torture

We Were Lied To About 9/11 - Episode 22 - Andy Worthington


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoB613GD3hQ

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and is available on Amazon) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” He has written for the New York Times and the Guardian, and is currently writing for Al-Jazeera. He has also worked with the United Nations, WikiLeaks and Reprieve.

We Were Lied To About 9/11 - Episode 14 - Robbie Martin


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyZgn24aCBU

Journalist for Media Roots, creator of the film American Anthrax, and co-host of Media Roots Radio with Abby Martin. He has appeared on Tyrel Ventura's Buzzsaw TV, KPFA, Breaking The Set on Russia Today, Deadline Live, The Corbett Report and has been interviewed by La Figaro, the BBC, Neural Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the founder of recordlabelrecords.org and is a musician under the alias of Fluorescent Grey.

12 Things to Keep in Mind When You Read the Torture Report

by Dan Froomkin

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report will be released “in a matter of days,” a committee staffer tells The Intercept. The report, a review of brutal CIA interrogation methods during the presidency of George W. Bush, has been the subject of a contentious back-and-forth, with U.S. intelligence agencies and the White House on one side pushing for mass redactions in the name of national security and committee staffers on the other arguing that the proposed redactions render the report unintelligible.

Should something emerge, here are some important caveats to keep in mind:

1) You’re not actually reading the torture report. You’re just reading an executive summary. The full Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program runs upward of 6,000 pages. The executive summary is 480 pages. So you’re missing more than 80 percent of it.

Dick Cheney denies war criminal allegations at KPU event

Former Vice President Dick Cheney refuted accusations that he is a war criminal during his speech to students and members of the AU community in Bender Arena on March 28. The Kennedy Political Union hosted Cheney as part of a stream of speakers coming to campus.

“If I would have to do it all over again, I would,” Cheney said. “The results speak for themselves.”

http://www.theeagleonline.com/article/2014/03/dick-cheney-denies-war-criminal-allegations-at-kpu-event

Bipartisan Report: U.S. Practiced Widespread Torture

Bipartisan Report: U.S. Practiced Widespread Torture, Torture Has “No Jusification” and Doesn’t Yield Significant Information, Nation’s Highest Officials Bear Responsibility

John Yoo and Others Banned From Entering Russia

John Yoo, Dick Cheney and others have been banned from entering Russia in a move designed to retaliate, tit for tat, with Washington's ban on 18 Russian Citizens to the United States citing human rights violation. John Yoo tops the list. The story can be found at HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/13/russia-responds-to-us-mag_n_3075795.html

John Yoo is at the top of the list. He wrote "The Torture Memos" that allowed the U.S. to torture captured "terrorists." It was Yoo who created an environment that enabled the government to do this: in other words he weasel worded the law to make people think what they were doing was legal. Yoo with Viet Dihn wroteThe Patriot Act. Yoo, who teaches at Berkeley, is under constant scrutiny by the public: http://www.firejohnyoo.net/

Yoo, who like Obama, passes under the sobriquet of "constitutional scholar," shows his complete weakness of character in the short nonpareil video produced by Chasers War on Everything , a comedic group out of Australia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwTPQjT0hA

 

9/11 Commission Deceived: An Unintentional Work of Fiction Based on Cheney’s Torture Program

The 9/11 Commission: A Victim of Cheney’s Torture Program

Preface:  This is not a partisan post. We have repeatedly documented that Obama is as bad or worse than the Bush administration.

In the run up to the Iraq war – and for several years thereafter – the program of torture carried out by the Bush administration was specifically specifically aimed at establishing a false justification for war. Dick Cheney is the guy who pushed for torture, pressured the Justice Department lawyers to write memos saying torture was legal, and made the pitch to Congress justifying torture. (The former director of the CIA said Cheney oversaw American torture policies).

The type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used Communist torture techniques specifically aimed at creating false confessions (see this, this, this and this).

According to NBC News:

  • Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured
  • At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”
  • One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was not even allowed to read
  • The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

In fact, the 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on third-hand accounts of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees.

(Video) "He Was The Agency": Ex-CIA Analyst Questions Brennan Claim He Couldn’t Stop Waterboarding, Torture

"CIA nominee John Brennan was repeatedly questioned about torture at his CIA confirmation hearing, including the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. He refused to say waterboarding was a form of torture, but said he has come to oppose the technique. Under George W. Bush, Brennan served as deputy executive director of the CIA and director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. "Remember, he was the cheerleader for some of these onerous policies, particularly renditions and extraordinary renditions. So, for John Brennan today to say he read the Senate committee intelligence report on torture and he learned things he never knew before and that he was shocked with what he learned, this is a case of incredible willful ignorance," says Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. [includes rush transcript]"

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/8/he_was_the_agency_ex_cia#transcript

Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

"Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. "This ... was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture," Kiriakou says. "My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional."".

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/13426

Obama's Failed Promise to Close Gitmo: A Timeline

"President Obama promised to shut down the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility during his first presidential campaign. But five years later, the controversial prison remains open. The Obama administration finally shut down something today, but the move will only frustrate civil libertarians even more. Because with Guantánamo's closure still indefinitely delayed, the office responsible for closing the prison has itself been closed. The New York Times's Charlie Savage reports that Daniel Fried—the State Department's the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—has been reassigned and will not be replaced. The news comes on the same day that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees began another round of pre-trial hearings for the attacks of September 11, 2001, a case that will surely reignite a fierce debate about the role of due process, torture, and oversees detention facilities. The Obama administration's latest seeming deferral adds yet another entry to the long timeline of failed attempts to shut down Gitmo".

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/01/obama-closing-guantanamo-timeline/61509/

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