This diary is going to end what has turned into a three-part (Part I and II) look into how Bush/Cheney pulled from historical precedents, in addition to people from earlier administrations who were involved in numerous scandals and illegal activities, to further their own goals.
With that, follow me for the final look at historical precedents...
I'm going to start off this final diary by taking a look back at WWII and Pearl Harbor from my first diary, which having been rescued (thanks Rangers!), generated more comments. I want to note that there are some who want to scream "conspiracy theory" during this series and I stated that I would, to the best of my ability with the information available to us, defend myself from this type of charge.
In comments from my Part I, there seems to be some confusion whether or not the United States had broken the Japanese codes at all. I can present to you the information available; it is up to the reader to decide the veracity of it.
First, we have John Toland, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, who wrote, "Infamy; Pearl Harbor and it's Aftermath", which was published in 1983. Mr. Toland wrote in his book:
On 6 December 1941 at a White House dinner Roosevelt was given the first thirteen parts of a fifteen part decoded Japanese diplomatic declaration of war and said, "This means War." (Toland 318)
Later that night, Roosevelt along with top advisor Harry Hopkins, Henry Stimson, George Marshall, Secretary of the Navy Knox, with aides John McCrea and Frank Beatty deliberately sat through the night waiting for the Japanese to strike Pearl Harbor. (Toland 320)
In Mr. Stinnett's book, "The Day of Deceit", he references actual decoded Japanese messages he received from the Navy in response to his FOIA requests.
Even some of those who were not wholly convinced by the information Stinnett provides in his book do not argue that the United States had broken the codes. From the AFPN site:
At the University of California, Berkeley, History Professor Anthony Adamthwaite takes a more neutral stand. "There really isn't enough evidence to say if the Roosevelt Administration knew of an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor," Adamthwaite said.
"No doubt there was monitoring of Japanese transmissions going on - but electronic intelligence was quite new at that time. Now we have the leisure to analyze this data," he said. "But at that time - there was a tremendous amount of data coming in and the question was - who read the intercepted signals?"
"I don't think the evidential chain is strong enough to reach the conclusion that the White House let the attack happen," he said. "You have to realize - for Japan to attack an American base so far way - that would seem like a crazy thing to do from the American point of view."
One critic, however, Mr. David Kahn, claimed that there were no messages decoded at all:
David Kahn, author of a definitive book on U.S. code-breaking, leveled a scathing attack on Stinnett's code research in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.
The operating Pearl Harbor attack story long has been that the Japanese Navy task force, commanded by Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, kept strict radio silence as the fleet crossed the Northern Pacific en route to Pearl. That's what really happened, Kahn said. No wonder.
"Central to the surprise [attack] was the radio silence of the strike force," Kahn says. "The Japanese commanders and radio operators alike, say unanimously they never transmitted any messages."
He adds that the Japanese code at that time, labeled JN 25, by the United States, had not been cracked, and U.S. intelligence summaries produced in Hawaii stated there was no information on submarines or carriers.
Now it's Stinnett who is scoffing.
Sitting in his basement office in his house near Lake Merritt, he pulls out a sheaf of photocopied message intercepts from the days and hours before the Pearl Harbor attack. All were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in May of this year.
The intercepts show that American radio operators in Hawaii, Corregidor in the Philippines and near Half Moon Bay here in the Bay Area tracked the Japanese fleet before the Pearl Harbor attack. The information went to Washington - but it never reached the two key commanders in Hawaii, Stinnett said.
He also produces a communiqué from the listening station on Corregidor: "We are redoing enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy," the station commander wrote Washington on Nov. 16, 1941.
In 1995, Congress investigated the actions taken at, and that led up to, Pearl Harbor. That report found (report no longer available to be found on the internet - the below was transcribed from the report when it was still available):
`the evidence of the handling of [the intercepted Japanese] messages in Washington reveals some ineptitude, some unwarranted assumptions and mis-estimations, limited coordination, ambiguous language and lack of clarification and follow-up at higher levels.'
