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3211
3DHS / Re: GOP Imploding As More and More Details Emerge
« on: October 01, 2006, 02:14:53 PM »
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01foley.html?hp&ex=1159761600&en=72f54d420adcb9e2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

' At the Justice Department, an official said that no investigation was under way but that the agency had “real interest” in examining the circumstances to see if any crimes were committed.

Several of Mr. Foley’s former colleagues demanded a criminal inquiry.

Representative Robert E. Cramer, an Alabama Democrat who was co-chairman with Mr. Foley of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, condemned Mr. Foley’s actions as “shocking and disturbing.”

“Anyone, including Foley, involved in this type of behavior should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Mr. Cramer said.'

3212
3DHS / Re: GOP Imploding As More and More Details Emerge
« on: October 01, 2006, 02:01:50 PM »
And what is with this coverup nonsense.

 Looking at the timeline provided by thinkprogress,  as GOP leadership became knowledeable of the transgressions,  they handled it.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
September 30, 2006
Hastert Knew While Foley Flew

Well, well, well. It appears the Republicans actually can make the Foley controversy worse. As if it wasn't bad enough that John Boehner knew about Foley's track record of sexual harassment of his underage pages, now it turns out that Speaker Denny Hastert lied about what he knew and when he knew it. Roll Call reports that Thomas Reynolds (R-NY), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Hastert about Foley's predatory actions in late winter or early spring of this year:

    National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) issued a statement Saturday in which he said that he had informed Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) of allegations of improper contacts between then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and at least one former male page, contradicting earlier statements from Hastert.'

    GOP sources said Reynolds told Hastert earlier in 2006, shortly after the February GOP leadership elections. Hastert's response to Reynolds' warning remains unclear.

    Hastert's staff insisted Friday night that he was not told of the Foley allegations and are scrambling to respond to Reynolds' statement.

I cannot tell CQ readers how disgusted I am with Speaker Hastert. Reynolds is no fringe nutcase; he's the man Hastert trusted to run the midterm re-elections of the Republican caucus. He has no reason to lie, but Hastert apparently did. This also calls into question Boehner's earlier reversal, when he denied saying that he informed Hastert after Hastert denied knowing of Foley's activities.

Hastert should have been a man from the beginning and admit that he knew about Foley. Now he has destroyed any credibility left in his Speakership, and he has only compounded the embarrassment for the GOP caucus. Foley's actions reflect on Foley alone, but thanks to Hastert and perhaps Boehner, the aftermath will reflect on all Republicans in the House.

Republicans have to act swiftly to remove the stench of Foleygate from the party. They need to demand the resignation of Hastert as Speaker, as well as Boehner as Majority Leader if he lied to protect Hastert. Allowing Foley off the hook was a mistake in judgment, but this is a betrayal of those who trusted Hastert to lead the House with dignity, honesty, and integrity.

[]
Posted by Captain Ed at September 30, 2006 07:20 PM
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008180.php

3213
3DHS / Rice gave brush-off to attack warning
« on: October 01, 2006, 01:06:50 PM »
 

State of Denial: Two months before 9/11, Rice gave the 'brush-off' to 'impending terrorist attack' warning

Ron Brynaert
Published: Saturday September 30, 2006



(Update: Former Counsel to the 9/11 Commission suggests that "[v]ery possibly, someone committed a crime" by engaging in a "cover-up" of the warning)

According to a new book written by Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, two months before the September 11 attacks, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the "brush-off" to an "impending terrorist attack" warning by former C.I.A. director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism coordinator.

An article in Friday's New York Times first mentioned the warning, and a front page book review of Woodward's State of Denial in Saturday's edition provides more details.

"On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack," David E. Sanger reported on Friday. "But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously."

Sanger also reported that Tenet told Woodward that before 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was "impeding" efforts to catch Osama bin Laden.

"Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden," wrote Sanger. "Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda."

Saturday's New York Times review claims that in Woodward's book, Rice "is depicted as a presidential enabler, ineffectual at her job of coordinating interagency strategy and planning."

"For instance, Mr. Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice to warn her of mounting intelligence about an impending terrorist attack, but came away feeling they’d been given 'the brush-off' — a revealing encounter, given Ms. Rice’s recent comments, rebutting former President Bill Clinton’s allegations that the Bush administration had failed to pursue counterterrorism measures aggressively before 9/11," writes Michiko Kakutani.

