The 11 o'clock News

George W.'s Spanish Lesson

Presi-dense Bush prided himself in his Spanish skills.  He'll need them because Spain is opening an investigation into his administration's torture program.

In an AP report,  four former Guantanamo prisoners -- a Spaniard, a Moroccan, a Palestinian and a Lebanese --  testified before Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon that they had been tortured while held at the U.S. detention camp for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Two of the four were acquitted in Spain of terrorism charges, while similar charges against two others were shelved, according to the 10-page court order from Judge Garzon on Wednesday.

The judge wrote there was sufficient evidence to open an investigation, based on the testimony from the four, plus news media reports about newly-declassified U.S. government documents.

The declassified U.S. documents, he wrote, revealed "an authorized and systematic plan for torture and harsh treatment of people deprived of their freedom without any charges and without the most basic elemental rights for detainees, set forth and demanded by international treaties."

The alleged plan at Guantanamo and other prisons, including a detention facility at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, "acquire almost an official level and therefore generate penal responsibility in the different structures of execution -- command, design and authorization of this systematic plan of torture," the judge wrote.

Garzon wrote that he planned to formally request the declassified U.S. documents to incorporate them into the case.

Garzon's new case is separate from another potential investigation at the same National Court in Madrid, which could involve a probe into the actions of six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Garzon's latest case cites allegations of torture, while in U.S. custody, from the following men:

-- Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, a Spanish citizen captured in Pakistan in 2001, who was later sent to Guantanamo. He arrived in Spain in 2004 and was acquitted of terrorism charges by Spain's Supreme Court.

-- Lhacen Ikassrin, a Moroccan who lived in Spain for 13 years. He was detained in Afghanistan in November 2001, sent to Guantanamo and delivered to Spain in July 2005, where he was acquitted of terrorism charges by the National Court.

-- Jamiel Abdul Latiff Al Banna, a Palestinian detained in Gambia in November 2002 by the United States military. He was sent to Guantanamo but was due to arrive in Britain in December 2007, prompting a Garzon arrest warrant.

-- Omar Deghayes, a Lebanese detained in Pakistan in April 2002, eventually arriving in Guantanamo but who was due to arrive in Britain in December 2007, also prompting an arrest warrant from Garzon.

The judge is Spain's best-known investigating magistrate for international human rights abuses. He issued a precedent-setting arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 while Pinochet was in a London hospital."

Obama Adminstration has its Boneheads

If I were Luis Caldera, I would make sure I didn't answer the phone after 5 pm Friday, the "switching" hour for the White House to "announce" changes it doesn't want to have to answer embarrassing questions.  Caldera has angered the wrong people, including Keith Olbermann, who went on vent usually reserved for Dick Cheney. 

His crime? On April 27, 2009 an Air Force One backup plane performed a flyover of New York City, accompanied by one F-16 fighter, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor. There had been no prior public announcement, leading Mayor Michael Bloomberg to condemn the photo opportunity, saying he was "furious", that it showed "poor judgment" and that he had not known ahead of time.   Caldera authorized the mission and subsequently apologized, stating, "Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."

Caldera is not new to bad judgment; he served on the board of directors for IndyMac Bank from 2002 until its failure and subsequent seizure by the government in July 2008.

And you thought just because Bush left town that stupidity did too?

CIA IG:"No Proof Torture Prevented Any Imminent Attack"

The Jack Bauer "24" Ticking Time bomb justification for torture exploded in Dick Cheney's face in 2004. 

By Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.

The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.

"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.

"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.

Helgerson also concluded that waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA's Office of Medical Services thought that the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit, according to the memos.

The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.

Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.

President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was "derailed" in early 2002 — before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.

Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.

The New York Times first reported Helgerson's inspector general's report in November 2005, but details of its contents have remained secret. A version of the report that the CIA turned over to the ACLU in May 2008 in response to a lawsuit consisted primarily of heavy black lines and notations of sections that had been redacted."

Gee, what else are they hiding?

The More Things Change....

