will we approve “cruel, inhumane and degrading” behavior? Don’t let the torture decision be made in a closed committee room. Tell your representative to take a public stand on our values:

Thanks!

Don’t blame the torture policy on Bush though
he is ultimately accountable for it. 9-11
attack opened a dark Pandora’s box of the
American psyche. This is one damn mean
country. I don’t have the figures on a survey done recently on torture but what surprised me
was a lot of American’s support the “soft”
torture methods as long as they “produce”
information that keeps us “safe.” I for one am
totally against all forms of torture.
Go read an excellent book by Corey Robin called Fear, The History of a Political Idea.

http://www.11alive.com/news/ne…..69707~Rita Evacuee Missing in Atlanta

Kevin Seay

Web Editor: Tracey Christensen
Last Modified: 9/24/2005

A evacuee from New Orleans has been reported missing in the Atlanta area, police officials said. Kevin Seay flew into Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Wednesday but failed to make his connecting flight.

Seay is a White male with blue eyes and reddish-strawberry blonde hair. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, a solid color T-shirt, tennis shoes and carrying a blue school bag.

Atlanta police said there is no reason to suspect foul play in his disappearance. However, police and family members are concerned for his welfare because Seay has made no contact with relatives or friends.

Anyone who thinks they may have seen Seay should contact Detective Loy with the Atlanta Police Missing Persons Unit at 404-853-4235 or call 911.

Lifetime TV had a series on the worldwide trade in children forced to into sexual slavery with a segment of Johnny Goshe’s mother and things you can do to help on their website.

Also about the complicity of US law enforcement. Read about The Finders, the Washington Post never followed up when the CIA told the FBI that The Finders was “an internal CIA matter.”

The Franklin Scandal and John DeCamp also talked about very similar sexual torture using electrodes as do the victims witnessing on http://www.Raven1.net. One Dr. Ewan Cameron’s victims from Allen Memorial successfully sued the CIA and the Canadian government for their mind control experiments on her and got the CIA to apologize.

An American mayor who visited Gitmo said she thought a mind control type of experiment was going on there.

Read the online 1977 MK-ULTRA Senate Hearings where Senators Kennedy and Church try to expose this horror.

I have had trouble logging onto this site over the last couple of days. Either I just get a blank page with the header, or the number of comments does not update, and just the ‘page not found’ comment. Others do not seem to have the same problem so assume if was just me.

Jane — you’re absolutely right; Dubya is mean to the bone as well as incompetent. His CV showed it long before he held office. He won’t have actually performed torture or even ordered it, but his lack of intervention on any questionable issue directed by SAO’s is tantamount to approval.

And stupid, I must not forget stupid. His campaign has already been approached about monies received from OH’s Coingate, yet not one cent has been returned. That’s not meanness or incompetence; it’s pure stupidity.

arbogast — the figure I watch (being short on unemployment for nearly 3 years) is the monthly job’s figure. We need 350,000 a month just to cover the rate of attrition. I can’t think of a month since early 2001 when we made that number. The overall unemployment numbers are grossly distorted since people like me who’ve resorted to picking up odds and ends of contract or part-time work aren’t considered unemployed. That’s why the polls come back showing the average American doesn’t believe the economy is turning around. Even the report about consumer confidence is misleading (not because of UofM’s work); the press doesn’t report that consumers might only be more confident than they were in mid-September immediately after Katrina. Wait until after the first couple months of natural gas bills…

zennurse
when your fish start swimming backwords you should start worrying

for some reason haloscan didnt terminate all the formatting at the end of one message.

Is this site under attack? There is much weirdness going on with the italic stuff and not being able to get in at times. Is FDL on the Rove radar? Wow. You’d think he had enough problems.

Thanks, Jane, for the comments about Bush as torture doctrine author – I agree with you. Here is something from Corrente a few years ago:
Bush really needs to control his blood lust

So I’m walking to my WiFi hotspot in Philly when I spot the Inky headline through the window in the newspaper box:

Bush: Hussein deserves to die

Wow! 24 hours ago, Bush was going to try Saddam before a tribunal that would “withstand international scrutiny.” Today, he knows not only what the verdict, but the penalty should be.