Saturday's Washington Post has more details regarding the meeting.

"The book also reports that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, grew so concerned in the summer of 2001 about a possible al-Qaeda attack that they drove straight to the White House to get high-level attention," Peter Baker reports for the Post.

"Tenet called Rice, then the national security adviser, from his car to ask to see her, in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression. But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported," the article continues. "Rice, they thought, did not seem to feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for an ongoing policy review."

Excerpts from Post article:
#

The report of such a meeting takes on heightened importance after former president Bill Clinton said this week that the Bush team did not do enough to try to kill Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said her husband would have paid more attention to warnings of a possible attack than Bush did. Rice fired back on behalf of the current president, saying the Bush administration "was at least as aggressive" in eight months as President Clinton had been in eight years.

The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black "felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about."

Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. "We didn't know about the meeting itself," she said. "I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it."

White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, responding on behalf of Rice, said Tenet and Black had never publicly expressed any frustration with her response.

"This is the first time these thoughts and feelings associated with that meeting have been expressed," McCormack said. "People are free to revise and extend their remarks, but that is certainly not the story that was told to the 9/11 commission."
#

FULL POST ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
'This is going to be the big one'

Another Post article slated for Sunday's edition provides even more details.

"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders, called "findings," that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden," the uncredited Post article reports. "Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an 'out of cycle' session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention."

J. Cofer Black later said that "[t]he only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

Excerpts from Sunday's Post article:
#

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? Perhaps, he said, it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.

Tenet had the National Security Agency review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

....

Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.
#

An "editor's note" appended to the end of the article notes that "[h]ow much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's 'neocons' and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks."

"Rice responded in an interview that 'what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,'" the editor's note continues.

FULL SUNDAY WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
'Very possibly, someone committed a crime'

Saturday night at Think Progress, former Counsel to the 9/11 Commission Peter Rundlet guest-blogged a post called "Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission."

"Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US,'" Rundlet blogs. "And most Americans have also heard of the so-called 'Phoenix Memo' that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the 'possibility of a coordinated effort' by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools."

But Rundlet writes that a "mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame" him when he read about Tenet's "special surprise visit" to see Rice in July of 2001.

"If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know," writes Rundlet.

"Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation — questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the Commission been told about this significant meeting," adds Rundlet. "Suspiciously, the Commissioners and the staff investigating the administration’s actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting."

Rundlet suggests that the "withholding of information" from the Commission may constitute a crime, and scoffs at Cofer's excuse in Woodward's book.

"Was it covered up?" asks Rundlet. "It is hard to come to a different conclusion."

"If one could suspend disbelief to accept that all three officials forgot about the meeting when they were interviewed, then one possibility is that the memory of one of them was later jogged by notes or documents that describe the meeting," Rundlet continues. "If such documents exist, the 9/11 Commission should have seen them."

Rundlet quotes a line from Woodward's book which he says shows how "Black exonerates them all."

"Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about," wrote Woodward in the third volume of Bush at War.

"The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd," writes Rundlet. "At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage."

"Very possibly, someone committed a crime," Rundlet concludes. "And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot."

RUNDLET'S ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/State_of_Denial_Two_months_before_0930.html

3214
3DHS / Re: Gen. Odom
« on: September 30, 2006, 08:51:49 PM »
I think survival there, stemming the bleeding, is the point now of the Iraq war.  I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I think based on what I have read.  We are sending troops out for the 4th tour of duty;  wounded come home, equipment is getting used and not replaced....This is not any kind of strategy, it's simply survival.   If anyone sees something different please tell me.
We are still there.  Is that the whole point?  Just to show we aren't gonna go no matter what?  Well, it's not working.  We are depleting our armed forces.  It is very, very dangerous to do that. 