Dear President Obama,

You are heading towards a slippery slope of political calculation that led spineless Democrats off the cliff when they  went long with Bush's Iraqi invasion to prove they were not weak when it came to national security.  Your political agenda is not threatened by enforcing laws against torture because  the Republicans won't support you, regardless of what you do. 

These same Democratic "leaders" continue to lead the way in shielding Bush crimes from scrutiny and stifling public disclosure of what was done.  Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid has announced  Senate Democrats will block any such investigations in favor of a Senate Intelligence Committee proceeding that will occur largely in secret and will not be completed until the end of the year.

The more things change:

Blocking criminal investigations for political reasons is corrupt.   That's true whether Democrats or Republicans do it.   It is the role of independent Justice Department officials to make that decision based on purely legal and apolitical grounds. Punishing politically powerful criminals is about vindicating the rule of law.  Partisan and political considerations should play no role in it.  It is opponents of investigations and prosecutions who are being driven by partisan allegiances and a desire to advance their political interests.  By contrast, proponents of investigations are seeking to vindicate the most apolitical yet crucial principle of our system of government: that we are a nation of laws that cannot allow extremely serious crimes to be swept under the rug for political reasons.  That's true no matter what is best for your political goals and no matter how many Democrats end up being implicated -- ethically, politically or even legally -- by the crimes that were committed.

Now that is CHANGE we all can believe in.

"Torture - if it feels good, do it"

If it feels good do it.  That's what the biggest Dick in the world would say.  That Dick would be Cheney,  who has apparently handed the World Court his conviction on a silver plate.  (Dick, I think it's time you get a lawyer and clam up.) Cheney admitted to personally approving the torture of high-profile detainees. In a new interview with the Washington Times, Cheney  defended the Bush administration's torture policies, saying, "I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do." He added emphatically that he would "do exactly the same thing again."

Then Cheney went completely bonkers:

"It would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11," Mr. Cheney said.

Cheney insisted that the torture policies he helped craft were "directly responsible for the fact that we've been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for 7 1/2 years."

Let US forget about the little oversight on the first 1/2 year, Dick, and your plans to cut the counter-terrorism budget before 9-11.  And what  further attacks?  The A.Q. attack on the LA skyscraper, Dick?  File that canard under "Dick's Delusions"  along with the  Atta non-meeting with Iranian agents in Prague,  the missing WMDs in Iraq and Saddam's involvement in the 9-11 attack. 

The truth be told, DICK, is torture has endangered, not protected, American lives. Military experts say that the U.S.'s torture policies have been the single greatest recruiting tool for al Qaeda. A former interrogator who worked in Iraq stated unequivocally, "The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001." Cheney's torture policies will lead directly to another domestic terrorist attack:

Insanity is  not a defense for war crimes:  Cheney may be planning his defense in case he is arrested and turned over to the World Court. He has insisted that waterboarding was not torture, and explained, "We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice." (and ignoring the past)

Torture may feel good but Dick, we can see your nuts.

Here is our moral obligation (Obama, are you listening?):  we need to punish everyone of these morally confused "humans" who thought torture was our moral obligation.  To "look forward"  and not punish these enemies of the state, who have stained the good reputation of this country, will give aid and comfort to the next Dick.    

Karpinksi: A few bad apples? You can't handle the truth.

Karpinski: This is one of the most shameful aspects of these memos and the knowledge that people at the highest levels of our government had about these memos, actually sat together and wrote them and rewrote them and crafted them to meet the requirements of these techniques they wanted to use.

They were well aware, these people, Rumsfeld, Sanchez, all of them and were well aware of these policies and these memorandums while these soldiers were being accused....five years ago.

And if it was okay Mr. Former Vice President, if you're saying that this was necessary today and that it produced good intelligence..where were you five years ago stepping up to the plate and saying hold on, we can't discuss this because this is classified information, but these soldiers did not design these techniques? Where were all of those heros then to step up to the plate and defend these soldiers and to defend me?

