Re: Liz Cheney, Wm. Kristol, and their pals slandering DOJ attorneys as the “al-Qaida 7″ and the “Department of Jihad”, engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with McCarthy:
If this seems confusing, here’s a simple principle to keep in mind: Representing someone in an American court does not mean agreeing with that person’s actions or [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Conservatives, Courts, Detainees, DOJ, Keep America Safe, Law, Liz Cheney, Neocons, Republicans, Smear Tactics, William Kristol
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For all Rove’s self-proclaimed expertise as a student of history, he writes that eight American presidents assumed office “as a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor.” (He’s off by only three.) After a peculiar early narrative detour to combat reports of his late adoptive father’s homosexuality, Rove burnishes his family values cred with [...]
But the problem with Rove’s account is that not only did Bush oversee the twisting of intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003 but he subsequently lied – and lied repeatedly – about how Iraq had responded to United Nations inspection demands.
So, while it may be impossible to say for certain what Bush believed [...]
These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.
Though public, the hundreds of pages of documents authorizing or later reviewing the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” haven’t [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
In essence, the classified memo cited by Cheney stated that the CIA torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla in 2003. But as Isikoff reports, the newly-released docs point out that Padilla was arrested in 2002 — so torture couldn’t have secured his capture.
This also appears to [...]
Monday, February 22, 2010
The theological justification for al Qaeda’s wholesale slaughter of civilians was provided by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, one of the founding fathers of al Qaeda. Because the murder of innocents is forbidden in Islam and the murder of Muslims in particular, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden required some sort of [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Al Qaeda, Apostates, Ayman al-Zawahiri, DOJ, Dr Fadl, Ends Justify The Means, George W Bush, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Jose Padilla, Justifications, Murder, Office of Legal Counsel, Osama bin Laden, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, Takfir, Takfiri, Takfirism, Theology, Torture
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Monday, February 15, 2010
KARL: … waterboarding, clearly, what was your…
CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that…
KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?
CHENEY: Yes.
He just admitted being an accomplice. To date approximately 100 detainees (at minimum), including CIA-held detainees, have died during [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Caught on Tape, CIA, Crime, Detainees, Evidence, Guantanamo, Iraq War, JSOC, Military, Torture, War Crimes, Waterboarding
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Monday, February 15, 2010
1. You recently commented that you kept the US safe after you started “taking al-Qaeda seriously.” Although the American public was not attuned until after 9/11, al-Qaeda had been well-known by the US government as a major threat. Yet, nine months into office, after receiving repeated and increasingly panicky warnings from the intelligence community, you [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking.
Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo prisoner, [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Binyam Mohamed, CIA, Courts, Crime, Detainees, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Hillary Clinton, Intelligence, Law, MI5, Rendition, Torture, War Crimes
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Sunday, February 14, 2010
You can have any opinion you want about waterboarding, but it is a fact that it is defined as “torture” under the relevant international treaties and federal law. That is a fact. In short, it is not “torture” to critics, it is “torture” under the law. And there is no dispute that the Bush Administration [...]
Is there any hope at all that the larger players in the Bush-era criminal activities – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz most prominently – will be brought to justice when those two lesser lights (Yoo and Bybee) are allowed to return to a law school classroom and a seat on the federal [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Accountability, Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Corporatism, Corruption, Crime, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, George W Bush, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Karl Rove, Law, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Rule of Law, War Crimes, William Rivers Pitt
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The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast [...]
Filed in Film, Notable
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Also tagged Adam Curtis, Afghanistan War, Al Qaeda, Anwar Al Sadat, Ayman al-Zawahiri, BBC, Bill Clinton, CIA, Documentary, Donald Rumsfeld, Egypt, Extremists, Fear, Gamal Abdel Nasser, George HW Bush, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Iraq War, Irving Kristol, Islam, Leo Strauss, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, Neo-Conservatives, Osama bin Laden, Paul Wolfowitz, Power of Nightmares, Rendition, Ronald Reagan, Saudi Arabia, Sayyid Qutb, Taliban, Terrorism, Tony Blair, Torture
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen has a new mission: to convince the American electorate that we are less safe and secure today because Barack Obama won’t use the torture techniques, like waterboarding, that were embraced by his mentor, Dick Cheney. The radicality of Thiessen’s thesis is revealed by noting that under Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald [...]
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tony Blair will face pressure at the Iraq inquiry a week on Friday to explain how he was able to claim that Saddam Hussein was building a “growing” programme of weapons of mass destruction six months before the invasion in 2003.
As the inquiry announced that the former prime minister will give evidence, a senior member said [...]
Thursday, January 7, 2010
“I don’t think the administration has helped themselves, or frankly helped the country, by trying so hard to paint their policies as being so radically different from the past,” says Zarate, who was a counterterrorism adviser to President Bush. “They’re not, and for the sake of the country they shouldn’t be.”
via Obama Cites Closeness To [...]
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