3215
3DHS / Re: GOP Imploding As More and More Details Emerge
« on: September 30, 2006, 07:46:54 PM »
Hastert was  told months ago about all this, and still did nothing?
WASHINGTON - Rep. Thomas Reynolds (news, bio, voting record), head of the House Republican election effort, said he told Speaker
Dennis Hastert after learning a fellow GOP lawmaker sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060930/ap_on_go_co/foley_reynolds_2

3216
3DHS / Widespread political illiteracy
« on: September 30, 2006, 05:50:22 PM »

New study finds widespread political illiteracy

I have to admit that I’m kind of ambivalent about torture.  I know I should be against it and all, but I honestly believe that it has its uses.  For example, I sometimes think that everyone who advocates torture, and everyone who defends torture, and everyone who engages in torture should be subjected to a little torture themselves.  Just so they can see “both sides,” so to speak, and come to a fair and balanced conclusion about the pros and cons of torture.

But because I know my advocacy of a little bit of torture for torture advocates (except myself, of course) runs contrary to some of my country’s legal traditions, I was frankly stunned by the results of a new study conducted by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, “The Coming Crisis in Citizenship.” According to the ISI, only about one-third of American elected officials understand that torture and indefinite detention are not authorized by the Constitution, and only about one-third of our representatives understand the principle of “habeas corpus.” The ISI study is a dire warning to us all:

    The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions presents scientific evidence that, for the very first time, reveals how much American colleges and universities—including some of our most elite schools—add to, or subtract from, their graduates’ understanding of America’s history and fundamental institutions. Commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), the present study represents the culmination of a multiyear research process involving a team of professors experienced in the classroom, ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board, and the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy.

    In the fall of 2005, the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy (UConnDPP) was contracted by ISI to undertake the largest statistically valid survey ever conducted to determine what colleges and universities are teaching their students about America’s history and institutions. UConnDPP asked roughly 100 United States Senators from roughly 50 states across the country 60 multiple-choice questions in order to measure their knowledge in four subject areas: (1) American history; (2) government; (3) America and the world; and (4) the market economy. Taken together, senators’ answers to these questions provide a high-resolution image of the state of learning about America’s history and institutions throughout the nation. The results are far from encouraging. In fact, they constitute nothing less than a coming crisis in American citizenship.

    Perhaps the most remarkable finding of the study is that only one of every 55 Republican Senators, on average, has an adequate understanding of America’s fundamental principles and political institutions.  The finding is all the more remarkable when one considers that Senator George Allen (R.- Virginia), long known for his efforts to preserve Southern culture and heritage, sits on the ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board and yet was unable to answer a single multiple-choice question correctly with regard to civil liberties and American legal traditions.

    For the most part, Allen’s GOP colleagues fared no better.  Twenty-four of 55 Republican senators could not define “habeas corpus,” and seventeen believed that waterboarding was expressly permitted by the Eighth Amendment.  Most strikingly, fifty-two of the 55 answered “true” to the true/false question, “Article II of the Constitution allows the President to set aside all other provisions of the Constitution if he truly believes that he has been selected by God to hold the office of the Presidency.” Three maverick senators refused to answer the question directly.

    The ISI/ UConnDPP study also indicates that only three quarters of Senate Democrats are capable of identifying and explaining America’s civil traditions.  Of the remaining one quarter, seven answered “true” to the statement, “American civil liberties may be legitimately set aside in the event of really, really close electoral campaigns in which one fears being labelled ‘soft’ on terrorism.” Five others responded by writing in the margins of the question, “May I focus on the economy instead?”

    Intercollegiate Studies Institute National Civic Literacy Board member Michael Novak offered an explanation for the surprising findings.  “There is no doubt as to who is to blame for the sorry state of Americans’ understanding of their own history and traditions,” Novak said in a prepared statement.  “The fault lies with liberal college professors, secular humanists, and busybodies like Glenn Greenwald.  Detention orders will be drawn up within the next thirty days, with special attention to those states and Congressional districts in which there are really, really close electoral campaigns.”

I congratulate the Intercollegiate Studies Institute for an important and timely study, and I salute the National Civic Literacy Board for its efforts to educate all Americans about our history and fundamental institutions.

http://www.michaelberube.com/

3217
3DHS / Re: GOP Imploding As More and More Details Emerge
« on: September 30, 2006, 05:09:32 PM »
From NY Times:

 'Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, called late Friday for an investigation into who knew of the messages, and when. After Republicans criticized her move on the floor, the House referred the request to the ethics committee.'


                         Republicans criticized her move on the floor???
  WHO THE HELL IS THINKING OF THOSE KIDS? 
Did Hastert know, and not say anything? Did Boehner?   Too worried about balance of power in the House to give a damn about the pages?