The evidence is very clear, despite Mr. Kahn's criticism, and the criticism of some commenters; the United States had, in fact, broken the Japanese codes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It has not been proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Franklin D. Roosevelt had information of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, nor, have I made that claim. In Part I, I claimed that it was clear FDR lied to America because he deliberately provoked Japan into committing an act of war against the United States. To support that claim, I cited the 8-point memo authored by Navy analyst McCollum on how the FDR could force Japan into war with the U.S., which was implemented, and did, in fact, goad Japan into striking the United States.
With that now behind us, I am going to continue with the historical precedents used by Bush/Cheney.
- Intelligence failures
While some will surely call this coincidence and others will surely scream "conspiracy theory" at the top of their lungs, I find the wording of the 1995 congressional report on the investigation of Pearl Harbor curious. I find it curious because I've seen it before -- in the 9/11 Commission's own report. I cite Chapter 11 for you:
Commenting on Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter found it "much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals.After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings."1 As time passes,more documents become available, and the bare facts of what happened become still clearer.Yet the picture of how those things happened becomes harder to reimagine, as that past world, with its preoccupations and uncertainty, recedes and the remaining memories of it become colored by what happened and what was written about it later.With that caution in mind, we asked ourselves, before we judged others, whether the insights that seem apparent now would really have been meaningful at the time,given the limits of what people then could reasonably have known or done. We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.
First, the reader should note that the 9/11 Commission, in writing their conclusion, went back to look at the investigation done on Pearl Harbor themselves.
Second, note the similarities between the two findings when they assign fault:
Pearl Harbor report - ineptitude, some unwarranted assumptions and mis-estimations, limited coordination, ambiguous language and lack of clarification and follow-up at higher levels.
9/11 Commission - imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.
Again, while some will undoubtedly be jumping up and down at this point, despite me having brought out nothing but factual evidence; the evidence of historical precedent speaks for itself.
- Torture
In Part II, I discussed the historical use of the term "enhanced interrogation" and how it tied into Nazi Germany. In this final diary, I'm going to look at torture itself.
Torture, the infliction of bodily pain or mental suffering either as punishment, to compel a person to confess to a crime or provide information, or to intimidate, coerce, discriminate against, or repress a person or group of people for political purposes. The methods of torture and the reasons for it have varied throughout history. The word torture comes from the Latin term tortus, which means "to twist."
The use of torture has a long and notorious history, from the days of the Roman Empire, to the beginnings of the Catholic church, throughout the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, to the Salem Witch Trials, even up to the present day.
In WWII, the Japanese used water to torture prisoners, but, we find the roots of it in the 14th century:
A turning point for waterboarding — in any form — came around 1800. As the Enlightenment swept across Europe, many countries banned the practice and people, in general, found it "morally repugnant," Peters says. Waterboarding moved underground, but did not disappear by any means. In fact, it has experienced something of a revival in the 20th century.
The interrogation method was used by the Japanese in World War II, by U.S. troops in the Philippines and by the French in Algeria. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rogue used waterboarding against its own people. The British used it against both Arabs and Jews in occupied Palestine in the 1930s. In the 1970s, it was widely used in Latin America, particularly under the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina (where it was known as "Asian torture.")
Details are hard to come by, since no government will openly acknowledge using the interrogation method. Over the years, the technique has been modified slightly. The Japanese, for instance, used teapots to hold the water, and cellophane is sometimes used instead of a cloth. But waterboarding has changed very little in the past 500 years. It still relies on the innate fear of drowning and suffocating to coerce confessions.
The one statement that is now no longer true is; "...since no government will openly acknowledge using the interrogation method."
CIA Director Acknowledges Waterboarding Use
The CIA has admitted to using the interrogation technique known as waterboarding at least three times after the 9/11 attacks. CIA Director Michael Hayden made the admission in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
CIA Director Michael Hayden: "Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees. It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on Nashiri. The CIA has not used waterboarding for almost five years. We used it against these three high-value detainees because of the circumstances of the time. Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent."