Why the sudden turnabout? It’s obvious that Bush simply can’t control his emotions.

Bush wants to kill, and what he wants, he gets (divine guidance and all that).

Think this over the top? In fact, we’ve always half-known that Bush is a killer—but maybe, because of our all-too-American willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt, we’ve not faced facts squarely.

Think! What about the photos and bios of terrorists kept in a drawer in the Oval Office? One imagines Bush taking them out, at night, and fantasizing… Something it’s not easy to think of Reagan doing, or even Nixon, let alone FDR. What kind of a man is Bush?

Think! What about Alberto Gonzales pimping 56 easy kills for Bush in Texas, detailed in The Texas Clemency Memos? What kind of a man signs a death warrant on the basis of “the most cursory briefings”?

Think! What about Bush mocking condemned Christian prisoner Karla Faye Tucker, pursing his lips while saying “Please don’t kill me?” What kind of a man jokes like this to a national reporter?

Think! What would you do if your neighbor’s child did things like put “firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up”? (Kristoff, in the Times, now archived behind the green door, quoting childhood Bush friend Terry Throckmorton). You’d try to get that child treatment. Or move away from that family. What kind of a child would do that? What kind of a family would allow him to?

You just have to hear Bush spit “killers” to recognize a classic case of winger projection.

Think! This is the man with whom we have to deal. Beneath the affability, beneath the veneer of “My Utmost to His Highest”: a small man, dressed in Floridian “borrow’d robes”, desperate to live up to his idolized father, deeply aware that he isn’t up to the job and for that very reason all the more vicious to those who oppose him; still at heart the child who likes to “put firecrackers in [living things] and throw them and blow them up,” but now the head of the world’s most powerful country and licensed to indulge his lust on the grounds of national security… .

This is such a wonderful site, full of information and very intelligent, articulate people. Thanks so much for all of your comments and insights.

However, I will need a 12 step plan for being a Plameoholic – I am hopelessly addicted.

Peace.

That’s 1.6 million in 2002. It’s more now. Those people are going to be hurting. Of course, it won’t affect the economy, as noted.

From the bureau of Labor Statistics:

In 2002, real estate brokers held about 99,000 jobs; real estate sales agents held 308,000 [total 407,000]
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos120.htm

Construction laborers held about 938,000 jobs in 2002.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos248.htm

Loan counselors and officers together held about 255,000 jobs in 2002.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos018.htm

Did anyone else’s comments go totally into italics in the last 10 minutes or so after refreshing? I’ve been having weirdness online all day and none of my coffeepots will work right; I’m starting to think it’s sabotage!

http://www.dccc.org/get_involved/petitions/murtha/

^^NEW MURTHA PETITION^^

Please take time to sign on!!!

http://fusioner.proboards60.co…..1131129004

^^ Find all the lastest petitions here ^^

Send letters!!! Contact your reps in Congress!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/ secur…ity_warnings_dc

It’s all Clintons fault? Right…

The Bush administration has something going for it if you count repeated intelligence failures and lack of effective border control.
Me3

this information is already addressed in the 9/11 report;

page 128

clinton was given a pdb almost identicle to the pdb that president bush was given, warning of attacks from bin laden using commercial air craft

the differance is that president clinton heeded the warning, but all agencies on high alert and the threat was averted

he also made getting bin laden an obsession.

Redd, even Scooter Libby doesn’t believe that torture is an effective device for obtaining information. At least that’s what we learn from reading The Apprentice and its eight-page torture sequence, late in the novel…

Jane,

Thank you for laying the responsibility for torture at the feet of the torturer in chief. There is no doubt in my mind that he was in on the ground floor when the doctrine was developed. The “intellectual” justification was left to Yoo and Gonzales, but I agree that the policy fits in nicely with what we know about his personality.

Remember his mocking comments after that woman (was her name Tucker?) was put to death in Texas while he was governor.