From CNN:

   ' Boehner blocked a vote on a resolution offered by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that asked the House Ethics Committee to begin a preliminary investigation into Foley’s conduct and the GOP leadership’s “response” to it.

    The California Democrat’s resolution would have called for an investigation of “when the Republican leadership was notified and what corrective action was taken.”

    Instead, Boehner made a motion that the Foley matter be sent to the House Ethics Committee, which passed 409-0.

    Pelosi said her resolution forced the GOP leadership to send the matter to the Ethics Committee for a bipartisan investigation.'

Pelosi's resolution here: http://democraticleader.house.gov/press/releases.cfm?pressReleaseID=1844

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/30/foley.quits/index.html


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/us/30foley.html?hp&ex=1159675200&en=bde4e6c357e3c006&ei=5094&partner=homepage

3218
3DHS / Re: State of Denial
« on: September 30, 2006, 04:49:20 PM »
I'm just concerned that Rumsfeld will turn out to be an expendable diversion, that firing him will generate a lot of ink, provide yet another illusory "turning point" and postpose the final day of reckoning.  It'll give the Bush admin a few more months to pursue its murderous crimes.  The rot starts higher up than Rumsfeld.
___________________________________________

I've been thinking about the Founding Fathers.  What on earth would they make of this, and of our reaction?
I think they would say, "We put into place certain provisions to take care of something like this.  USE THEM.  Impeachment, to start with."    And if that didn't stop tyranny then we also have the 2nd Amendment.  Thank God every day for that.

3219
3DHS / Re: State of Denial
« on: September 30, 2006, 11:09:00 AM »
Just saw this on the first page of the article:

[.....]
The book details how Rumsfeld alienated key figures throughout the government and military: Rice complained that Rumsfeld would not return her telephone calls, forcing Bush to personally intervene. Rumsfeld rebuffed Card when he conveyed Bush's order to send National Guard troops to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina until hearing from the president himself. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, concluded that "Rumsfeld doesn't have any credibility anymore."

It also reports on ultimately futile attempts by civilian officials to persuade the Bush team to send more troops to Iraq and outlines secret government findings about escalating attacks on U.S. troops and dire forecasts about the war worsening over the next year rather than improving.
[............]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901593.html

3220
3DHS / Gen. Odom
« on: September 30, 2006, 09:16:42 AM »
Lt. General Odom Speaks Truth in Basement of U.S. Capitol. Dome Shakes.
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2006-09-26 16:23. Congress

Rep. Woolsey and 15 Other Congress Members Hold Hearing on Iraq
By David Swanson

Photos. -- Video at PoliticsTV.

Present (whole time or briefly, in order of arrival): Representatives Lee, Woolsey, Jackson-Lee, Rothman, Kilpatrick, Conyers, Hinchey, Owens, Kaptor, Hoyer (Hoyer!?, yes Hoyer, but he left quickly and did not get a chance to speak), Tierney, Farr, Watson, Delahunt, Shakowsky.

Corporate media present: apparently none.

Panel 1: Witnesses: Lt. Gen. William Odom, Dr. Paul Pillar.

live blogging below...

Pillar spoke first. He addressed the question of whether the disaster in Iraq is the result of poor execution or of the initial decision to go in at all. "Most of what we are seeing," he said, "and in particular the communal violence, is an almost inevitable result of having ousted the dictator Saddam Hussein."

Odom spoke second and addressed points of argumentation that he hears too often and is tired of hearing, including being told to ignore the past and focus on the future, to ignore how we got into Iraq and only talk about what to do from here on. Unless, Odom said, we discuss whose interests this war served, we cannot decide what to do. It served no U.S. interests. It served the interests of al Qaeda and Iran.

Al Qaeda recruiting declined in 2002, Odom said, but spiked after the U.S. invaded -- rose in Asia as well as in the Middle East. And Iraq is a great training ground for terrorists now. In addition, Odom said, a wedge is being driven between the United States and its European allies. "Osama understands that; we seem not to." The invasion of Iraq, Odom said, probably saved al Qaeda from ceasing to exist.

"Iran's clerics," Odom added, "must have been equally surprised and delighted." Terrorists can now train in Iraq and engage in violence in Israel.