Despite denying its recent use, Hayden went on to urge lawmakers not to outlaw waterboarding, because he said it might be needed in the future. The CIA admitted late last year to destroying videotapes capturing the interrogations of two of the prisoners that Hayden mentioned—Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Hayden also claimed the CIA has practiced what he called "enhanced interrogation techniques" on one-third of the around 100 prisoners he says have been detained.
Michael Hayden admitted, in front of Congress, that the CIA had, in fact, used waterboarding and even named the victims. He went on to urge Congress not to outlaw the torture technique so they could use it again in the future.
It is established fact that the U.S. under Bush/Cheney not only used torture, but, went out of their way to be able to use torture under AG Gonzales:
The Formica report reviewed only three allegations of abuse by special operations forces, but found that Iraqi detainees were held for up to seven days at a time with their eyes taped shut in tiny box-like cells so small that they had to sit with their knees to their chests while loud music blared, and detainees were fed only bread and water for up to a week.
One of the detainees said he was kept inside his tiny cell for two days, another for five days, and the third for seven days. The one kept for seven days alleged, " before he was placed in the box his clothes were cut off. He said that while held in the box, his captors duct-taped his mouth and nose, making it hard for him to breath." He charged that water was thrown on him, that he was beaten, kicked and electrocuted.
Formica concluded that overall conditions "did not comport with the spirit of the principles set forth in the Geneva Conventions," but dismissed allegations that prisoners were physically abused or humiliated. The general recommended no disciplinary action against any U.S. special operations personnel.
Formica faulted "inadequate policy guidance" rather than "personal failure" for the mistreatment, and cited the dangerous environment in which Special Operations forces carried out their counterinsurgency missions. He said that, from his observations, none of the detainees seemed to be the worse for wear because of the treatment.
The Yoo memo's are now simply established fact.
- Secret prisons
It is established fact that the CIA has used secret prisons to hold prisoners, even moving them around to keep them from the oversight of the International Red Cross:
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The following is a list of persons believed to be in U.S. custody as "ghost detainees" -- detainees who are not given any legal rights or access to counsel, and who are likely not reported to or seen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The list is compiled from media reports, public statements by government officials, and from other information obtained by Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch does not consider this list to be complete: there are likely other "ghost detainees" held by the United States.
Under international law, enforced disappearances occur when persons are deprived of their liberty, and the detaining authority refuses to disclose their fate or whereabouts, or refuses to acknowledge their detention, which places the detainees outside the protection of the law. International treaties ratified by the United States prohibit incommunicado detention of persons in secret locations.
President Bush’s announcement this month that the CIA has emptied out its secret prisons has raised new questions about what has happened to dozens of Al Qaeda suspects who were believed to have been in US custody.
One of them is Aafia Siddiqui ’95, an MIT-educated Pakistani scientist and Roxbury mother of three who disappeared with her children in 2003. A newly declassified government document says Siddiqui married a top Al Qaeda operative who is among the 14 suspects moved by President Bush from a secret prison to Guantanamo Bay for trials.
But the document gave no further information on Siddiqui’s whereabouts.
Siddiqui’s mother said she believes her daughter was being held by the US military, and she traveled to the United States to search for information after reading Pakistani newspapers articles that said Siddiqui had been arrested in Pakistan and sent abroad in a private plane, said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a Marblehead lawyer and the family spokeswoman.
"Nobody knows where she is, but one has to wonder if she is one of these secret detainees," said Sharp.
Bush’s announcement of the transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo Bay was the first official confirmation that the CIA had secretly arrested suspected terrorists and held them in undisclosed places overseas.
A senior administration official briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity last week said that fewer than 100 detainees had been held in the CIA program and that all of them have been "turned over to the Department of Defense to be held as unlawful enemy combatants [at Guantanamo Bay], returned to their country of origin, or entered into a legal process to be held accountable for their crimes."
But human rights groups say the fate of dozens of detainees who were in CIA custody is still unknown.
The evidence here is clear; the Unites States, under Bush/Cheney, "disappeared" people. Does that too have historical precedent?
