Proof Bush Personally Ordered Torture, Rumsfeld Liked To Watch It

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Tuesday October 23, 2007 · 2:54 PM PDT

2007/10/23 · 14:54

In a new book based primarily on government documents released under FOIA law, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys reveal many disgusting facts not known before by the public. The Book " Administration of Torture" comes from over 100,000 documents. The documents disclose not only torture but many deaths never publically reported.

"The documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes," write Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. "Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating 'stress positions,' held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months."

Please notice this says Guantanamo, not Abu Ghraib. We have ALWAYS been told this was never done at Gitmo.

OneCrankyDom

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Wednesday October 17, 2007 · 1:57 PM PDT

2007/10/17 · 13:57

I'm not sure how I am going to spent this bonus of income. The nnews is now public so I except all the people I know calling hoping to get a piece. How big a increase will I be getting to offset the rising prices of gas, energy, food, medicines, medical costs, and every freaking thing else that has gone up by 30 or 40% in the last yr? Would you believe I'm going to the get whopping amount of $24.00 ?

The typical retiree will face the challenge of using the extra $24 to cover higher costs for everything from gasoline and food to medical care.

What will that $24.00 pay for ? 1/3 of a tank of gas allowing me to go appox 100 miles. It could be used to pay for a 1/7 of my month prescriptions, or 8lbs of hamburger. It will pay 1/33 of my monthly rent, but only for one month. Such extravagance is unheard of in this day and age of supporting the entire country 0f Iraq. I sure hope they can share it.http://hosted.ap.org/...

OneCrankyDom

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Thursday October 11, 2007 · 7:15 PM PDT

2007/10/11 · 19:15

I had just read this story when I switched over to the NYTimes and it was there also. It appears that rather than lose our top soldiers to Blackwater and their ilk, we have been paying out some damn hefty bonus.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has paid more than $100 million in bonuses to veteran Green Berets and Navy SEALs, reversing the flow of top commandos to the corporate world where security companies such as Blackwater USA are offering big salaries...

Overall, more than 1,200 of the military's most specialized personnel near or already eligible for retirement have opted for payments of up to $150,000 in return for staying in uniform several more years. Military offers millions in bonuses to retain elite commandos

I have the breakdown on the flip.

OneCrankyDom

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Tuesday October 09, 2007 · 5:23 PM PDT

2007/10/09 · 17:23

Rep. Henry Waxman is hot on the trail of more fraud surrounding the US Embassy in Iraq. He has obtained documents showing not only fraud, but bribery and some of the shoddiest building practices I have never seen and I was in the construction field for over 20 yrs. While Waxman didn't come right out and say it, he seems to feel members of the State Dept. also may have committed perjury before his committee. That is a hell of a lot to cram in my first paragraph, and you will need to read the entire letter he sent to Rice to understand it all.

I could post the entire letter but it would take up way too much space. I will quote a few important points and send you over to read all the nasty details. I will only post one quote before the break because it says so much, then if you are interested follow after the break.

● "[T]he entire installation is not acceptable."

OneCrankyDom

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Monday October 08, 2007 · 8:24 AM PDT

2007/10/08 · 08:24

Anyone who listens to CSpan, Fox, or any number of talk shows that allow call-ins know by now what a hot button Sandy Berger is for those on the right. For years now the Right has used Berger as a propaganda issue against the Clintons and the Left.

The News that Hillary taken on Berger to do what he used to do for the Kerry campaign before he was fired over the scandal is going to do more to outrage the Rights base than any other thing she could of done.(The facts about if Sandy if has been hired or is working unpaid and informally are in question, fyi)

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers

OneCrankyDom

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Saturday October 06, 2007 · 10:00 PM PDT

2007/10/06 · 22:00

While some of those from our Progressive Caucus in the House have plans to try and stop Immunity, it appears Dems in the Senate have other plans. 4 plans to be exact. They are floating 4 different ideas, but the problem is the Telecoms walk away scot-free in every one of them.

Four possibilities are being discussed, said a Senate aide familiar with the discussions. The broadest would be blanket immunity, which would immunize anyone, including government officials, who had anything to do with any surveillance program. That is the approach the government favors and is strongly opposed by civil liberties advocates.

The second is targeted immunity, in which companies that can prove they were acting in good faith would be granted immunity from prosecution. The third is substitution, in which the government would replace the defendant in the lawsuit. Finally, there is indemnification. The cases would proceed through the court system, and if there were financial penalties, the government would assume them, the aide said.

