I'm aware of his plan, but it (and Goldman, himself) has significant problems.
Goldman, like Randi Rhodes, is a "vote for the lesser of two evils" proponent. As bright as he is, he's naive (or intentionally deceptive) in his suggestions.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around. And we'd better do it because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn this all around. This week's primaries swept out a bunch of incumbent Blue Dogs.
I say this as an old, OLD liberal Democrat (a 'New Deal' Democrat) who has never voted for a Republican, never will, but I can honestly say that I can't imagine ever voting for a Democrat again.
I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's what p!sses me off about Obama, and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying them that brung 'im. Because by shutting out liberals, the base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What am I going to do?
I've been doing #6 and #2 for a couple of decades now and the Democratic Party and the government have moved farther to the right. Clearly those aren't the solutions.
The solution has always been as plain as the nose on my face, and it's what I've been saying for 30 years and it's what got Obama elected in the first place but has refused to do:
Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.
The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism , and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgvnned by election dirty tricks & fraud.
When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.
KEEP READING
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-controlled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensional chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppiest in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.
Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]
What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelphia, where next?
"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
KEEP READING
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.
#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republicans"-plan
The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.KEEP READING
It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...
Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?
By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year.
While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.
Really, just let these frickers get what they want; we'll pick up the pieces later.
#3 - Primary Obama
Two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left:
MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).
MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what's happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.
Up until recently I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty would do it. Due to the hierarchical system of party government, it would be suicide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president.
Liberals/progressives within the DemocraticParty, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Reid's/Pelosi's tune. They vote as they're told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the CorporateMasters controlling them. The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/progressives to betray their constituents from safe districts if it needs them, accompanied by threats/promises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (AlanGrayson, DennisKucinich, 2 examples).
The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the WhiteHouse and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).
As I said, that was up until a few months ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama. But that would only happen if Obama's numbers went down, and like the idea of the Republicans having a brokered convention, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' would have to wake up and realize that he's sold the people out again and has made more deals with corporations in order to keep any 'normal', moderate Republican from getting into the election.
So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.
So what's left?
KEEP READING
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Then what is a progressive voter to do? Sit it out and let the TP take over? There isn't even a "lesser" of the two evils anymore.
No sooner had I hit the 'Post Comment' button did your very thought cross my mind.
The list of what the Frank Luntzes have done to the language of our body politic is really mind-boggling.
Maybe the only response should be to keep correcting the false notion that it's somehow a freebie, someone else's money and not our own.
And you, too, (me, a fan of yours).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
'Entitlement' isn't a dirty word. They're called entitlements because we are entitled to them, we paid for them.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.
Nothing changed.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.
They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".
In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.
Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old r@c!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.
And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election and a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy and Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises & sloooooowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.
Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. This was a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.
Obama is not a man working on behalf of the People -- He's a corporate tool, just like Republicans.
Since Obama has gotten into office, he's continued most of Bush's policies & his 'accomplishments' are being spun as "reform" when, in fact, they're Republican in nature.
There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People. And then try to blame it on Republicans.
Worst of all, we're stuck with marshmallow-fluff-brained voters, who soak up the most ridiculous excuses, like "Republicans won't let us do it!", when, in fact, Obama and Democrats don't even try. Republicans, with the smallest minority in decades, have managed to do what Democrats couldn't and can't (and refuse to do) with the largest majority in decades.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Pelosi says this leading up to an election. Just like when she took impeachment off the table a few weeks before the 2006 elections. So that if/when Democrats took over the majority, she could say that it was what Democrats ran on.
Obama is the gr!fter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), continues with more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans' jobs) and "payroll tax 'holidays'".
There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline -- There must be principal write-downs.
Democratic politicians should be beating this drum, loudly, constantly, and pushing the People's Budget instead of working off of a set of corporate lobbyists' plans.
Why aren't Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Democrats talking about the Progressive Caucus's budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama's AND Republicans' plans.
As Krugman has said, the Progressives' budget:
"balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of Social Security's solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense."
