"Amid much criticism, President Obama has released top-secret terror memos from
the Bush Administration. According to the memos, President Bush authorized
various forms of torture, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and of
course, the fourth hour of the 'Today' show."
- Jay Leno
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They Used WHAT?!?
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/PettJ/2009/PettJ20090420_low.jpg
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Nadler: Impeach Torture Memo Author
http://tinyurl.com/cm5swq
Rep. Jerry Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called
Monday for the impeachment of federal judge Jay Bybee, one of the principal
authors of the torture memos released last week by the Obama administration.
"He ought to be impeached," Nadler said in an interview with the Huffington
Post. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to
break the law." ...
Nadler is meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday to argue that
the release of the torture memos further buttresses a call he had made earlier
for a special prosecutor on torture.
"Any special prosecutor on torture would have to look at the authors of those
torture memos," said Nadler. "And certainly you have real grounds to impeach
him once the special prosecutor took a good look at that. I think there ought
to be an impeachment inquiry looked at in any event. Which should happen first,
I'm not sure." ...
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Not Looking Too Good....
http://thehill.com/images/stories/weyants/2009/April/cartoon042109.jpg
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"According to a C.I.A. memo, the agency waterboarded Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183
times. Supposedly waterboarding makes victims think they're going to drown.
Although, after the first 100 times or so, don't you think they'd catch on?"
- Bill Mihalic
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"Libs should remember politically motivated prosecutions are a dangerous game
and one day, they will be out of power and the GOP will be in."
- twitter from John Hawkins, "Townhall" columnist
"We can safely assume that John has been in a coma for about the last sixteen
years. Shhhhh. Nobody tell him about the ack-blay guy in the White House."
- TBogg, tbogg.firedoglake.com
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Balancing Act
http://www.cagle.com/working/090419/cole.jpg
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"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent
disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the
Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the
success of the effort.
"I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read,
that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and
what the consequences were for the country. I've now formally asked the CIA to
take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the
American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and
how good the intelligence was."
- FORMER Vice President "Dick" Cheney
Why does Cheney think he gets any say in anything anymore? The FORMER Veep
doesn't get to "formally ask" the CIA to do diddly squat. He's nobody's boss
anymore. He gets to shut his fat sneering yapper and that's all the f...@#k
he's allowed to do.
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"Dick" Cheney.... Disgruntled Ex-Employee?
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"Oderunt dum Metuant."
Let them hate so long as they fear.
That was a favorite expression of the Roman Emporer Caligula, who required his
subjects to worship him as a living god.
I'd be willing to bet "Dick" Cheney has read every biography of the man that's
available....
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Nobody's Perfect....
http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=43ea726e5cfbebb6952caf1b21ceb19f
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The Cheney Virus....
Shooting America in the face beyond his time.
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Hillary Clinton Questions Dick Cheney's Credibility
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/04/hillary-clinton.html
Rep. Dana Rohrbacher [R-CA]
"Are you in favor of releasing the documents that Dick Cheney has been
requesting be released?"
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
"Well, it won't surprise you, I don't consider him a particularly reliable
source of information."
Rep. Rohrbacher
"Madam Secretary, I asked you a specific question."
SecState Clinton
"Congressman, I believe we ought to get to the bottom of this entire matter. I
think it is in the best interest of our country and that is what the president
believes and that is why he has taken the actions he did."
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The f...@#king "Dick" has got more to say now that he's a citizen than he did
when he was Vice President.... apparently he thinks the fourth branch of
government is a lifetime (self-)appointment.
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"Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
- Ex-President Richard M. Nixon, 1977
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"The FDA learned Monday there are two hundred sixty tons of pharmaceutical
drugs dumped in America's drinking water every year. No one was surprised. You
knew we had a problem when terror suspects emerged from waterboarding asking
for another toke."
- Argus Hamilton
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One can only assume that the CIA destroyed all those interrogation tapes
because they showed just how successful torture is...
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"If there exist documents that prove that torture prevented attacks on the US,
and those documents can be released without jeopardizing national security, why
didn't the Bush administration release them before leaving office?"
- Jamison Foser
http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904210021
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Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Pol Pot.... they also used whatever means possible to
achieve an end. Now it seems we get to add Bush/Cheney to that list.
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
George W. Bush repealed Godwin's Law with a Signing Statement.