Speaking to the broader point, I think these guys know that the good intelligence obtained through torture far outweighs the negatives (bad intelligence, bad pr, risk to troops, etc). Beyond being consistent with their character as you have pointed out, I think they view it as a litmus test of how far they can push the limits of executive power. That they continue to get away with this, as well as the possible reauthorization of the more troubling aspects of the PAtriot act, will only embolden them.

Time for everyone to dig in their heels. Hopefully, Round II of the abu ghraib photos will be released. Troubling as they will be, hopefully the outcry will not die down this time.

I’m reading the Jehl article, and got this “wait a minute…” feeling. A Libyan? Named Al-Libi…? Where have I…?

Ah ha.

Take a look at this tidbit from May of this year. I blogged about it here.

Three people, with very similar surnames, from the same country. Is Al-Liby/Libbi/Libi (on the label, label, label) the equivalent of Smith in Libya? Is this Libya’s version of the Bush family?

….Or, is BushCo rounding up anybody with that particular last name (no wonder they gave up Scooter so easily!)? Do they not know that Ay-rabs have “first” names, too? I mean, can’t they tell the difference between Abu, Ibn, Anas?

Do I really want to know?

percy = “rescue” by Jebby might not be a la Schiavo (state troopers order to remove her).

Could be another hit by mysterious unidentified persons, blamed on Kidan’s consorting with criminal types in the first place. If I were Kidan, I would be very concerned.

Correction: I meant to refer above to ReddHedd, not Jane.

Wilson said VNovak to tell all on Sunday!

I guess that means that Rove has to approve the print copy.

How much is enough money for these guys? What do they do with it all? Fill up the tub and wallow in it!

Jane: “Organizations tend to take on the character of their leader. The disorganized, irresponsible, petty, sadistic, egotistical, entitled, elements of this “war on terror” have Dubya written all over it.”

So true, and well said, itÂ’s worth repeating This is the fundamental point that escapes so much of the punditry which seeks to paint GW as being above it all while his subordinates do all the damage.

Not only is he ultimately responsible, as the commander in chief (Nuremberg principle), but his whole history and personal character are entirely consistent with knowing and approving of the acts carried out by his administration.

The premise that underlies the entire Republican gameplan is that the US is the great power on earth today. We are invincible. We need no one but ourselves.

The people in the US who buy that are going to be very sorry consumers.

A single example. It is predicted that 800,000 jobs will be lost as the housing market unwinds. Remarkably, it is felt that the economy will brush that aside and march gloriously into the future.

The value of residential housing in the US is now at 150% of the gross national product. A shitload of home equity has been pumped into the economy via loans on this unbelievable number.

800, 000 jobs. Not even the order of magnitude is right.

from VandeHei & Leonig:

Sources familiar with their conversations say Novak’s and Luskin’s accounts to Fitzgerald appear to conflict on when they spoke.

[snip]

A source familiar with Novak’s account said she believes the conversation took place in March or May, and definitely took place after February 2004, when Rove first testified before the grand jury.

But one person close to the case said the conversation took place before Rove’s first grand jury appearance in February. This person said the conversation was not the event that led Rove to change his testimony.

Leave it to “Diamond Jim” to leave the “she” ambiguous as to whether the source is female, or whether Ho’-vak is unsure.

So why is Karl putting all this out 2 days before Ho’-vak’s tell-all?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/security_warnings_dc

It’s all Clintons fault? Right…

The Bush administration has something going for it if you count repeated intelligence failures and lack of effective border control.

VandeHei rears his ugly pen again:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..36_pf.html

although this one looks like it might actually contain some good news

After reading Richard Clarke’s book and hearing that after 9/11 Bush just wanted to kick the crap out of someone, it didn’t matter whether it was legal, justified or no, I fully expect that at some time in the future it will come out that he is the originator of the torture doctrine. He’s got a real sadistic streak and the thought that torture might be a really good idea is the kind of brainstorm he would wake up with one morning.

Organizations tend to take on the character of their leader. The disorganized, irresponsible, petty sadistic egotistical entitled elements of this “war on terror” have Dubya written all over it.