In 2008, 10 million more voters went to the polls to vote in a black man, in good old rac!st America, instead of a war hero, because they had so had it with conservatives.
In 2010, when Obama and Democrats had refused to use the political capital given by them when 10 million more voters voted for them, voters used their votes to dump incumbents -- On both sides of the aisle. Democratic voters dumped BlueDog incumbents big time; liberals only lost 3 seats. That's happening again in 2012 (see last week's election).
The real problem is that Big Money/Big Business controls the political process, which includes high-priced propaganda campaigns that spin policy and candidates as things they're not. Corporations have been able to control politicians, candidates, the primary process, so that populist candidates can't get a seat at the table.
Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.
Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.
Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).
Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.
Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
When Obama Obama first openly put cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits on the table during the debt ceiling negotiations many of his defenders went into full "he's playing 11th dimensional chess"-mode. They claimed Obama wasn’t so much putting these on the table because he wanted them cut right now, but to prove he was the more sensible adult in the room when Republicans rejected this grand bargain. On this one point I agree with David Brooks and think we all just need to take Obama at his word. From David Brooks:
According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.
The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.
Obama caved...again.===========================
Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.
Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.).
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.
Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Time and time again, Obama has been able to cut deals with Republicans because Pelosi delivered the votes he needed, over the objections of her own caucus. The war supplemental that included the $108 billion in IMF funding, the healthcare bill with the anti-choice language and no public option, the deal to extend the Bush tax cut and the Libya war defunding vote are just a few prominent examples.
The pattern is so well-established that Obama can correctly assume that when the time comes, he can count on Pelosi to make sure her caucus walks the plank, no matter what he gives away to Republicans.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Pelosi has done the same. Many times. Here's one of them. Here's another.
Obama has been able to cut deals with Boehner because Pelosi has delivered the votes he needed, over the objections of her own caucus. The war supplemental that included the $108 billion in IMF funding, the healthcare bill with the anti-choice language and no public option, the deal to extend the Bush tax cut and the Libya war defunding vote are just a few prominent examples.
The latest union- and job-killing free trade bills, SKoreaAFTA and CAFTA - Pelosi voted yea.
And H.R.347: Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal, outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it, anywhere in the country.- Pelosi voted yea.
And look who voted for NDAA - Pelosi!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Selective bin Laden leaking - The White House tells a court the bin Laden raid is top secret, as it keeps leaking snippets to glorify the President.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Some of the promises Obama made as a candidate—televising healthcare negotiations on C-Span, making White House contacts with lobbyists more open—and compared them with reality. The administration promised in 2009 to release visitor logs to the White House. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, to date only 1% of 500,000 meetings from the president's first eight months have been released, and thousands of known visitors (including lobbyists) are missing from the lists.
Sterns also cited news stories that explain how administration officials purposely met with lobbyists at a nearby coffee shop to avoid official records of meetings. The C-Span recordings never happened, of course, and the White House has also hid much of its work behind its "czars."
Equally damning criticism came from some of the outside groups called to testify. Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton, a frequent critic of Bush administration policies (it pushed for Bush visitor logs related to convicted felon Jack Abramoff), said the Obama administration had been even worse.
"To be clear, the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration," he said, noting that his group had filed more than 325 Freedom of Information Act requests, and some 45 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Even Anne Weismann of the Center for Responsibility for Ethics in Washington—a left-leaning group that tends to assault Republicans while ignoring ethics-tarred Democrats—was forced to acknowledge that the White House hasn't kept its word. "The policies for disclosure are in place, but the applications of the policies do not exist," she said.
Democrats groused that this hearing was unfair since no one from the White House testified. Mr. Stearns noted that the administration had been invited but refused to send anyone, leading him to quip: "The failure to send any witness to a hearing about White House transparency . . . is revealing in its own way about the administration's true attitudes."