The longer the war goes on, Odom stressed, the more it benefits al Qaeda and Iran.

During questions and answers Odom addressed the notion that U.S. troops need to do a better job of training Iraqi troops. If we do that, he said, the military will take over and install a dictatorship. The problem is not one of soldiers' skills, he said, but of political loyalties.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee said that the House is voting today on more money for the war, and that she will vote against it, but that she is glad to have successfully included in the bill a stipulation that no money can be spent on permanent U.S. bases in Iraq during 2007.

Odom again spoke about what would happen when/if the United States pulls out. The aftermath is going to be great, he said. It was going to be great the day you went in, but the longer you wait the greater it will be. And, Odom added to noticable effect, this will be the greatest strategic defeat in American history.

Congressman Rothman said that he had voted for the war because he had believed Bush and Rumsfeld, and that he now understood they had been lying. He said he saw the same approach now underway with Iran, and that he thought it was aimed at the coming U.S. elections.

Odom again spoke of leaving Iraq and said "It takes a very high level of ignorance to believe America can leave behind in Iraq any government that will not be anti-American."

But Odom argued that staying longer in Iraq would make things worse, whereas getting out would dramatically improve America's standing in the world. Our standing went up as soon as we got out of Vietnam, he said.

"Beating the war drums on Iran," Odom said, "is a disaster that will make this one look small."

Odom did not hesitate to criticise the Congress Members in the room. He recalled the day on which Republicans in Congress, in response to Rep. John Murtha's bill, proposed a bill to simply withdraw from Iraq. The Democrats scattered in fear, Odom said. He recommended that they should have introduced a bill to send 600,000 more troops to Iraq.

Congressman Conyers replied that the Republican bill did not allow amendments, so the Democrats could not have done that.

Odom said that the most important thing for the United States to do now is to talk to Iran, a nation with which we have many common interests. Both nations, Odom said, oppose al Qaeda. One wants to sell oil, the other wants to buy. Iran's government hated Saddam Hussein and should appreciate what the US did. "We have two issues," Odom said, "Hezbollah and nukes, and they're going to get nuclear weapons - there's nothing we can do about that."

Conyers thanked Odom and Pillar but said that he and his colleagues who agree with him cannot convince other Congress Members. "There's one thing that gets to members, and that's constituents...." In the end, conyers said, the question is how do we get more of our people to tell their representatives that the Progressive Caucus members are right?

Pillar drew a comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan. The jihad in Afghanistan for 10 years against the Soviet Union served to train terrorists, he said, and we are still experiencing the results. Iraq is now that training ground, and we may see results for many years, he said.

Rep. Hinchey asked Odom "How do we get out?" Odom's reply came without a pause: "Well, the Constitution gives the House the right to impeach."

Photos.

_________________________
_________________________

NEWS from

CONGRESSWOMAN LYNN WOOLSEY

6th District, California

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Chris Shields

September 26, 2006 202-225-5187

WOOLSEY, COLLEAGUES HEAR TESTIMONY ON COST OF CONTINUED OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

Washington, D.C - One of the leading national figures in the anti-war movement, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) was joined by 15 of her colleagues today, including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and Oakland's Barbara Lee in hearing testimony on the cost of the continued occupation of Iraq.

"This series of discussions, quite frankly, have been launched because I repeatedly requested for formal hearings from the relevant House committees and subcommittees...and was met with stone silence," Woolsey said in her prepared remarks. "They weren't interested in asking the tough questions, or in hearing anything other than spin and happy talk.

"I didn't think that was acceptable," Woolsey continued, and "given everything Americans have sacrificed for this occupation -- including nearly 2,700 of their fellow citizens - I believe we're entitled to some straight answers. If the majority party in Congress won't perform its oversight responsibilities, I guess we'll just do it for them."

This is the third in a series of forums that Woolsey has organized on the occupation of Iraq. Today's diverse group of panelists included General William Odom, who served as head of the NSA under President Reagan, and Dr. Paul Pillar who served in the CIA for 30 years. They addressed declining American influence in the region, the inadequate state of our military readiness, and the situation in Iraq, respectively. The panel also addressed the financial and opportunity costs of the continued occupation, a theme echoed by Woolsey:

"Congress has already appropriated $317 billion for the invasion and occupation [of Iraq], a staggering sum amounting to roughly $11 million every hour of every day," Woolsey said. "Of course in 2003, no one in the Bush Administration was prepared to admit that the price tag would climb this high. Had Americans been given the facts, about both the money involved and the lack of WMDs, the President would never have received the green light to go into Iraq in the first place."