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"It's hot here today in L.A. In fact, it was so hot, I called up the CIA and
begged to be waterboarded."
- Craig Ferguson
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The OLC "Torture Memos": Thoughts From A Dissenter
http://tinyurl.com/cbpw2b
. . At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal
reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state,
didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an
alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that
other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My
colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White
House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo I expect that one
or two are still at least in the State Department's archives. ...
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
Sorry, Mr. Bush, but "My lawyer said it was okey dokey" is NOT a valid legal
defense for torture, or any other crime....
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Easy For You To Say....
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/MarguJ/2009/MarguJ20090420A_low.jpg
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Report: Abusive Tactics Used To Seek Iraq-al Qaida Link
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use
harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al
Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a
former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President
George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence
has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network and Saddam's regime.
The use of abusive interrogation -- widely considered torture -- as part of
Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued
a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama
opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep
deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates
drowning, insist that they were legal.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation
issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded
that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why
extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on
condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack
(after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld,
especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq
that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were
there."
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top
al Qaida detainees repeatedly -- Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002
and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 -- according to a newly
released Justice Department document. ...
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They Will Remember This
http://images.chron.com/blogs/nickanderson/archives/and042109b1.jpg
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According to professional crime and intelligence investigators, the practical
reason not to use torture is that the person being tortured will tell you what
he thinks you want to hear, rather than the truth.
Or to put it another way: If you're Dick Cheney, the reason to use torture is
that the person being tortured will tell you what he thinks you want to hear,
rather than the truth.
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What Am I Reading?!?
http://www.rjmatson.com/images/cartoons/STL868.jpg
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"If only Saddam Hussein had been smart enough to solicit a legal opinion from
his government lawyers that gassing people was within the law, he could have
been playing golf in Myrtle Beach right now."
(via talkingpointsmemo.com)
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The CIA's Questioning Worked
http://tinyurl.com/dzzvrz
. . Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence
because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos
note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced
techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah
to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their
ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In
other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they
can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know.
This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world
and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely
help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak
freely.
This is the secret to the program's success. ...
[The writer, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in senior
positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently
as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.]
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So, torturing Muslims is acceptable.... because they're Muslims!
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
First we had, "Torture works."
Then we had, "They deserve it."
Now we have, "They need us to do it!"
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Is torturing a human being moral under ANY circumstances?
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
It Was Torture!
http://www.cagle.com/working/090418/granlund.jpg
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'A BAD IDEA'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517260,00.html
Greta Van Susteren: Again, the whole business about the torture memos being
released by the Obama administration -- good idea or bad idea?
Sen. Joe Lieberman [I-CT]: I thought release of the memos was a bad idea.
The President of the United States as the commander in chief has the right to
decide what kinds of tactics he wants to use with detainees who we believe are
associated with terrorism and what kinds he does not want to use. Congress
legislated on that. I was a cosponsor with Senator McCain of the anti-torture
provisions we put into law.
But once you start to take internal memos that have been designated as top
secret --
Van Susteren: Even if it's -- first of all, is waterboarding torture?
Lieberman: Well, I take a minority position on this. Most people think it's
definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on
people. It's a terrible thing to do.
I have said in the past, and I'll say it again to you, that I want the
president of the United States in a given circumstance where we believe
somebody we've got in our control may have information that could help us stop
an attack, an imminent attack on the United States like 9/11 or, god forbid,
worse, we ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.
But, generally speaking, it ought to not be on the table.
Incidentally, I believe General Hayden when he says that not just
waterboarding, which he stopped, as I understand it, but a number of the other
items on that list that have been published, really did work, did help to give
us a lot of information we have about Al Qaeda.
Why do I think it was a mistake to give it out? I wasn't necessary. It just
helps our enemies. It doesn't really help us.
Again, the president can decide what tactics he wants the CIA or the military
to use on people we capture, suspects of terrorism. But to let our enemies know
what we are going to do or not do, that's not a good idea.
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"If a US soldier was captured and water boarded 183 times in one month,
something tells me Fox News would say he was tortured."
- twitter from Chris Hayes, Washington Editor, "The Nation"
***********************
Wait A Minute, Here....
http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=ae9d3a92241bd9d35bc7242b1bdeab08
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