VNovak to tell all on Sunday!
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp…..1001657977

Very well said, JC.

zennurse – google “the gulag of our times” and durbin.

oops! I meant the NYT/Jehl story, not WaPo.

I’m lost on the Durbin thing, can you give me a link? I think I missed that class. Thanks

The WaPo story ties together virtually every immoral aspect of this Administration’s war policy into one: redefine “torture,” use rendition to allow/conceal torture by others and escape responsibility, use the coerced information to justify going to war, suppress/conceal the warnings that the information is unreliable, place false stories in the (Miller) press to tout the misinformation, and use all these tactics to convince the public to support a war they intended to start in any event.

Those of us who witnessed Watergate/Nixon keep looking for “smoking guns” or other pieces of evidence to warrant impeachment, but we can’t see that the evidence is everywhere, like stumbling over dead bodies in a fog and not recognizing we are in a killing field.

Rayne:’at what point does Jebby step in and try to “rescue” Kidan to salvage the Repub party’s image?”

My opinion: if Kidan’s implicated in a murder case, he’s radioactive, even to Jeb. Jeb may have no morals, but he does read the polls.

Instead we got the typical tearful apology from a spineless Dem.
Horatio | Homepage | 12.09.05 – 9:00 am | #
___________________

I still don’t understand that whole thing. What turned him around? Pressure from other Dems in the Senate? Pressure from constituents? And why the friggin tears?

You know, the main point of that Jehl story was not new to me, but I can’t remember where I read about it. Which blog was it?

So hard to keep track, with all the reading I do.

Different topic. Question for Redd

“A source familiar with Novak’s account said she believes the conversation took place in March or May, and definitely took place after February 2004, when Rove first testified before the grand jury.

But one person close to the case said the conversation took place before Rove’s first grand jury appearance in February. This person said the conversation was not the event that led Rove to change his testimony”

If the conversation took place in Feb before Rove appeared before the GJ. why then did Rove lie to GJ about Cooper?

That doesn’t make any sense.

Most, if not all of the people we torture, or outsource for torturing, can never be brought to trial.

So WHAT are we going to do with them…? Kill them? Turn them loose with fire in their bellies for revenge? Watch them line up to tell their stories in detail to the Guardian? Either we’re looking at more US targe practice aimed squarely at our own feet, or we’re at the edge of an even uglier scenario- take ‘em, torture ‘em and terminate ‘em.

In fighting bin Laden, we are becoming him.

So the big question is will the prosecution be able to roll-up a lot of these charges without the cooperation of Abramoff.

Also, has Abramoff just been cut loose for real, or has he been covertly disowned but guaranteed that he will be “well taken care of” if he keeps his mouth shut.

Just Abramoffs e-mails in regards to the Indians and casinos alone tells you just how much of a base, money worshipping prick he really was.

But, it seems like there is the back to front roll-up going on here to get more and more low level mooks to turn and flip and roll and sing.

Scanlon is in the bag now for the Feds and sounds like the NY “deli consultants, the goodfella hit-men” are willing to point the finger.

So now Kidan flips too I also think that David Safavian, the Fed procurement flack who quit just before he was indicted..he is mixed up in here too.

Also, there is question as to whether money from the Abramoff money machine went to help supress votes here in NH..

Needless to say, lots of fuses are lit and they are all heading towards Washington and Casino Jack Abramoff and his relationships with Dirty Delay, Grover “Bathtub” Norquist, and Ralphie-Boy Reed, Mayor Bob Ney too……

_GSD

How does this match up with the idea that the McCain amendment is finally making progress again?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200…..ongress_dc

no comment needed:
from BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4514112.stm
Today is the United Nation’s Anti-Corruption Day. I wonder if John Bolton will comment on DeLay, Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, etc ?

percy — the question I see, since the Boulis hit is being prosecuted by FL state: at what point does Jebby step in and try to “rescue” Kidan to salvage the Repub party’s image?

We should start a board on that one.

me to me — agreed, there’s a time when eye-for-an-eye punishment is most effective, particularly with those folks who live and die as advocates for the same.