Also on the panel were Chloe O'Gara (Save the Children), Anita Dancs (National Priorities Project), Peter Laufer (author) and Sergeant Patrick Cambell (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America). Other members who attended include: Carolyn Kilpatrick; Sheila Jackson-Lee; Steve Rothman; John Conyers; Maurice Hinchey; Major Owens; Marcy Kaptur; Sam Farr; Diane Watson; John Tierney; Rush Holt, Jan Schakowsky and William Delahunt.

###
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14319

3221
3DHS / State of Denial
« on: September 30, 2006, 08:50:39 AM »
 
[......]   [Woodward's] book also reports that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, grew so concerned in the summer of 2001 about a possible al-Qaeda attack that they drove straight to the White House to get high-level attention.

    Tenet called Rice, then the national security adviser, from his car to ask to see her, in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression. But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported. Rice, they said, did not seem to feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for an ongoing policy review.

    The report of such a meeting takes on heightened importance after former president Bill Clinton said this week that the Bush team did not do enough to try to kill Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said her husband would have paid more attention to warnings of a possible attack than Bush did. Rice fired back on behalf of the current president, saying the Bush administration "was at least as aggressive" in eight months as President Clinton had been in eight years.

    The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black "felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about."

    Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. "We didn't know about the meeting itself," she said. "I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it."

    White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, responding on behalf of Rice, said Tenet and Black had never publicly expressed any frustration with her response.
[........]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901593_2.html

3222
3DHS / Re: Tickle me Gitmo (toon)
« on: September 30, 2006, 07:09:24 AM »
Or hey, maybe to you this is just foreplay.  Er, I mean, just playtime.  Like Tickle Me Elmo.  Of course it's Abu Ghraib, not Gitmo, but it is our troops committing these acts.

Or maybe, just maybe I actually have condemned over-the-line abuse and torture, and advocate the prosecution of any soldiers who have crossed the line.  Wow, there's a thought you obviously ignored
________________________________________
Your cartoon  certainly does not condemn torture.  It equates it with making someone listen to Tickle Me Elmo. 

3223
3DHS / Re: Judge received death threats
« on: September 30, 2006, 07:06:28 AM »
Radical fundamentalist are fringe groups and do not represent the policies of established religous practices. I'm getting tired of hearing that line.

Who is saying it? Because you're right, it sure is a line. 

3224
3DHS / Re: Tickle me Gitmo (toon)
« on: September 30, 2006, 02:35:33 AM »
[]
"What you have here is a Saudi training at an American flight school, just like the 9/11 hijackers," says Pelley. "You know, there are people at home watching this right now, saying, 'Hey, you've got to do what you've got to do.'"

"I do understand that, and the fact is No. 1, it's ineffective," says Saar. "There are much better methods that were being employed at Guantanamo Bay, that yielded the little bit of intelligence that we did receive, and it wasn't methods like those."

60 Minutes talked to three interrogators who were at Guantanamo at the same time that Saar was there. And they told us the sexual tactics were well known, and even had a name they called it the “sex-up” approach.

Did it work?

"It did not work, and from what I later learned, the detainee remained uncooperative," says Saar. "It's impossible to try to build a connection and establish trust. We were now relying solely on fear to get the detainee to cooperate, and I think that's an enormous mistake. I think many of the FBI agents on the base felt as though that was a mistake also."

The FBI does its own questioning of prisoners at Guantanamo, and those agents have been writing emails, classified secret, to FBI headquarters. They detail abuse by military interrogators. The agents wrote of finding prisoners “chained hand and foot in a fetal position” for up to 24 hours at a time, and of prisoners who had “urinated or defecated on themselves."

Another FBI document says an interrogator grabbed a detainee’s thumbs and “bent them backwards” and “grabbed his genitals.” One FBI agent reported that he saw a detainee had been “gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head.” The interrogator explained that the prisoner had been “chanting the Koran and would not stop.”