In February 2012, several frequent FOIA requesters filed a class-action lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, alleging that it unlawfully impedes requesters by requiring them to agree to pay all fees without providing any cost estimate, by imposing new fees for declassification and by refusing to release records in electronic form. Also in February, five nonprofit groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, asserted that the Department of Homeland Security was demanding thousands of dollars in “exorbitant fees” to process FOIA requests, even though the groups regularly obtained waivers in the past.
The Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and EFF have filed suit against the US Department of Homeland Security for denying access to public records on the questioning and searches of travelers at US borders. The suit responds to growing complaints by U.S. citizens and immigrants of excessive or repeated screenings by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. ALC a San Francisco-based civil rights organization received more than 20 complaints from Northern California residents last year who said they were grilled about their families religious practices volunteer activities political beliefs or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad. In addition customs agents examined travelers' books business cards collected from friends and colleagues handwritten notes personal photos laptop computer files and cell phone directories and sometimes made copies of this information.
Lawsuit Forces Release of Obama Vacation Records
Or this, or this.
A year ago, representatives of four open-government groups visited the Oval Office to give Obama an award for his “deep commitment to transparency.” (The event prompted some snickering because it was closed to the press and was omitted from Obama’s public schedule.)
KEEP READING
Even if that was true, that it was being done on sincere concerns for national security, there's no 'transparency' or openness about it. There's stalling, misdirection, and outright deception being employed to avoid the issue altogether.
But the Obama administration's transparency failure goes way beyond national security matters:
The Office of Management and Budget has stalled for more than a year the proposals of the chief FOIA ombudsman’s office to improve governmentwide FOIA operations
Obama Administration Refuses to Release Milestones Missed by Fisker Under Conditions of Auto Manufacturer's $528.7 Million Government Loan
Thanks to a FOIA lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: FAA Reveals List of Colleges and Police Departments That Can Fly Drones
Administration ignores FOIA request, Electronic Frontier Foundation forced to sue - The Intelligence Oversight Board Has Members - But We Had to Sue the Government to Find Out:
The Intelligence Oversight Board, or IOB, is a Presidentially appointed, independent, civilian oversight board charged with ensuring that intelligence investigations comply with laws, executive orders, and internal agency procedures. Toward the end of the Bush Administration, the IOB’s oversight responsibilities were largely gutted, shifting primary responsibility to the Director of National Intelligence. However, shortly after taking office, President Obama rolled back those changes, restoring many of the IOB’s important oversight functions.
In February 2011, following the White House’s failure to respond to a reporter’s questions concerning the IOB, we submitted a FOIA request to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to determine if, in fact, the IOB had members. We didn’t hear anything for 8 months.
It had nothing to do with retaliation. Nothing.
Click on this.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
We were taken to war on lies.
We were taken to war and it's destroyed us, fiscally and legally and morally.
We were taken to war and it continues and expands under Obama.
It will continue, our lives will get worse, much worse, until We The People stop it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What Leon Panetta said about enhanced interrogation techniques:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: I'd like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was -- as a result of water boarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?
PANETTA: It-- you know, Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here. We had a multiple source-- a multiple series of-- sources that provided information with regards to the situation. Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees but we also had information from other sources as well. From Sigent intelligence, from imagery, from other sources that we had-- assets on the ground. And it was a combination of all of that that ultimately we were able to put together that led us to that compound. So-- it's-- it's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.
WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was, in part, among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?
PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether-- whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question.
WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that --
PANETTA: Right.
WILLIAMS: -- includes water boarding?
PANETTA: That's correct.
Guidebook to False Confessions": Key Document John Yoo Used to Draft Torture Memo Released
If HP is going to just be a news aggregated website, it should at least aggregate some accurate stories.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You're half right.
It's to get false information, but it's got nothing to do with the wishes of the interrogators. The EIT order came from inside the White House.
It was to set up a justification to attack Iraq. To link 9/11 and Iraq. To link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.
About Torture
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Waterboarding is torture, and it's long settled law.
It wouldn't matter whether it works or not (it does; it'll get you confessions, lies, everything, just to make it stop) -- It wasn't used to get accurate information. It was used to get false information.