But as someone else pointed out, we are about to see Republicans become big defenders and proponents of civil rights. Threaten them with the same “harsh interrogation” or torture merely defined as pain applied, they will be singing the praises of every civil rights and human rights activist in their defense.

This is gonna’ be good.

All this stuff makes me even more pissed at Durbin for his grovelling apology. He should have stuck to his guns, demanded the truth and once he got it, kicked everyone’s ass with it. Instead we got the typical tearful apology from a spineless Dem.

US sponsored torture is a hugely important subject. (Did any of us ever imagine we might, during our lives, read such a statement?)

So I don’t want to lead us off topic. But simply as a reference-post, following my research dive during the last post, here are my bullet points (pun intended), on the possible connections between Kidan & Abramoff, and the Boulis hit:

(And thanks, Pacha, for your assessment, which matches what I found.)

-After the state of Florida came down on Boulis’ gambling boat business, he agreed to sell it to Kidan and Abramoff for $23 million, due immediately… but they never paid Boulis. Instead, they faked a wire transfer in order to secure a loan. Boulis was pissed (and, according to Kidan, threatened to kill him.)

-Kidan was cozy with Mafia criminals and, via SunCruz, paid them large sums for “services” never rendered. Five months later, the Mafia hit men killed Boulis, and were arrested.

-One of them, Moscatiello, has alleged to detectives that Kidan ordered the Boulis hit.

-Kidan has been busted for conspiracy and wire fraud, is facing big time, and is expected to flip against his business partner, Abramoff. He’ll have to provide testimony in the (federal) fraud and (state) murder cases. But what, exactly, does he have to say about the hit, and will he be charged? So far, no one seems to know.

-My take: most of the dots are connected. So far the link between Kidan and the murder don’t go “beyond reasonable doubt” (only the word of one hit man, plus some money transfers) but I’ll give even odds that Kidan has been or will be linked by prosecutors to the murder, that he’ll sing like Shakira, and that he’ll probably do (reduced) time for the crime as well.

-If Abramoff, knew about the hit (likely), then Kidan will surely take him down, too. But that’s conjecture. Again – nothing I’ve read so far indicates that any person has fingered Abramoff in the hit.

I think Fitz and us are doing a “fear-up” on the perps right now ;-)

I really think these people need “harsh interrogation” when they’re indicted

Okay, now someone who photoshops well and has a minute to spare needs to do a poster of Condi Rice starring in “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, with the usual suspects in supporting roles.
Now, please!

Love,
News Nag
________

Boy, no wonder the Bush/Rove spin machine kicked into high agitation after the Amnesty International report lamented that the Bush/Cheney/Stalin Government had created: “the gulag for our times”.

Was it Socrates who said: “Why does truth call forth anger”.

Now we are building four more bases in Romania…oh the sorrows of the empire.

-GSD

Here is a webpage that sources the systematization of torture.

From the introduction….
“In spite of official protestations to the contrary, it is now evident that the grotesque abuses of US troops in Iraq are not simply the criminal acts of a few sadistic thugs but merely a visible indication of a systematically implemented policy. Indeed, the evidence strongly indicates that the practices have been developed and sophisticated over decades and that they are carefully devised applications of the findings of psychological and sociological research.”

Agreed about Dana Priest! And, it looks like they’re trying to go after her.

However, my question for Redd…do you heart Atrios more than Fitz?

“Amen” Percy at 8:40.

MSM gets a lot of well deserved criticism at FDL, but WaPo’s Dana Priest deserves a lot of credit for breaking the story about the secret prisons.

Who do they (Bush et al) think we (American people) are?

“it’s not torture, it’s just really, really, really harsh interrogation”

Creeping banality of evil.

It’s wrong. It doesn’t work. It destroys our nation’s soul. It sets our own soldiers and citizens up for the same, and then what will we say? “Hey! Only WE can do that.”

Irony is supremely ironic in this instance. And the sad thing is, I’ll bet none of the current crop of Repugs get it. I’m with you Redd…depressed. Back to work for a while.

And if I’m still first…Fitz!