- The "disappeared" and the "murdered"
Yes. In fact, the United States runs a "school" where "graduates" of the "school" were directly involved in countries where people were "disappeared".
(CNN) -- The intruder waited in his hiding place for just the right moment -- soon after his targets had gone to bed. He then put his plan into operation.
Earlier that day in 1983, Vietnam veteran and priest Roy Bourgeois had walked unchallenged into Fort Benning, Georgia, wearing surplus military fatigues. He had climbed up a tree near a barracks used by Salvadoran soldiers training with the U.S. Army, waited until "lights out," then unleashed his guerrilla protest.
Bourgeois turned on his electronic "boom box" that blared into the night air a recording of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero calling on his nation's soldiers to stop killing their countrymen. Romero was later killed while conducting Mass in San Salvador. Of the three men accused in Romero's assassination, two were graduates of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA).
Notorious individuals who trained at SOA:
Former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, now serving an extended sentence in a U.S. prison on drug charges.
See "The Panama Deception" on how Manuel Noriega was an "asset" of the CIA, then helped to power in Panama, only to be ousted later during the "invasion" of Panama.
El Salvador's Roberto D'Aubuisson, who formed the death squads that killed Romero and thousands of others during the Salvadoran civil war.
Former Argentine President Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, accused of making thousands of people "disappear" during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s.
SOA officials said that out of thousands of soldiers the school has trained, only about 300 have been accused of human rights violations.
All of the above people cited were involved in humans rights abuses, murders, people "disappearing", and all were graduates of the School of the America's, which was subsequently renamed due to finding itself in the limelight to the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'.
We find historical precedent for "disappearing" people throughout history; Latin America, Russia, Germany (just to name a few). During Bush/Cheney, we too have "disappeared" people into secretly run prisons. As for murder?
- War crimes and secret U.S. Army team
That war crimes were committed during the Vietnam War isn't debatable; they were. The most well known case was My Lai. Lt. Calley was ultimately courtmartialed for his role at My Lai. Certainly we have heard the excuse that there were/are "bad apples" even in the face of evidence that individuals were instructed to commit the crimes.
Davis, who served in Iraq with the 372nd Military Police Company, a reserve unit based in Maryland, said he and other military police officers at Abu Ghraib were ill-trained to deal with conditions there and constantly pressured to obtain information from detainees.
"It was a city of lost souls," he said of the prison once used by Saddam Hussein's regime to torture and execute its foes. "It's a very dark, gloomy, dirty, dank place. Words can't describe it."
He said he and others had to deal with an alien world in which nothing was normal.
"That was the most extreme situation any military policeman had to endure," he said. "Under any other circumstances, I would have treated those guys (the detainees) with dignity and respect. A lot of things soldiers did there were out of character."
Yet, we know for a fact that the behavior at Abu Ghraib was encouraged by Command, and, Command got exactly what it wanted out of the soldiers.
Many people find it hard to believe that our government could sanction war crimes, but, how then do these people explain Tiger Force?
In 2003, the Toledo Blade broke the story of Tiger Force; a United States Army team who terrorized Vietnam for seven months during the Vietnam War.
The Blade's investigation began after the newspaper obtained 22 pages of classified Army records detailing atrocities by Tiger Force.
The records of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command were just the start.
Reporters reviewed volumes of research on the Vietnam War, finding no mention of the Army's investigation of the platoon's atrocities.
They inspected thousands of declassified records of the case from the National Archives in suburban Washington and obtained hundreds of additional classified documents of the case. They also interviewed dozens of former Tiger Force soldiers.
The Blade sent reporters Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss, as well as photographer Andy Morrison, to the Central Highlands of Vietnam, where they found witnesses to the atrocities.
Reporter Joe Mahr joined the team as the newspaper pieced together a story the U.S. Army never wanted told.
In fact, any investigation was whitewashed and swept under the rug -- relegating the story of Tiger Force to "conspiracy theory" status for decades. What was the mission of Tiger Force?
