CIA tapes were destroyed to ’save image.’
CIA tapes were destroyed to ’save image.’
The New York Times reports that the CIA’s “every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived — by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.” The Times adds:
By late 2002, interrogators were recycling videotapes, preserving only two days of tapes before recording over them, one C.I.A. officer said. Finally, senior agency officials decided that written summaries of prisoners’ answers would suffice.
Still, that decision left hundreds of hours of videotape of the two Qaeda figures locked in an overseas safe.
Clandestine service officers who had overseen the interrogations began pushing hard to destroy the tapes. But George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, was wary, in part because the agency’s top lawyer, Scott W. Muller, advised against it, current and former officials said.
Yet agency officials decided to float the idea of eliminating the tapes on Capitol Hill, hoping for political cover. In February 2003, Mr. Muller told members of the House and Senate oversight committees about the C.I.A’s interest in destroying the tapes for security reasons.
The tapes recorded a program “so closely guarded that President Bush himself had agreed with intelligence officials’ advice that he not be told the locations of the secret C.I.A. prisons.”
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I’d say this is sounding more and more like something out of an Austin Powers movie, but it’s too painful to laugh about.
The CIA worried about its image? Not a problem… Herr Brusch took care of THAT completely. The CIA HAS no image left to worry about. As for the location of tapes… uhhh… Dick Cheney’s super-secret man-sized safe?
December 29th, 2007 at 10:24 pmBush is such a wuss he couldn’t even handle knowing the location of where his criminal acts were taking place.
Everyday it becomes more and more like the Mafia.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:31 pmSo Bush knew all about the Not Torture, but didn’t want to know where the Not Torture was not taking place?
December 29th, 2007 at 10:32 pmCYA
December 29th, 2007 at 10:41 pmThe CIA wanted to save it’s image?
Too late.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:42 pmExactly, Zoo, it’s like Al-Qaeda member offering candies to the orphanes they made after killing their parents.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:49 pmBTW, when the CIA has done something NOT illegal?
December 29th, 2007 at 10:49 pmAnybody watching the Patriots/Giants game? No? Oh, you are missing one great battle.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:56 pmPats – 31, Giants – 28 with 9:53 to go in regulation time.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:57 pmNews flash ~
Thousands of Salvadorans and Hondurans were brought back to life today so the CIA could save their image.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:04 pmEveryday it becomes more and more like the Mafia.
Comment by Jack Jett — December 29, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Actually, Jack, that is indeed how the Mafia functions. There are so many layers of intermediaries between the head of the family and the street level flunky who commits the actual crime tht it was impossible for decades to pin anything on the bosses, except for the Murder, Inc case. And those convictions were only possible because Abe Reles “Kid Twist” talked.
That is why RICO was written and proved to be so effective – it allowed whole crime families to be prosecuted on the basis of association.
So when Brusch agrees to NOT know the location of the tapes, it is EXACTLY how organized crime functions.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:17 pmalmost as much of a waste as the UN.
Comment by Gin Dummy — December 29, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
Ooops!!! Saturday Night Troll Alert!!!
December 29th, 2007 at 11:18 pmYeah, the CIA and Chimpy didn’t want real images of torture to expose them to criminal charges.
Hoorary for America, home of the gulags and torturers!
Despicable.
Oh yeah, if they have nothing to hide!
-GSD
December 29th, 2007 at 11:32 pmThe tapes might visually identify as many as five or six people present for each interrogation — interrogators themselves, whom the agency now prefers to call “debriefersâ€; doctors or doctor’s assistants who monitored the prisoner’s medical state; and security officers, the official said. Some traveled regularly in and out of areas where Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists are active, he said.
If this is accurate, Abu Ghraib, and the secret sites in Afghanistan and elsewhere were little more than torture r&d. That the CIA had medical personnel overlooking the prisoner’s physical condition – and still had prisoners freeze to death – is amateur-hour.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:33 pmWhile the “tapes” have apparently been destroyed, if medical personnel were involved, there is the chance that their documentation still survives. They abbrogated their oaths by overseeing torture, and rightfully should be identified, and their licences revoked. This would invalidate any claims of priviledge.
Bush may not have known, but I’m pretty sure Cheney did. Can’t have the boss out of the loop, you know?
December 29th, 2007 at 11:33 pmNice, now the US has a bunch of Dr. Mengeles running around.
Thanks George, you really restored dignity to the Whitehouse!
-GSD
December 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pmBush was covered by the crimes like Nixon. Saying your not going to tell the President still makes the President responsible. Yes we know Bush is a puppet and Cheney runs the White House but Bush is responsible for each and every person he appointed and their illegal actions. Now it’s time to put a stop to this now. The people elected Bush and he is the one who is to be in charge. If he gave that responsibility to others it doesn’t matter.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:10 amSo what if Pres Bush didn’t know the exact locations of the secret prisons run by the CIA?
Fact remains he knew there were/are secret prisons, and he knew about the renditions and “enhanced” interrogations techniques. I think now it’s clear that war crimes were/are being committed with green light from the White House.
Whether or not Pres Bush could pinpoint the location of the CIA-run prisons is nothing more than quibble, really.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:18 amAnd the response from CongressWeenies will be a yawn, a shrug, and a, well, what are we supposed to do about it>?
