Author's note: The statements Cheney made this week during an interview with the Washington Times about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called "enhanced interrogation" of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media.
Also published at my web magazine, The Public Record.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.
“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.
Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That's it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.
Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping – actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.
“I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney said of what he called the “enhanced interrogation” of the detainees. “I thought the [administration’s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.”
Cheney also took issue with the notion that waterboarding was torture.
“Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture,” Cheney said. “The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.”
Other experts, including some military and intelligence interrogators, have disputed Cheney’s claims of success in extracting reliable information through waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Much of the confessed information turned out to be dubious or incorrect.
The First Case
Zubaydah was the first “war on terror” detainee to be subjected to the Bush administration’s waterboarding, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, news reports and several books written about the Bush administration’s interrogation methods.
However, according to author Ron Suskind who interviewed CIA and other insiders, Abu Zubaydah was not the "high-value detainee" that the Bush administration had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine.
Nevertheless, Suskind said President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about pending terrorist plots against the United States.
"Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"
Abu Zubaydah's captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind wrote.
But Bush did not want to "lose face" because he had stated Zubaydah’s importance publicly, according to Suskind.
WARONYOU
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Cheney 'Signed Off' on Waterboarding at Gitmo
Friday, November 28, 2008
American Food System Fertilized With Industrial Chemical Melamine
Weve talked about the pervasive industrial chemical melamine appearing in Chinese food from its domestic supplies of milk to its exports of wheat gluten found anywhere from pet food to chicken feed. Weve also covered how new tracking measures are being implemented to improve food safety (see New Tracing System To Improve Safety of [...]
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The Nation: Maybe Nader was Right. Return of the Wall St. Hustlers
By Robert Scheer | November 26, 2008
The Nation
Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn't that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.
But how else is one to respond to Barack Obama's picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess to now lead us out of it? Watching the president-elect's Monday introduction of his economic team, my brother-in-law Pete said, "You can see the feathers coming out of their mouths" as the foxes were once again put in charge of the henhouse. He didn't have time to expound on his point, having to get ready to go sort mail in his job at the post office, but he showed me a statement from Citigroup showing that the interest rate on Pete the Postal Worker's credit card was 28.9 percent, an amount that all major religions would justly condemn as usurious.
Moments earlier, Obama had put his seal of approval on the Citigroup bailout, which his new economic team, led by proteges of Citigroup Executive Committee Chairman Robert Rubin, enthusiastically endorsed. A bailout that brings to $45 billion the taxpayer money thrown at Citigroup and the guarantee of $306 billion for the bank's "toxic securities" that would have been illegal if not for changes in the law that Citigroup secured with the decisive help of Rubin and Lawrence Summers, the man who replaced him as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.
Happy Thanksgiving to Dr. Paul and everyone on the DP!
Very few things have altered the course of my life. The standards like marriage, children, etc.... you grow to anticipate.
Things like Dr. Paul just sort of blind-side you. I've had my beliefs all my life but no one (in politics) has ever spoken to them with any conviction or understanding until I heard Dr. Paul describe himself as "the champion of the Constitution".
I remember asking my brother, who makes me look mainstream, if this guys was the 'real deal'. He assured me he was.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hide the Toys, 'Age' the Soap And Other Tips for Tight Times
Who are we kidding? The end is nigh. Wall Street is in freefall. The deficit is so big it has its own gravitational field. We've been at war(s) for five years. And it seems like every weekend a hurricane washes away another coastal city. The question now is: What are we going to do about it?
I had lunch the other day with a guy who said all you need to survive the coming apocalypse is a shotgun, water and some rabbits. Of course, if you've got a shotgun, you don't need your own water and rabbits. You can just take someone else's.
But perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic. Where's that pioneer spirit that helped forge this great nation? Where's the sense of self-sacrifice that helped the Greatest Generation weather the Depression?
I found it last week on the fifth floor reading room of the Library of Congress's Adams Building. Eager to prepare myself for the recession/depression/downturn/End Times, I had requested books published in periods of previous economic turmoil. The books had such titles as "Ten Lessons in Thrift" and "Fifty Ways to Save Money."
There was a delightful book from 1937 called "Orchids on Your Budget" that offered this observation: "Even quite dull people can live smartly if they have plenty of money, and the money often makes them duller. A slight financial pressure sharpens the wits, though it needn't sharpen the disposition. But it takes an interesting person to have an attractive ménage on a shoestring and to run it with gaiety and charm."
As we watch our house values collapse and our investments evaporate, keep in mind the following tips, which I culled from "500 Ways to Save in Your Home: Household Economies to Help Win the War!" (published in 1942) and "How to Beat the High Cost of Living: 864 Money Savers for Everyday Use, Especially in the Present Stage of the American Inflation Cycle" (published in 1937). These suggestions might seem extreme to a generation that defines hardship as not being within walking distance of a Starbucks, but let's just think of them as helping to sharpen our wits.
" 'Age' your soap by buying a liberal supply, removing all wrappers, and storing away on a shelf for at least several weeks before using. Fresh soap contains much moisture, melts away fast. When well dried it takes just a little more effort to lather -- and each bar lasts nearly twice as long!"
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Amy Goodman First Journalist to Win "Alternative Nobel"
AMY GOODMAN, HOST OF DEMOCRACY NOW!, FIRST JOURNALIST TO RECEIVE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD
New York City, NY – Award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely recognized as the world’s premier award for personal courage and social transformation. The annual prize, also known as the Alternative Nobel, will be awarded in the Swedish Parliament on December 8, 2008.
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honor and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. Goodman has been selected for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”
Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the country, Democracy Now! is a daily grassroots, global TV/radio/internet news hour airing on more than 750 public radio and television stations and at democracynow.org.
Goodman said, “I am deeply honored that grassroots, independent journalism and the hard work of my colleagues at Democracy Now! are being recognized in these critical times. I strongly believe that media can be a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is.”
Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers were arrested last month at the Republican National Convention while reporting on street demonstrations. Charges were dropped after widespread public outcry. The video of Goodman’s arrest was among the most watched YouTube video’s during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 860,000 times.
Amy Goodman writes a weekly syndicated column with King Features which runs in major newspapers throughout North and South America. She is co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers: Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times; Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back; and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.
Goodman’s reporting on East Timor and Nigeria won the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. Her other awards include the first ever Communication for Peace Award presented by the World Association of Christian Communication, the Puffin/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship, The Paley Center for Media “She Made It” Award, and the Gracie Award for American Women in Radio and Television Public Broadcasting. Goodman has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Goodman shares the 2008 Right Livelihood Award with Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan of India, and their organisation, Land for the Tillers’ Freedom, for their work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development; Asha Hagi of Somalia “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”; and Monika Hauser of Germany, gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”
Bailout, Take II: What the Feds Do Next
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Thursday, September 4, 2008
Army opens prep school for dropouts to fill ranks
FORT JACKSON, S.C. (AP) - Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m.But [...]
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Service Charges:McCains Crusade Against Individualism
“John McCain’s fetishization of service may sound harmless, but it’s representative of his anti-individualist politics” Matt Welch looks at the threat http://www.reason.com/news/show/128546.html
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[Source: Libertarians for Ron Paul - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