The platoon - a small, highly trained unit of 45 paratroopers created to spy on enemy forces - violently lost control between May and November, 1967.
A small force whose mission was to spy on enemy forces go on a seven month killing spree, yet, Army Command doesn't pull them out? A small force, whose mission entails stealth, are going village to village, killing everyone in their path, yet, the individuals in charge do nothing?
Among the newspaper's findings:
# Commanders knew about the platoon's atrocities in 1967, and in some cases, encouraged the soldiers to continue the violence.
# Two soldiers who tried to stop the atrocities were warned by their commanders to remain quiet before transferring to other units.
# The Army investigated 30 war-crime allegations against Tiger Force between February, 1971, and June, 1975, finding a total of 18 soldiers committed crimes, including murder and assault. But no one was ever charged.
# Six platoon soldiers suspected of war crimes - including an officer - were allowed to resign during the investigation, escaping military prosecution.
# The findings of the investigation were sent to the offices of the secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but no action was taken.
So, out of seven months of committing known violence that were chargeable as war crimes, the team was never pulled out and were even encouraged by Commanders to continue. When investigations were started, it was swept under the rug. That was, until:
Seven years after leaving Vietnam, James Barnett broke down.
Haunted by the killing of civilians, the former Tiger Force sergeant invited Army investigators to his home to offer a surprise confession.
He admitted to shooting a young, unarmed mother. He admitted to his platoon's cruel treatment of villagers.
He asked for immunity from prosecution, but in the end, he never needed the legal protection.
No one would.
Though the Army substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 Tiger Force soldiers committed in 1967 - with numerous eyewitnesses - no charges were filed.
An investigation that should have brought justice to the longest series of atrocities by a U.S. fighting unit in Vietnam reached the Pentagon and White House but never a court of law - or the American public.
Instead, the case was hidden in the Army's archives, and key suspects were allowed to continue their military careers.
In 2003 and 2004, the investigation was once again swept under the rug, by Donald Rumsfeld, when the Toledo Blade broke the Pulitzer-Prize winning story. It was the Nixon administration involved in the initial cover-up -- you know, the administration that included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney:
Summaries of the Tiger Force case were forwarded in 1973 to President Richard Nixon's White House and the offices of Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway, according to National Archives records.
How much did the Nixon administration know about Tiger Force?
White House kept tabs on investigation
Much is still unknown about the Tiger Force investigation.
Dozens of case records are missing from the National Archives, and the Army refuses to release its own reports, citing privacy rights of the former soldiers.
What is known is that summaries of the investigation were sent to the White House between 1971 and 1973, records show.
While President Nixon was in office, his chief counsel, John Dean, ordered the Army in May, 1971, to file weekly updates on the status of war-crime investigations - 10 cases including Tiger Force. By 1973, the reports were sent monthly.
A memo on March 2, 1973, gives a description of the case, with five suspects and other "unidentified members of Tiger Force" under investigation for crimes ranging from murder to body mutilation.
The same document was routed to the secretary of defense's office from the secretary of the Army's office.
But in June, 1973 - five months after the U.S. pullout - the Army stopped sending updates of cases to the White House.
A memo from Maj. Gen. DeWitt Smith to other Army officials noted the "news media and public interest in the subject have waned with the U.S. disengagement in Vietnam."
He went on to state the regular sending of reports "unnecessarily continues to highlight the problem monthly."
Mr. Dean, who left the White House in April, 1973, said in a recent interview he didn't recall the Tiger Force case but was not surprised the investigation was dropped. "The government doesn't like ugly stories," he said.
The answer is plenty and it was covered up by the Nixon government, records sealed, witnesses told by government investigators to remember nothing... all recorded, verified, investigated and reported by the Toledo Blade.
Once again, we see a familiar name pop up: John Negroponte. In this interview, Negroponte tells us his own whereabouts during Vietnam:
JOHN NEGROPONTE: Yes, indeed. I was on the National Security Council staff from September of 1970 until February of 1973 and during most of that time, I was in charge of the Vietnam office of the National Security Council staff, supporting Dr. Kissinger in his peace talks with the North Vietnamese.