OneCrankyDom

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Friday October 05, 2007 · 9:26 AM PDT

2007/10/05 · 09:26

One of the snipers charged with placing "bait" out to draw Iraqis into their killzone is quoted as saying

"If you've never been outside the wire, you really have no basis -- you don't have a basis to judge what I do or what I don't do. You've never been in a life-or-death situation, where you've had to count on the guy to your left and right,"Hand said.

"People who stay back here, in my opinion, are not mentally in the game. They've never been out there."

The problem is what happens "outside the wire" has become a freezone. Free from accountability for anything a Soldier does. We have seen over and over when brought up on charges for things like murder and rape, the punishment is a slap on the wrist if that. There is too pat a pattern not to believe the same thing that is happening in Washington, is happening in Iraq.

OneCrankyDom

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Wednesday October 03, 2007 · 8:57 PM PDT

2007/10/03 · 20:57

After Comey, after Goldsmith rescinded the Bybee Memo on Torture, after Congress passed laws barring torture, and many more denials by Bush, yet another secret opinion was written saying torture was ok, even when done to the extreme.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

OneCrankyDom

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Saturday September 29, 2007 · 11:09 PM PDT

2007/09/29 · 23:09

David Ignatius has a OpEd in the Washington Post about finding the middle ground when it comes to giving up our civil rights for safety from Terrorists. I found it deeply disturbing in tone. The reasoning alone that we should give up any Civil Rights is wrong to me. We have given up too much over the last 50 yrs or so already. This is what is being done way too often in the name of fear. When you read the numbers released over the last couple days that 100,000 Americans are killed a yr, and not a one by a foreign terrorist, it make me wonder why we are even having this debate. That is the basics of where I look at this from.

David starts the piece with a simple statement we can all agree with, it is also the setup. The sentence is, "When a nation can't solve the problems that concern its citizens, it's in trouble." We all know this country is in some deep trouble and GW Bush is responsible for most of it.
The interesting part of this piece is what David lets out that I had never heard before, but maybe you have. It's about the deal being made by the DC Elites behind closed doors. More on the flip.

OneCrankyDom

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Friday September 28, 2007 · 11:03 PM PDT

2007/09/28 · 23:03

Before anyone goes off on me for posting some CT crap, please read the whole story. While it is true some other sites have been following this story and have made claims, I waited until McClatchy and Yahoo News ran the story to write about it. Two reputable News Sites. First the basics.

MEXICO CITY — U.S. authorities are assisting the Mexican government in the investigation of an American business jet that crashed near Cancun this week with four tons of cocaine on board, officials said Thursday....

Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington, D.C., and Guantanamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantanamo. No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantanamo directly from the United States.

The jet, carrying the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery. Who owned drug plane that crashed in Mexico?

Does this get your attention ?

OneCrankyDom

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Thursday September 27, 2007 · 10:45 PM PDT

2007/09/27 · 22:45

The AP is reporting they have been told that it took 9 hours to set up a tap on those insurgents they think kidnapped 3 of our Soldiers last Spring. A Unnamed source. It's a good spin as they go, but watch how many people buy this one. If you think the Patraeous Report kept us in Iraq, then you will see this save the Telcos and the Warrantless Wiretaps.Call me cynical.

Last spring, with insurgents apparently holding three American soldiers in Iraq, it took the U.S. government more than nine hours to begin emergency surveillance of some of the kidnappers' electronic communications.

The bulk of that time was spent on internal legal deliberations by Bush administration lawyers and intelligence officials,

Can you feel it coming ? Bendover anyone who thought we might of stopped the madness, here it comes.

OneCrankyDom

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Tuesday September 25, 2007 · 10:31 PM PDT

2007/09/25 · 22:31

It appears the Sunni's in Iraq have decided they like Gen. Petreaous's tactic. So much so they have adopted it. Just to make sure no one misses their change they have what Tahseen al-Sheikhly, from the Minister of Interior says is a message.

"The main reason behind all these attacks are the signs of improvement of the security situation mentioned in the Crocker-Petraeus report," said Tahseen al-Sheikhly, the Iraqi spokesman for the security plan, in a reference to the recent Congressional testimony of General Petraeus and the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker. "The terrorist groups are just trying to say to the world that the (Petreaous) report did not reflect the reality of the security situation in Iraq."

How they delivered this message is being seen out front as the title of the WaPo makes clear. Sunni Insurgents in New Campaign to Kill Officials

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