These were soldiers that were serving in a combat zone that were good Americans and remain good Americans and that were so unfairly blamed. Five years this month to get these memos released, declassified and released and people still trying to say that what happened at Abu Ghraib was different than what these memorandums were directing. No! It is not!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm9_foi0vRs

"Dick Cheney Blew Everybody Off"

Remember all those trips Dick Cheney made to the CIA to force the intelligence analysts to make the case that Iraq had WMDs?  The analysts told Dick they couldn't find any convincing evidence.  Dick  blew them off.  Dick told them "Go back and look AGAIN!"  Now comes news that Dick "blew the CIA and the Army (torture) interrogators off and kept insisting that they had overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more they could do to get information."

Information about what?   A ticking terrorist time bomb?  No, former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Excerpts from Burney's interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney's statement "very significant."

"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Another Blow Job:  Levin recalled Cheney's baseless assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When the FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred, Dick blew them off and went on "Meet the Press" to say, "It happened!"

Other Blowhards: The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.  Military interrogators, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Lessons learned: Remember when Bill Clinton admitted to smoking the wacky weed, "I smoked but did not inhale."  Let US hope for Dick's sake that when he blew everybody off that he did not swallow.

All that bad "intel" was the real ticking time bomb.

S.E.R.E. - The Tortured Defense

S.E.R.E.  - Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape - was the basis for the torture program  unleashed under George W. Bush and George Tenet. While torture, according to the experts who do this stuff, DOES NOT WORK on terrorists, Cheney, Rummie and the DOJ Bush leaguers are using these same tactics to try to SURVIVE the consequences of Obama letting US in on the truth about the torture programs.

EVASION:  With the release of the report on the Bush Administration torture program, it is now documented that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other top officials deliberately, willingly, and with malice aforethought, established a system of interrogation using brutal techniques that they knew were against the law.  The torture memos were an act of evasion to give retroactive legal cover for atrocities that were already taking place at the orders of the White House and the Pentagon.

RESIST: Bush and the rest resisted those who dared to tell the truth  repeatedly that these tortures were ineffective at producing useful intelligence.  It is undeniable  the Bushies began this torture program long before they had captured even one "high-profile al Qaeda detainee," and that they were using these heinous techniques not in a desperate bid to save the nation from further attacks  but instead to produce the non-existent link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

ESCAPE Clause:  We were under attack.  We were at war.  Saddam will attack US again.  Be very afraid. They have WMDs.  The smoking gun could be a MUSHROOM CLOUD. Anything to justify torture, the lies and deception.

Are we S.E.R.E.-US?  The only question remains: Are we SERE-US in putting the Bushies on trial?  For if we do, aren't we putting US all on trial?   If we start putting people in jail for the torture program,  the illegal wiretapping program, the corrupt war profiteering, and God-only-knows what other perversions against our Constitution, the house of bad faith and credit cards collapses (as if it hasn't already).

And you know in your heart of hearts, we're not going to let that happen.

See Jane Run

Thank God for Glenn Greenwald --

"Blue Dog Rep. Jane Harman -- once the most vigorous Democratic cheerleader of Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- is rip-roarin' angry today.  Apparently, her private conversations were eavesdropped on by the U.S. Government!  This is a grave outrage that, as she told Andrea Mitchell just moments ago, demands a probing investigation:

That's what I asked Attorney General Holder to do -- to release any tapes, I don't know whether they were legally made or not, of my conservations about this matter  . . . and to hope that he will investigate whether other members of Congress or other innocent Americans might have been subject to this same treatment.  I call it an abuse of power in the letter I wrote him this morning. . . .

I'm just very disappointed that my country -- I'm an American citizen just like you are -- could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years.  I'm one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, and I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back.  I'm thinking about others who have no bully pulpit, who may not be aware, as I was not, that someone is listening in on their conversations, and they're innocent Americans.

So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was "both legal and necessary" as well as "essential to U.S. national security," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials.  But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power.  Behold Jane Harman's overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist. 