There is little doubt that John Negroponte wouldn't have known or been briefed about Tiger Force since he was in charge of the Vietnam Office of the NSC during the exact time the updates of the case were being sent to the White House and political talks were underway.
Was Tiger Force a bunch of "bad apples" who got out of control, as well? If so, how do you explain the fact their actions were encouraged and left in the field for seven full months? Simply a "spy" team when they are gunning down civilians in villages, which would then spread like wildfire through the civilian populace exposing their team, just as the actions at Abu Ghraib spread through the Iraqi population long before anyone else knew?
And, if you think those questions raise your hackles, well... let's talk Operation Phoenix, long held by some as unable to be substantiated, which is only another case in point. The link provided is to Amazon.com, where you can buy the book, "Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account":
Stuart A. Herrington was an American intelligence advisor assigned to root out the enemy in the Hau Nghia province. His two-year mission to capture or kill Communist agents operating there was made all the more difficult by local officials who were reluctant to cooperate, villagers who were too scared to talk, and VC who would not go down without a fight. Herrington developed an unexpected but intense identification with the villagers in his jurisdiction–and learned the hard way that experiencing war was profoundly different from philosophizing about it in a seminar room. (emphasis mine)
So, at the very least we know there was an Operation Phoenix; but, what was it?
If you believe the book above, it was an operation to ferret out Communist spies in the North Vietnamese Army. Nothing more. Except to do that, they interrogated people. How did that work out? Well, if you believe the statement made to Congress by ex-CIA Bart Osborn, those didn't turn out all that well:
"I never knew in the course of all those operations any detainee to live through his interrogation," Bart Osborn, a former CIA agent, told Congress in 1971. "They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or . . . thrown out of helicopters."
So, do we find anything in Iraq today that may have had its roots in Vietnam? A Tiger Force or an Operation Phoenix? Who knows.
We know for a fact that John Negroponte was installed as Ambassador to Iraq in 2004, and, we know his history. We know for a fact Donald Rumsfeld, who helped to cover-up the Tiger Force investigation in 2003/2004, was a principle player in the Iraq invasion of 2003. We know that as early as 2002 that Bush/Cheney wanted to be able to torture and that the CIA was doing just that until it came to light. We also know that death squads did get formed in Iraq with bodies being found zip-cuffed and executed in buildings. These facts are all undeniable.
- Sealed records
I'm going to finish off this diary with how the government seals away records from the public, all the while, telling us little people that if we have nothing to hide, we shouldn't care if it spies upon us.
The rest of the sealed records regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy are to be released in 2017 - 54 years after the event. What will we the public finally learn? Who knows... the question remains, why were the files sealed to begin with?
As I have previously pointed out, some documents have been disclosed regarding Pearl Harbor, however, in researching his book, the Navy refused to release tens of documents. Mr. Stinnett has refiled to get those documents under FOIA request - this, even though, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred 61 years ago.
In the 2004 election, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell ordered all of the documents concerning the 2004 Ohio election to be sealed.
In 2002, Bush got more documents sealed:
The Bush administration asked a federal claims court on November 26 to seal documents relating to hundreds of cases of autism allegedly caused by a mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, used in childhood vaccines.
The government’s legal action comes on the heels of an insertion into the Homeland Security bill that protects Eli Lilly, the drug company giant that developed thimerosal, from lawsuits involving the additive. The bill removes all liability from the pharmaceutical industry and health officials for the injuries and death resulting from the preservative.
"With the cases sealed, Eli Lilly will move for a dismissal and all my cases are filed against Eli Lilly," Waters continued. "This will be a long battle against people who have all the resources and motivation. They control the pier-reviewed medical and scientific journals and all the research money. It will be a long and difficult fight."
Helen Thomas wrote regarding the executive order signed in November 2001:
WASHINGTON -- It's easy to see why President Bush wants to keep his administration's current secrets, especially in wartime.
But why is he trying to hide historic White House documents of the Reagan administration that former President Ronald Reagan agreed in writing to release to the public?