That has been proven, known, for some time now, and every article like this is just for disinformation purposes, to distract attention from that fact and keep the 'official line' in play. To keep you from asking, "Why was it used to get false information?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The road to our neverending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lead right through JohnMurtha's seat in Congress, and witnessed by Paul Kanjorski.
To my knowledge, Paul Kanjorski is the one of several witnesses (all congressmen) who can directly place GeorgeWBush at the scene of the conspiracy to deceive Congress into backing the attack on Iraq with evidence falsified by the CIA.
It's through Kanjorski's account that we learn the BushCheney Administration's scheme, which included the CIA's fabricating photographs for the explicit purpose of deceiving Congress into authorizating the use of military force in Iraq.
http://www.counterpunch.org/brasch09032007.html
After you read that, read this, where JohnMurtha showed up again in this report (this got no reporting in the MSM), where Kanjorski told his constituents in a townhall meeting that he voted to give Bush the authorization to go to war in Iraq based on a briefing he attended with other congressmen at the WhiteHouse (with Bush & CondiRice) in which the CIA presented "smoking gun photos" of Iraq having the ability to fly nuclear/biological weapons to the US mainland.
The photos later turned out to have been faked by the CIA, staged in the southwest US:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/26/dick-cheneys-torture-kabuki/
The story then continues with JohnMurtha's role & intersects with the "Nancy Pelosi was briefed by the CIA on waterboarding/'No, I Wasn't'"-story (remember that?). It appears that Murtha was used by the CIA & BushCo to deceive the 'Gang of 8' and Congress about the waterboarding/torture. With this story (read here), we get some insight into how Cheney got all of his & Bush's crimes past congressional oversight (through his knowledge of how congressional subcommittees operated, from his earlier stint as a congressman):
Here's a background clip of the person that Marcy Wheeler/emptywheel references in the link above, Greg Sargent, who in this clip is being interviewed by Rachel Maddow about the Pelosi-CIA story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQD7ELc5Nmo
There's a part 1 to the clip, which is the lead-in where Rachel summarizes the situation before she gets to Greg Sargent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBjQ7Sv9u0Q
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The purpose of waterboarding was not to get real or accurate information: It was to get false information.
The videotapes would have shown that, and that is why they were destroyed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What US Taxpayers funded & What Obama's Covering Up --
CIA gave waterboarders $5M legal shield:
When the CIA decided to waterboard suspected terror detainees in overseas prisons, the agency turned to a pair of contractors. The men designed the CIA's interrogation program and also personally took part in the waterboarding sessions.
But to do the job, the CIA had to promise to cover at least $5 million in legal fees for them in case there was trouble down the road, former U.S. officials said.
Turns out the contractors needed that secret agreement as taxpayers pay to defend the men in a federal investigation over an interrogation tactic the United States now says is torture. The deal is even more generous than the protections the agency typically provides its own officers, giving the two men access to more money to finance their defenses.
It has long been known that psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen created the CIA's interrogation program. But former U.S. intelligence officials said Mitchell and Jessen also repeatedly subjected terror suspects inside CIA-run secret prisons to waterboarding, a simulated drowning tactic.
The revelation of the contractors' involvement is the first known confirmation of any individuals who conducted waterboarding at the so-called black sites, underscoring just how much the agency relied on outside help in its most sensitive interrogations.
Normally, CIA officers buy insurance to cover possible legal bills. It costs about $300 a year for $1 million in coverage. Today, the CIA pays the premiums for most officers, but at the height of the war on terrorism, officers had to pay half.
The Mitchell and Jessen arrangement, known as an "indemnity promise," was structured differently. Unlike CIA officers, whose identities are classified, Mitchell and Jessen were public citizens who received some of the earliest scrutiny by reporters and lawmakers. The two wanted more protection.
The agency agreed to pay the legal bills for the psychologists' firm, Mitchell, Jessen & Associates, directly from CIA accounts, according to several interviews with the former officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
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