This pisses me off in a BIG way.

Just for starters there’s this. But, read the article. It is short and it is a doozy.

In just the last few days, virtually unnoticed by most of the news media, administration officials have:
Rejected a new Freedom of Information request for White House visitor logs (despite their announced intention to start making such documents public).
Appealed, yet again, to invoke “state secrets” to block a lawsuit that might shed light on the CIA’s extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to countries that practice torture.
Gotten Congress to pass legislation that would prevent graphic photographs of detainee abuse by the U.S. government from ever becoming public. (Update: Obama on Thursday signed into law a homeland security bill that exempts from the photos from the Freedom of Information Act.)

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2009/10/29/obama-secrecy-watch-full-intelligence-briefings-would-step-on-executive-prerogatives.aspx

Executive prerogatives my ass. I say power corrupts.

Need to stay on ours too.

DA

Don't blame the Blue Dog Democrats. Eating their own vomit is just their nature

And the lions win . . . . Froomkin gets head bitten off at the Washington Post. Dan Froomkin’s truth apparently is too hard for some to swallow.

The Heretik thinks this bites.

Her opposite? The greatest brain on earth.

DA

Part bird virus, part pig virus, part human virus…

Just the opposite is true. It resulted in the senseless deaths of thousands of Americans.

We have known (thanks to reports from former Deputy Sec of State, Larry Wilkerson) for some time that key claims made by the administration about contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda were the result of the torture of one Ibn Sheikh Al Libby, who was ”rendered” to Syria and tortured during interrogation.  Eventually, they put him in a coffin-like “confinement box” for an extended period of time and then beat him senseless when he was eventually taken out. 

Suddenly, he answered “Yes” to the repeated questions about the supposed contacts. 

That information was a key argument put forth by the administration during Colin Powell’s now infamous UN speech.

Just so you know I am not pulling that info out of my posterior, here is Wilkerson in his own somewhat sanitized words:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4481092.stm

Lately, I’m growing increasingly concerned because two things have just happened here that really make me wonder.

And the one is the questioning of Sheikh al-Libby where his confessions were obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorised by Geneva.

It led Colin Powell to say at the UN on 5 February 2003 that there were some pretty substantive contacts between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. And we now know that al-Libby’s forced confession has been recanted and we know – we’re pretty sure that it was invalid.

But more important than that, we know that there was a defence intelligence agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation. We never heard about that.

Follow that up with Curveball, and the fact that the Germans now say they told our CIA well before Colin Powell gave his presentation that Curveball – the source to the biological mobile laboratories – was lying and was not a trustworthy source. And then you begin to speculate, you begin to wonder was this intelligence spun; was it politicised; was it cherry-picked; did in fact the American people get fooled – I am beginning to have my concerns.

Got that?  Tortured false confessions led us into a brutal and illegal war in Iraq. 

So, rather than saving American lives, it is clear that it has actually cost us thouands of American lives (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis theirs).

False confessions tortured out of people have resulted in more U.S. deaths than 9-11! 

What’s more:

Wilkerson has recently given several recent interviews where he says that as part of his State Department job, he became aware of roughly 200 detainees that have died in our hands.  That number grew steadily over time as he tracked it.  His early testimony before Congress started with about 100. 

You do not hear people talking about the folks we killed in custody. But, you watch, that will come out in more detail as this is investigated by the media and hopefully a Federal prosecutor. 

We were not only inflicting “severe physical and mental pain” on our detainees. We were literally torturing folks to DEATH.

Folks like this guy (in pics taken so they could be used to threaten other detainees with a similar fate):

And that my friends is why the sick freaks that planned, authorized AND carried out this torture program must be prosecuted.  Every last one of them.  Just as the Geneva Conventions REQUIRES.

Do it to prevent this from ever happening again. Do it to get justice for our victims. Do it for the senseless victims (on both sides) of a war we launched based on tortured confessions.

Do it because AMERICA IS A COUNTRY OF LAWS.