Reagan issued an order in 1989 that called for disclosure of most of his official papers 12 years after he left office. Until 1978 American presidents had complete control over the release of their internal communications.
But after Watergate and the struggle with President Richard Nixon over the release of his records and tape recordings, Congress passed the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which provided for the release to the public of presidential papers 12 years after the chief executive leaves office.
Reagan's records were supposed to be released in January, and historians were eagerly awaiting them. But because of delays ordered by White House counsel Albert R. Gonzales, researchers and the public may never get to see them.
Welcome to the handy excuse of "national security." It is being used to cover any past, current or future questionable government activities under a new order Bush has signed. The six-page document requires anyone seeking papers of past presidents and vice presidents to demonstrate a "specific need" for those papers before they can be produced. And any release then will be at the discretion of the sitting president -- even if a past president wants the information released. Bush's father was vice president under Reagan.
Amazingly, the current president's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, told reporters the aim of the order was to introduce an "orderly process" for releasing the documents. And Gonzalez said White House officials recognize "the importance, for historical reasons, of releasing as much information as we can." He even added that "there may be reasons that it's inappropriate or harmful to the country not to release certain information."
Yet the order is clearly protective of the president's father and officials who are back at the White House in top jobs after serving in the Bush I administration between 1989 and 1993.
The Guardian wrote on this executive order signed by Bush:
The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain.
Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now working for Mr Bush.
They include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, the budget director, Mitch Daniels Jr, and the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card.
The White House defended the order as establishing a procedure for implementing the 1978 Act.
A White House official said: "History has shown that former presidents release virtually all of their documents and this executive order won't stand in the way of that."
However the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain secret in perpetuity.
But, remember, we are all conspiracy theorists because the information is sealed away from us... oh wait... it's a fact that the facts are sealed away so... well... anyway...
So, in finishing up what has turned out to be a three-part research-fest, I can safely conclude that unless people get off their duffs and start realizing that the same people, in scandal after scandal, administration after administration, continue to come back to haunt us. That the same abuses we've seen throughout history have, and will continue to, come back to haunt us over and over. And, until either we the people say "enough", or, Congress does its job (which we know will not happen), you can expect that whether it be 12 years or 30 years, your children and grandchildren will sit here saying the same thing:
"look mom, it's the Goodling person AGAIN! Wasn't she involved in some scandal way back in 2006 or 2007???
UPDATE:
I'm sorry... I missed one: reeducation camps.
Off the wire:
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Saturday it has released more than 10,000 detainees in Iraq so far this year more than in all of 2007 as it continues to try phase out its running of Iraqi prisons.
The military said about 21,000 people remained in custody, and it is currently releasing about 45 detainees and detaining 30 a day.
The United States wants to transfer the detainees to Iraqi control. Reaching that goal has been slowed partly by the lack of adequate Iraqi prison space and trained guards. More than 8,900 people were released from detention last year.
The U.S. military separated moderate detainees from extremists and instituted religious, educational and vocational programs over the past year to try to rehabilitate less dangerous prisoners. It also increased releases under amnesty programs.
"Due to changes in the conduct of detainee operations and programs to prepare detainees for reintegration into society, we have not only gone over 10,000 releases, but our re-internment rate is less than 1 percent," said Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
America is conducting "religious rehabilitation" on prisoners? Where have I heard that before?
Reeducation camp (trại học tập cải tạo) is the official name given to the prison camps operated by the government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In such "reeducation camps", the government imprisoned several hundred thousand former military officers and government workers from the former South Vietnam. Reeducation as it was implemented in Vietnam was both a means of revenge and a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination which developed for several years in the North and was extended to the South following the 1975 North Vietnam takeover.
The term 'reeducation camp' is also used to refer to prison camps operated by the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, or to the laogai and laojiao camps currently operated by the Chinese government. The theory underlying such camps is the Maoist theory of reforming anti-revolutionaries into socialist citizens by reeducation through labor.
Congratulations George... we are now acting like Communists and "reeducating" people.