consortiumnews.com

Yoo's on First?

By Ray McGovern
April 10, 2008

Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department's hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons' testicles crushed, because we are "at war" and he is commander in chief?

Or is it because our press is STILL reluctant to go after Yoo's guys – first and foremost his ultimate client – President George W. Bush? Oh, but that would be hard, you say.

Nonsense.

Available on the Web, in its original format, is a 7 Feb. 2002 action memorandum that the president signed to implement the dubious advice he was getting from Yoo and those at Justice who hired Yoo – and from the vice president's office which guided Yoo.

Yoo did their dirty work (and now he takes the rap).

Weren't Yoo's co-conspirators careful to keep their fingerprints off the more blatantly offensive memoranda? Sure they were.

A shocking clip from Robert Greenwald's "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" -
http://www.iraqforsale.org

Flyby News Notes -
Editor - Jonathan Mark - www.FlybyNews.com
April 1, 2008 - Torture + Lies Exposed * Iran Shell Game Action

"We must all learn to live together
as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.
We are tied together in the single garment of destiny,
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And
whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. "

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968,
the day before his departure from this world

1) Will US Now Illegally Rage War Against Iran and environment?
- - Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border
- - Ex-Terror Detainee Says U.S. Tortured Him
- - Attorney General Mukasey lies about 9/11 and international spying
- - NPR News: National Pentagon Radio
- - U.S.-Led Coalition Forces Bomb Shiite Militia in Basra
- - A Day in a Guantanamo Detainee's Life
- - Day of Infamy - US Declaration of War on Iran
2) Reflecting Pool US Economy Impact Silverstein & illness lawsuit
- - Report Of WTC Collapse Cover-Up Justifies Call For New Inquiry
- - The Impact of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the US Economy

photo Canadian Broadcasting 2004

Get me to Syria, I need a quick 10 Mil

I went to the University of Victoria last night to see a panel discussion called, "Civil Liberties and National Security: The Maher Arar Panel"

This panel was comprised of Maher Arar, his wife Dr.Monia Mazigh - who has a PhD in financial economics and ran for the NDP in the 2004 federal elections in the riding of Ottawa South, and thirdly, Stephen Toope who is the Arar Commission fact-finder, human rights law scholar and UBC President. The panel discussion was moderated by UVic Law Dean Andrew Petter - just in case the assembled guests were to break out into a rousing contest involving Indian leg wrestling, or possible declaration of a thumb-war. In case you haven't heard about the Maher Arar case - here goes:

Rupert Cornwell: Torture, terror and a trial system that is tainted

Wednesday, 13 February 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell-tortur...

If George W Bush has his way, this will be al-Qa'ida's Nuremberg. A presidency that began with the deadliest terrorist attacks in history on American soil will end with the trial, conviction and sentencing to death of those who planned them.

Read Part One: http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-sieg...

Hear No Evil, See No Evil

Americans’ ever-enduring, catatonic sleepwalk through the Empire’s vast array of bread and circus, as always produced by the Ministry of Truth and the Department of Propaganda, better known as the corporatist media, has succeeded in the creation of an ignorant, incurious and dumbed down populace completely bereft of knowledge of what is done in its name. With no concern for or understanding of geography, cultures, history, alien societies, the outside world and of the imperial aspirations of the Empire, Americans have proved easy targets to the manipulations and deceptions of the corporatist world. Seemingly unwilling to gain knowledge of anything outside American Idol or the weekly NASCAR rat race, the soldier ants and worker bees of the Empire are content to circumvent the horrors of war and the myriad crimes against humanity committed in their name in order to maintain their beautiful minds at peace.

Indeed, the corporatist media has triumphed in completely erasing America’s two disastrous occupations of Muslim lands from the peoples’ conscious and concern, in effect shifting the ongoing debacles away from the daily reality of Americans and towards the abyss of a most cavernous memory hole. Methodically and systematically, the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, with all their inconvenient truths, with all their disturbing realities, with all their corresponding death, suffering and destruction, have virtually vanished into a vacuum of nothingness, transported by the corporatist state into a clandestine and secretive reality, making of these disasters non-existent nightmares that vanish upon the waking of a new day.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080217/wl_mcclatchy/2852729

Clinton's response to questions about charges filed last week against six Guantanamo prisoners was the most far reaching of the three leading presidential candidates.

Clinton would seek to try 9/11 plotters in established courts

By Carol Rosenberg, McClatchy NewspapersSun Feb 17, 6:57 PM ET

If elected president, Hillary Clinton would ask the Justice Department to determine if alleged 9/11 plotters currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , could be tried in civilian courts or regular military courts rather than face military commissions that have sparked controversy both inside and outside the United States , her campaign says.

Clinton's response to questions about charges filed last week against six Guantanamo prisoners was the most far reaching of the three leading presidential candidates.