60 Minutes ran the emails and Saar’s story past one of the nation’s most experienced military intelligence experts.

"Unimaginable to me, I just can not imagine what people think they were doing," says Army Col. Patrick Lang, who was head of human intelligence gathering at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

Lang, who’s now retired, wrote the Arabic and Middle-East studies curricula for West Point. "I mean, what is this?" asks Lang. "A scene from Dante's Inferno? I mean, what level of hell are we on to? Imagine that we could do such things to people? This is just absolutely wrong."

60 Minutes also asked Lang to review some of the written statements of prisoners who claim to have been beaten.

"If people were really beaten and kicked and knocked around, and their heads beaten against the floor, and had, you know, deprived of treatment for broken bones and teeth resulting from this," says Lang. "If these things really happened in fact, to me, that's a lot more serious than this silliness with having these girls go in and rub themselves all over these prisoners."

"There is a lot of discussion about precisely what the word "torture" means," says Pelley. "You've been at the top of defense military intelligence. Based on what you've seen and heard, is all of this torture?"

"I think that a lot of this behavior which has been allowed is so far outside the pale, that I think that it would have to be considered to be something not allowed in international law or U.S. military law," says Lang.

But is it torture? "Yeah," says Lang. "I think it's torture."
[]
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/28/60minutes/main691602_page2.shtml

3225
3DHS / Re: Tickle me Gitmo (toon)
« on: September 30, 2006, 02:30:09 AM »
Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos

By Greg Mitchell

Published: September 29, 2005 12:45 PM ET

NEW YORK A federal judge ruled today that graphic pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image. Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of "rape and murder" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were "blatantly sadistic."

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."

The ACLU has sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes taken at the prison as part of an October 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture.

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that releasing the photos would hinder his work against terrorism. "When we continue to pick at the wound and show the pictures over and over again it just creates the image--a false image--like this is the sort of stuff that is happening anew, and it's not," Abizaid said.

The judge said, however, that "the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed."

An ACLU release this afternoon said it was getting 70 photos and three video tapes. It also said that the government is being given 20 days to appeal.

What is shown on the photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon has blocked from release? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images, "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe." They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added.

A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of "rape and murder." Rumsfeld then commented, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

The photos were among thousands turned over by the key "whistleblower" in the scandal, Specialist Joseph M. Darby. Just a few that were released to the press sparked the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal last year, and the video images are said to be even more shocking.

“Today's historic ruling is a step toward ensuring that our government's leaders are held accountable for the abuse and torture that happened on their watch,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “The American public has a right to know what happened in American detention centers, and how our leaders let it occur."

One Pentagon lawyer has argued that they should not be released because they would only add to the humiliation of the prisoners. But the ACLU has said the faces of the victims can easily be "redacted."

To get a sense of what may be shown in these images, one has to go back to press reports from when the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal was still front page news.

This is how CNN reported it on May 8, 2004, in a typical account that day:

"U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed Friday that videos and 'a lot more pictures' exist of the abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison.

"'If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse,' Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.'

"The embattled defense secretary fielded sharp and skeptical questions from lawmakers as he testified about the growing prisoner abuse scandal. A military report about that abuse describes detainees being threatened, sodomized with a chemical light and forced into sexually humiliating poses.

"Charges have been brought against seven service members, and investigations into events at the prison continue.

"Military investigators have looked into -- or are continuing to investigate -- 35 cases of alleged abuse or deaths of prisoners in detention facilities in the Central Command theater, according to Army Secretary Les Brownlee. Two of those cases were deemed homicides, he said.

"'The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.'

"A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a 'male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.'

"Rumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.'"

The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.

In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men ... . The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'

"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

Judge Hellerstein said today that publication of the photographs will help to answer questions not only about the unlawful conduct of American soldiers, but about “the command structure that failed to exercise discipline over the troops, and the persons in that command structure whose failures in exercising supervision may make them culpable along with the soldiers who were court-martialed for perpetrating the wrongs.”
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001218842

Or hey, maybe to you this is just foreplay.  Er, I mean, just playtime.  Like Tickle Me Elmo.  Of course it's Abu Ghraib, not Gitmo, but it is our troops committing these acts.  But of course if you want to go on record as saying sodimizing young boys is simply "playing" with them...I'll understand.

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