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Karen, For a year or two It never
happened and is unlikely to happen now. Cheney’s
health is certainly a question mark – always has been. If it deteriorated,
then he could certainly resign. As I said in answer to Rumsfeld has
just announced he’s staying on in spite of wild speculation by pundits,
who seem to know more about the internal workings of the Administration than
they do. Constant
repetition seems to turn speculation into fact, with every commentator
referring to others until a web of ‘fact’ is created out of
nothing. Should (say)
Rumsfeld resign in 2007, a host of “experts” will take credit for
predicting the fact – perhaps back in 2003. This sort of
thing is now a fact of life. I think that little can be done about it except to
take much of it with a pinch of salt – may be a lot of salt. Harry ******************************** of 818 352-4141 ******************************** From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole Commentary from a former CIA analyst and
co-founder of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Rice with Indefensible Brief; Cheney
in Last Throes European
reaction to visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements on
torture can be summed up in lead commentary Wednesday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among the most
widely respected German newspapers. Under the title "Justice à la
Rice," the editor "translated" her message into these words:
"The
end justifies the means and terrorism can be fought with borderline methods on
the outer edges of legality." He added: "Rice came to There
was no mushroom cloud, but Rice is radioactive nonetheless. No matter how much
she and the embedded reporters traveling with her tried to spin her words, they
are falling on deaf ears in Trouble on the Home
Front With attention riveted on the cause célèbre
occasioned by revelations concerning CIA-run prisons abroad, kidnapping, and
"extraordinary renditions" of captives to torture-prone foreign
countries - and the predictably neuralgic reaction among our allies - it is easy
to miss the likely political fallout here at home. Vice
President Dick Cheney, whose unbridled chutzpah has led him to take public and
well as private credit for being the intellectual author of Never
in the sixty years since World War II has an American secretary of state been
received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in It
is no secret that Cheney bears primary responsibility for making our country a
pariah among nations by punching a gaping hole in the (until now) absolute ban
on torture under international and US law. Under international treaties,
including treaties ratified by the US Senate and thus the supreme law of the
land, civilized societies have long since prohibited practices widely
recognized as torture. No matter. At the instigation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld
cabal, the inherent human right to physical integrity and personal dignity has
become an early casualty of the We
did not need Col. Wilkerson to tell us that. What he has revealed in tracing
responsibility for the US rogue policy on torture to the office of the vice
president and Rumsfeld merely confirmed much of what is already known, but
reported meagerly - if at all - in US media. Just
five days after 9/11, the vice president told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the
Press: "We
also have to work, though, sort of the dark side ... a lot of what needs to be
done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources
and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies ... it's going to
be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our
objective." At
that same time President George W. Bush reportedly issued instructions to the
CIA to take a no-holds-barred approach when interrogating suspected terrorists
and, according to counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, used colorful language
to impress his attitude upon Clarke and Rumsfeld: "I don't care what the
international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." The head of the
This
was the message conveyed to CIA director George Tenet, who dutifully marched
off to find interrogators to be set loose on "suspected terrorists"
likely to be captured in Afghanistan - and then Iraq. For it was clear from the
start that "Dark-side"
operations, using "any means at our disposal" - like, say,
"enhanced interrogation techniques" - by law require a
"finding" signed by the president. Before signing, Bush would have
sought the advice of his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales - the more so,
since this particular finding raised serious questions with regard not only to
international law but also to US criminal statutes, and particularly the War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441). Enter
the (in)famous memorandum
of January 25, 2002,
from Gonzales to the president, in which some provisions of the Geneva
Conventions on prisoners of war were described as "quaint" and
"obsolete." Referring to the US War Crimes Act, the author of that
memorandum argued that there was a "reasonable basis in law" that
Bush could escape future criminal prosecution for violating that law. Powell Protests ...
Not Too Much Then-Secretary of State (and former Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Colin Powell protested, and his warning, which
was inserted into the January 25 memorandum to the president, speaks volumes: “A
determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War] does not
apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine In
a memo dated January
26, 2002,
Powell also warned that such behavior by the And
so, on February
7, 2002,
Bush signed the watershed memorandum telling our armed forces "to treat
detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military
necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of But Who Wrote the
January 25 Memorandum? The author was Cheney's legal counsel, David
Addington, whom the vice president had the gall to promote to be his chief of
staff after I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby was indicted. Addington's
authorship has been openly acknowledged, and Cheney appears to regard it as a
feather in Addington's cap. One searches in vain, however, for legal experts
who support Addington's tortured (no pun intended) reasoning. Indeed, in November 2004, 130 prominent jurists -
including twelve federal judges, eight former American Bar Association
presidents, and former FBI director William Sessions - issued a highly unusual
statement criticizing Addington and others by name for failing in their
"high obligation to defend the Constitution." Bypassing the
"Six Blind Mice" What is new is the willingness of patriotic
officials within the government to put their country before their career and go
to the media to blow the whistle on the various indignities and crimes they
have witnessed. Those officials, initially cowed by the object lesson served up
by White House retaliation against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, have become
increasingly scandalized at the jettisoning of long accepted practices like
those that used to govern interrogations. And so, officials with first-hand
knowledge have now begun to come forward and tell what has been going on, in
hopes of getting the country back on track. Cheney no longer has Libby to keep
his finger in the dike to prevent leaks that are fast becoming a flood, and
Karl Rove is preoccupied with his own efforts to avoid indictment. Most
important, Cheney's formidable power has been deeply dented by the indictment
of his closest aide Libby, and the vice president's unabashed support of
torture has prompted old friends and colleagues like Gen. Brent Scowcroft to
say, "I don't know Dick Cheney." Absolute power may still corrupt
absolutely even when it is deeply dented, but then it is not as threatening to
those with the courage to confront it. It
is no surprise that patriotic truth-tellers within the government have chosen
to go to the fourth estate rather than to a Congress controlled by the
president's party.
Their choice reflects a realization that little but trouble can be expected in
seeking recourse from those who have become known as "the six blind
mice" - Senators Pat Roberts, John Warner, and Richard Lugar, who chair
the committees with jurisdiction in the Senate; and Congressmen Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of
the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst with
the CIA for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS).
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120905Z.shtml |
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