waterboarding

(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

Amnesty International: US must begin criminal investigation of torture following Bush admission

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGPRE201011101946&lang=e#

PRESS RELEASE
November, 10 2010

Amnesty International today urged a criminal investigation into the role of former US President George W. Bush and other officials in the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" against detainees held in secret US custody after the former president admitted authorizing their use.

In his memoirs, published yesterday, and in an interview on NBC News broadcast on 8 November 2010, the former President confirmed his personal involvement in authorising "water-boarding" and other techniques against "high value detainees".

"Under international law, the former President's admission to having authorized acts that amount to torture are enough to trigger the USA's obligations to investigate his admissions and if substantiated, to prosecute him," said Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International.

"His admissions also highlight once again the absence of accountability for the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance committed by the USA."

US hid waterboarding of 9/11 accused, says former MI5 chief

US hid waterboarding of 9/11 accused, says former MI5 chief
MI5 had no idea that the architect of the September 11 attacks had been waterboarded when the Americans passed them intelligence from his interrogation, the former head of the Security Service has said.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Published: 7:05AM GMT 10 Mar 2010

Baroness Manningham-Buller said she only discovered that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times when the US Justice Department released a memo last year and it was reported in the press.

She also said that MI5 had protested to the Americans about their treatment of detainees at one stage but declined to go into details.

Speaking during a question and answer session following a lecture at the House of Lords, she also insisted that torture could never be justified even if it saved lives.

It is unclear whether the information passed to the British was acquired through torture but makes clear that MI5 either did not ask or was not told how prisoners were being treated by the Americans.

How a Detainee Became An Asset

How a Detainee Became An Asset
Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

By Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 29, 2009

After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."

In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.

Al Qaeda suspect waterboarded before "legal authorization"


"US 'waterboarding' row rekindled"
BBC, July 13, 2009

Fresh claims have emerged that a key al-Qaeda suspect was waterboarded before the Bush government lawyers issued written authorisation to do so.

A former CIA agent has told the BBC that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded by the CIA in May or June 2002.

The date was provided by former CIA agent John Kiriakou. The practice was sanctioned in written memos by Bush administration lawyers in August 2002.

The CIA says waterboarding did not take place before August 2002.

Officials have refused to tell the BBC when it did occur.

Legal memos

Mr Kiriakou led the CIA team that captured Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan on 28 March 2002, and was the first to speak to the badly injured captive before returning to the US.

There he monitored the internal communications that came in (cable traffic) on Abu Zubaydah's interrogation at a secret CIA prison from the organisation's headquarters in Virginia.

Ex-FBI agent [Ali Soufan]: Waterboarding produced ‘no actionable intel’

C-Span video at article link below; for more info on FBI Agent Ali Soufan and how he figures into the 9/11 investigation, see his profile: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=ali_soufan_1

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/13/ex-fbi-agent-no-actionable-intelligence-from-enhanced-interrogations/
Ex-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced ‘no actionable intel’ BY DAVID EDWARDS

Published: May 13, 2009
Updated 11 hours ago

A former FBI agent who interrogated suspected terrorists told a Senate panel Wednesday that no actionable intelligence was gained from “enhanced interrogations” such as waterboarding.

“I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Ali Soufan who worked for the FBI from 1997 to 2005. “These techniques, from an operational perspective, are slow, ineffective, unreliable, and harmed our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”

Boehner posts terrifying video with 9/11 images, implied support of torture

From Rawstory: "House Minority Leader John Boehner has posted an alarming new video on his YouTube page that includes images of the Pentagon burning on Sept. 11, 2009, and implications that the Congressman, or those who created the video, support torture techniques used on terror war prisoners during the Bush administration."

Note that Sept. 11, 2009 should have read Sept. 11, 2001, but I've quoted Rawstory verbatim, errors included. They or may not correct it soon.

A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney?

mainstream mention of Cheney's

A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney?

www.harpers.org/#hbc-90003846

By Scott Horton

Gene Burns is one of the nation's most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune.

Here's a transcript of his remarks:

"I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.

Cages of Conquest: Part Two of Crusade of Surge and Siege

Read Part One: http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-one-of.html

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.

Pentagon charges Sept. 11 suspects

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_sept_11_trial

Pentagon charges Sept. 11 suspects

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer

The Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, it was announced Monday. Officials said they'll seek the death penalty in what would be the first trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system.

"These charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States of America," Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunal system, told reporters. He added that the charges have been sworn "against six individuals alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks" which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 people.

Hartmann said the six include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attacks in which hijacked planes were flown into buildings in New York and Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed in the fields of western Pennsylvania.

Bank Failure * Torture * Sibel * Shell Game

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:

MSNBC: Key 9/11 Commission Report Testimony Based on Torture

(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.

(Political Cartoon) Super News: Star-Spangled Terror

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...

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