Her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama , D-Ill., said that the so-called "high-value detainees'' at Guantanamo should be tried in federal or traditional military courts, but did not say what actions he would take to move the trials.

Flyby News Notes -
Editor - Jonathan Mark - www.FlybyNews.com
February 11, 2008 - Bank Failure * Torture * Sibel * Shell Game

”9/11 Truthers are the Real
Patriots of the 21st Century!”

-- Steve Alten
Author of The Shell Game

1) Financial Corruption Threatens US All
- - The Bush Financial Bust of 2008
- - World Reports: Extreme Crisis As Group of 9 Demand Settlement
2) Waterboarding for God and Country
- - Ray McGovern: Waterboarding for God and Country
- - Justice Dept. 'Cannot' Probe Waterboarding, Mukasey Says
- - Cheney Defends Use of Harsh Interrogations
3) Sibel Edmonds: "The Highjacking of a Nation”
- - CNN [In Turkey] Covers Sibel Edmonds
- - Let Sibel Edmonds Speak – Don’t - Kill The Messenger
4) Uncounted – Diebold – Hillary 08?
- - Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections
- - The Winning Ticket: Hillary and Diebold in 2008
5) Project Shell Game – 9/11 Commission Cover-Up
- - The Shell Game Opportunity for 9/11 Truthers to Reach the Masses
- - 9/11 inquiry head 'tried to shield George Bush'
- - Coleen Rowley on Philip Shenon's Book
- - The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation

Editor’s Notes:

(I subbed in the word "torture" in the above headline, where MSNBC will only say "waterboarding". Even though Chief Justice Mukasey won't say it, Malcolm Nance, "a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego" says, I know waterboarding is torture - because I did it myself. So there you have it. -rep.)

9/11 Commission Controversy

By Robert Windrem and Victor Limjoco - January 30, 2008

The 9/11 Commission suspected that critical information it used in its landmark report was the product of harsh interrogations of al-Qaida operatives - interrogations that many critics have labeled torture. Yet, commission staffers never questioned the agency about the interrogation techniques and in fact ordered a second round of interrogations specifically to ask additional questions of the same operatives, NBC News has learned.

Those conclusions are the result of an extensive NBC News analysis of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report and interviews with Commission staffers and current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

The analysis shows that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was derived from the interrogations of high-ranking al-Qaida operatives. Each had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." Some were even subjected to waterboarding, the most controversial of the techniques, which simulates drowning.

The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission.

Flyby News Notes -
Editor - Jonathan Mark - FlybyNews.com
January 21, 2008 - MLK * 911-Ballot * Edmonds Update * $ Crash

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler
did in Germany was "legal" and everything the
Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Why We Can't Wait, 1963

1) NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative Gets Boost by Dr. William Pepper
- - Martin Luther King, Jr. ties into the 911 TRUTH Movement
- - There Is No “War on Terror”
- - Oops Canada reverses torture stance and stands by hypocrisy
- - Cover-Up of Documents in Sibel Edmonds Nuke Secrets Case
2) Stock Plunge Worldwide Black Monday - US Markets open Tuesday
- - Breaking: Stock Markets in Europe Plunge 7 Percent
- - British shares in worst fall since Sept. 11 attacks

Editor’s Notes:

Naomi says it all..almost. She leaves out one crucial point, however--those "confessions" are also central to the government story on 9/11. She does hint about it, though (see boldface type below). Naomi, why the reticence on 9/11? Why keep playing that game? Don't write for Alexander Cockburn, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Justin Raimondo, or whomever. Just tell the truth. The official story of 9/11 is not based on evidence and this story is yet another proof of that fact. Alvin
_______________

Naomi Wolf
December 13, 2007

To judge from firsthand documents obtained by the ACLU through a FOIA lawsuit, we can guess what is probably on the missing CIA interrogation tapes -- as well as understand why those implicated are spinning so hard to pretend the tapes do not document a series of evident crimes.

...What we are likely to see if the tapes documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri are ever recovered is that the "confessions" of the prisoners upon which the White House has built its entire case for subverting the Constitution and suspending civil liberties in this country was obtained through methods such as electrocution, beating to the point of organ failure, hanging prisoners from the wrists from a ceiling, suffocation, and threats against family members ("I am going to find your mother and I am going to fuck her" is one direct quote from a US interrogator). On the missing tapes, we would likely see responses from the prisoners that would be obvious to us as confessions to anything at all in order to end the violence. In other words, if we could witness the drama of manufacturing by torture the many violently coerced "confessions" upon which the whole house of cards of this White House and its hyped "war on terror" rests, it would likely cause us to reopen every investigation, including the most serious ones (remember, even the 9/11 committee did not receive copies of the tapes); shut down the corrupt, Stalinesque Military Commissions System; turn over prisoners, the guilty and the innocent, into a working, accountable justice system operating in accordance with American values; and direct our legal scrutiny to the torturers themselves -- right up to the office of the Vice President and the President if that is where the investigations would lead.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

CIA admits it destroyed tapes of interrogations

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

"The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request," said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Were these assurances given under oath?

More:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/06/america/06cia.php

See also:

Hayden Says CIA Videotapes Destroyed

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071206/D8TC7EAG0.html

These are the new rules after 911. AmeriKA under George W. Bush.

I prefer the America Keith Olbermann talks about. What are your thoughts / comments on this?

How far does 911 especially when it is a FALSE-FLAG INSIDE JOB change America and her Constitution and her respect for human rights, international law and justice?

Where do good people draw the line? Pls review and critique.

KEITH OLBERMANN SPECIAL COMMENT ON WATERBOARDING NOV 5, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arWJ358tZgU

From tonight's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:
(excuse the poor quality)

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/v/90B-Ii4lz3Q

This is where your focus should be:

Source: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20070806_9_11_suspect_says_CIA_t...

9/11 suspect says CIA tortured him

By Josh White and Julie Tate

Washington Post

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was subjected to the CIA's harshest interrogation methods while he was held in secret prisons around the world for more than three years, part of an interrogation regimen that the International Committee of the Red Cross has called "tantamount to torture," according to an article published on the New Yorker magazine's Web site yesterday.
In a 12-page article released Saturday, reporter Jane Mayer analyzes the development of the CIA's secret interrogation techniques and writes that a confidential Red Cross report to the U.S. government details Mohammed's assertions that he was tortured by the CIA.

Much of the talk at 911blogger lately has moved away from compiling evidence regarding government complicity with 9/11 and toward questions about activism. What next? many are saying.

I believe, and have stated, that 9/11 Truth has two years before the door of opportunity closes. I do not believe the Democrats will push for a 9/11 investigation. I do believe, however, that there are other ways to elicit an investigation. This news item suggested one of them:

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuses

"New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques."

The 9/11 Commission never interviewed KSM, nor his interrogators, and could not corroborate his alleged testimony. Now Cheney admits KSM was tortured. How reliable is most of the info in chapters 5 and 7 of the 9/11 Commission Report?

Cheney Admits Water Torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Scott Hennen: And terrorist interrogations and that debate is another example. And I've had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?

The Vice President: I do agree. And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth, we've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/15849585.htm

MIDEAST | Israelis have experience in interrogation issues now facing U.S.
Fighting terror with torture
As Bush determines what is acceptable, Israel’s decisions offer insight.
By DION NISSENBAUM
McClatchy Newspapers

DION NISSENBAUM | MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
Mohammed Barghouthi, a Palestinian Authority official interrogated by Israel for several weeks last summer, demonstrates the position he was held in during questioning.

JERUSALEM | Long before the Bush administration launched its war on terrorism, opened secret detention centers or debated the wisdom of harsh interrogation techniques, Israel wrestled with similar questions about protecting itself.

President Bush soon must prepare an executive order that will outline what methods the CIA can use under a law signed last week. Backers of the law contend that their measure will prevent the use of the most contentious methods, such as “water-boarding.” But the law gives the president broad discretion to decide what tactics to approve, and Israel’s experience could provide guidance.

Since Israel’s Supreme Court curbed the use of extreme techniques in 1999, human rights studies suggest that interrogators are relying more on psychological tricks, informants and electronic surveillance to solicit information.

http://www.current.tv/pods/supernews/PD04527

Star-Spangled Terror
// 10.16.2006

An eerie Halloween night at the White House as Cheney demonstrates the effectiveness of waterboarding and the ghosts of Presidents past show up to sing...

Terror Bills days Bush can "interpret the meaning and Application" of International Standards for prisoner treatment - Seems fair enough to me US Army CIA
.. cartoon by Latuffe 2006

This cartoon says it better with one image than I could say with hundreds of words.

two honest articles about US torture plans:

http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/092906/092906s.htm

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9740

Whacko christian is a 911 truther.

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=111593&ran=56921

Chomsky news:

Chomsky Addresses Crisis in Middle EastAlive and Well, Professor Emeritus
Speaks to Packed Audience in Kirsch Auditorium

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V126/N41/41chomsky.html

Allegations of severe torture have regularly emerged from Iraq

Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN's chief anti-torture expert says.

Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue "often bear signs of severe torture", said the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq in a report.

The wounds confirmed reports given by refugees from Iraq, Mr Nowak said.

He told journalists at a briefing in Geneva that he had yet to visit Iraq, but he was able to base his information on autopsies and interviews with Iraqis in neighbouring Jordan.