DA

Unless you believe in witches, you know that torture produces false confessions.  History proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When you hear media phrasing like “self-confessed mastermind of 9-11″, remember that if it were you or I experiencing this torture we’d confess to being the mastermind just to make the abuse stop.  By the time they waterboarded us 183 times in a month, we would actually believe that we had been the so-called “mastermind” of the attack.

DA

Thought I’d recirculate this post from “Domionists for Tancredo 2012″. 

http://protoplasm.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/no-matter-what-we-call-it-torture-can-change-hearts-of-evildoers/

Give it a good read.  It BLEW my mind. 

Is there any word for views like this other than “sick”?  Maybe “Christofascism”?

DA

www.seedsofdoubt.com

Apparently this freak Rev. Hipple forgets that:

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Just when I think I could not be more disgusted:

No matter what we call it, torture can change hearts of evildoers

By Hipple, Rev. Paul T.

It is hard to resist sarcasm.  With our US  government now transitioning from one based upon Christian Principles to one based on the Quran, it seems to have become fashionable lately to rename ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ as torture.

We must accept the fact that what is sure to follow this revision of terms is Persecution of the good Christians working for the Bush administration, because nobody who has been accused of practicing enhanced interrogation techniques will ever be convicted of war crimes.

Fine, let’s call it torture and let’s accept that Christians, like Jesus Christ before them, will be unjustly brought to trial and face death for their acts of torture.  When this happens, let us Prayerfully give thanks, taking solace in how it reminds us that persecution is precisely what defines Christians as a great Religious Movement.

Even so, the elect can take further solace in knowing the convicted are saved and at Peace with God.  If the US detention facility official who is conducting torture does  not enjoy torturing the terrorist prisoner, it is completely illogical to think that he is engaged in anything other than the routine extraction of intelligence information from heartless, bloodthirsty murderers.

The fact of the matter is,  we are compelled by our Christian Faith to perform whatever uncomfortable acts are necessary to prevent islamojihadists from committing mass murder.  And if Good Christians are brought to trial and persecuted simply because they sought to uncover these muslim deceptions, we must accept that as God’s Will.

And through all of this, let’s not forget that torture does work.  The liberal mainstream media would have you believe that it doesn’t.  But of course, they have that wrong, too.

For an excellent example, look no further than to the case of  Sayed Imam Al-Sharif, ak Dr. Fadl.   As we all know, before now, no muslim has ever repudiated the terrorist acts of al-Qaeda and for this reason, we now clearly understand that Islam is not a peace loving religion.  However, none other than the ideological founder of Islamic Jihad,  after being tortured as a prisoner of  the Egyptian authorities for over a decade, Dr. Fadl finally broke, repudiating his islamofascist legacy:

In a prison cell south of Cairo a repentant Egyptian terrorist leader is putting the finishing touches to a remarkable recantation that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and is set to generate furious controversy among former comrades still fighting with al-Qaida.

Of course, this common criminal doesn’t believe a word of it, and would gladly go back to slaughtering Christians if given the chance.  But that isn’t the point.  My point is this repudiation of violent islamic extremeism would not have been possible without God’s magnificant instrument of torture! Now, for the first time, we have real hope Obama bin Laden will fear what has happened to his colleague, heed the words of this torture victim, lay down his arms, and surrender peaceflly to the nearest authorities.

The next time someone trys to tell you torture is useless, tell them about how a bloodthirsty jihadist in prison called Dr. Fadl,  somewhere around or near the Nile River,  is suddenly singing peace and love like a purple martin sitting on a 20 foot pole.

They clearly went WAY beyond these bogus authorizations.
 
Procesute these torturer scum.  Make America great again.
 
DA

p.s. Thanks to the tireless work of the ACLU, you can read the original memos here:

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html

 Lest we get too focused on the lawyers, or the CIA or any other indivdual abuser. 

Remember, they are ALL guilty of a criminal conspiracy and of torture.  War crimes for which others have been prosecuted and even lost their lives.

I am sure there are others I am missing. Let the investigtations show who they are.

 DA