But I'm really wondering:  as serious as it is when a member of Congress is the target of government eavesdropping, can we really afford to investigate this?  After all, we have so many very important things to do.  It really seems like we need to be looking forward, not backwards.  The Bush administration is gone.  This all happened in 2005 -- years ago.  Is this really a time to be pursuing grudges, to be re-litigating old disputes?  What kind of partisan witch hunt is Harman after?  We can, and surely should, reflect on what happened to her -- in fact, let us now pause together for a moment of quiet reflection on what was done to Jane Harman -- but this is not a time for retribution or looking back.  "Most Americans" want the people's business done, not "abuse of power" investigations.  

Besides, if Jane Harman didn't do anything wrong -- as she claims -- then what does she have to hide?  Only Terrorists and criminals would mind the Government listening in.  We all know that government officials have better things to do than worry about what innocent Americans are saying.  If she did nothing wrong -- if all she was doing was talking to her nice constituents and AIPAC supporters about how she could be of service -- then Bush officials obviously weren't interested in what she had to say.

Beyond that, even if there were "illegal" acts committed here, surely we should be rushing to retroactively immunize those responsible, just as Harman eagerly advocated and engineered and then voted for when it came to the telecoms who broke our laws and enabled illegal spying on American citizens.  That was when she voted to gut FISA protections and massively expand the Government's power to eavesdrop on Americans with no warrants as part of the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer Surveillance State celebration known as the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008."

Ultimately, even if a few so-called "laws" were "broken," surely the people who did it were acting to protect us from possible foreign espionage.  Are we now going to start subjecting the good men and women working to keep us safe to harassing, expensive investigations every time some member of Congress pipes up and claims they were victimized by "illegal" acts?  Think how overly cautious our intelligence community will become, what that will do to morale, how much it will handcuff us in our Wars.  And if, at the end of the day, all of this doesn't convice the "Rule of Law" purists among us to let bygones be bygones, I'm sure all reasonable and decent people can at least agree that the methods our government uses to eavesdrop on us are among the most sacred State Secrets that exist, and thus simply cannot and must not be reviewed by any tribunal for legality and propriety lest we all become deeply vulnerable to the Terrorists. 

Jane Harman is so shrill and angry today.  She sounds like some sort of unhinged leftist blogger.  As The Washington Post's Dana Milbank so insightfully asked this week, what could any Democrat possibly have to be angry about?  After all, they won.  I wonder how long it's going to be before Harman joins the ACLU?  What's that old saying -- a "civil liberties extremist" is a former Bush-enabling, Surveillance State-defending Blue Dog who learns that their own personal conversations were intercepted by the same government that they demanded be vested with unchecked power."

Greenwald, you are so BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.  I'm green with envy.

"Mistakes were Made" - Obama and the Voters agree

According to a report in the NYT, Mr. Obama says it's time to admit “mistakes” and “move forward.” Perhaps the voters who voted for Obama and wanted someone punished for WAR CRIMES like TORTURE  are admitting their votes were a mistake.  Come on 2012!

What war crime? 

The Bush DOJ memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times. 

What war criminal? 

Dick Cheney accused Obama of endangering the country by disclosing national secrets.  Mr. Cheney went on the Fox News Channel to announce that he had asked the C.I.A. to declassify reports documenting the intelligence gained from the interrogations. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, has also condemned the release of the memorandums and said the harsh questioning had value -especially on the 266th time.

What's a voter to do? 

Congressional Democrats and international officials pressed for a fuller accounting of what happened.  Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months...and then we will rule it out.

Mr. Obama tried to calm the C.I.A. headquarters:

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”

Moving forward?  Proud?  If Obama really wants to ensure America's proud reputation and the independence of the CIA, put Dick and his cronies who twisted the arms of career intelligence officers to go along with the lies and torture in Iraq in jail.  There can be no "moving forward" until we put a stake in the axis of the evil-doers like Dick.

Oh  Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.” 

Torture is GOOD for US: “I find it a little bit disturbing” that “they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort,” Mr. Cheney said on Fox News. “There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

Yes, Dick, let US know EVERYTHING that you were doing the past eight years.

(NB: Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ chief official on torture, states, that as a party to the international Convention against Torture, the United States was required to investigate credible accusations of torture. )

That is why many voted for Obama.  But apparently mistakes were made.  Never again.