WeenieCongressWeenies.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:21 amTHE CIA COMMITS OVER 100,000 SERIOUS CRIMES EACH YEAR
It’s no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does in is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA’s spooks “engage in highly illegal
activities” at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every day). Mind you, we aren’t talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities — these are “highly
illegal activities” that “break extremely serious laws.”
In 1996, the House of Representatives’ Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a huge report entitled “IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.” Buried amid
hun-dreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph:
The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.
Source: 50 things you’re not supposed to know.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:33 amI support the CIA destroying those tapes. War is not pretty – do we show live video of our troops in hand to hand combat? Interrogation is a part of warfare, and the public doesn’t need to see it, especially since the public wouldn’t be seeing what the captive was doing prior to his capture and interrogation, to balance the coverage.
December 30th, 2007 at 1:53 amComment by Jason M. Hendler — December 30, 2007 @ 1:53 am
There is no “balancing” the coverage of torture, since it’s illegal. Not to mention immoral.
Your posts can be so harebrained, absurd, and preposterous, I am inclined to believe internet access is part of your occupational therapy.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:51 amRe: Post #23 — Has there been discussion about the general public needing to view these tapes? If so, when and where?
There could be many other important uses for these tapes that would not result in their being seen by the general public. If these tapes were of interrogations, their preservation would be important to verify whatever the suspect said when they are tried in court and the circumstances under which their statements were elicited. These tapes could also be viewed by upper echelons of the CIA, Executive Branch and key members of Congress (such as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee) to verify that the United States was adhering to internationally accepted protocols. These are but a couple of many important reasons for preserving the tapes.
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
December 30th, 2007 at 3:03 amBUSH’S WAR CRIMES
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/68705,CST-EDT-REF23B.article
Bush seeks retroactive immunity for violating War Crimes Act
September 23, 2006
BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN
Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate — and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.
The ”pardon” is buried in Bush’s proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ”pardon” provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.
Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.
Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ”prosecutors and independent counsels” might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ‘’special prosecutors” prior to the statute’s reauthorization in 1994) aren’t for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.
Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.
To ”reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,” Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn’t apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.
When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.
What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.
Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
December 30th, 2007 at 5:23 amDowning St. Memos and Nuremberg: Illegality of the Iraq War
My most recent article on The Last Ditch website is “The Downing Street memos and Nuremberg: The illegality of the war on Iraq” at http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_downing.htm which presents how the US attack on Iraq was illegal by the standards of the Nuremberg trial and current international law. While this was pretty obvious before the release of the Downing St. memos, those leaked memos confirm it completely.
Some excerpts:
The American Establishment has conventionally praised and invoked the 1945-46 Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership as a model for bringing international criminals to justice. But what if the same standards applied at Nuremberg were also applied to current U.S. policy? And a parallel trial were convened? In such a proceeding, would American leaders fare any better than the captured German leadership?
When people today think of Nazi criminality they think of the mass extermination of Jews: gas chambers, human soap, millions of bodies turned to ash in factory-like death camps. But the fact, which has largely been tossed down the memory hole, is that the extermination of Jews was not the fundamental Nazi crime cited at Nuremberg. Nor was it even the murder of noncombatant gentiles in addition to Jews. Rather, the major crime was the making of “aggressive war” — also referred to as “crimes against peace.”
It is plain, then, that people knowledgeable about international law considered the attack on Iraq to be illegal long before the Downing Street memos came to light in 2005. But the leaked memos further confirm the war’s illegality.
First, they confirm that the Bush administration had decided to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam before Blix’s inspectors ever set foot in Iraq. In short, not finding any WMDs would not prevent a U.S. attack
But no matter how positively the United States advertises itself and its motives, it has violated the same precepts of international law for which the Nazi leaders, and even some men who were not among the chief leaders, were severely punished. Not to worry, though: the United States can get away with its violations of international law. Unlike Nazi Germany, it has yet to be conquered by its enemies.
But none of that is of any importance to America’s current leadership . . . . Judging from the American example, we must conclude that the only punishable “crime” in the struggle among nation-states is to lose a war.
In light of that rule, it is easy to understand why other countries scramble to equip themselves with the most powerful weapons they can lay their hands on.
For the entire article see: http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_downing.htm
December 30th, 2007 at 5:24 amPresident Bush said the United States does not torture prisoners, commenting after Vice President Dick Cheney embraced the suggestion that a dunk in water might be useful to get terrorist suspects to talk.
WATERBOARDING:
Waterboarding is a type of torture used in coercive interrogations or for punishment. The modern form of the practice simulates drowning and produces a severe gag reflex, making the subject believe his or her death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
TORTURE:
The word torture is commonly used to mean the infliction of pain to break the will of the victim or victims. Any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, sadism, information gathering, or to obtain false confessions for propaganda or political purposes may be called torture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture
ORWELLIAN:
The term “Orwellian” usually refers to one or more of the following:
Manipulation of language for political ends. Most significantly by introducing to words meanings in opposition to their denotative meanings.
Invasion by the state of personal privacy, whether physically or by means of surveillance.
The total control of daily life by the state, as in a “Big Brother” society.
Active encouragement by the state of “doublethink,” whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent.
The denial or rewriting of past events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian
December 30th, 2007 at 5:25 amhttp://www.warcrimeswatch.org
Published on Friday, November 3, 2006 by The Nation
War Criminals, Beware
by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
On November 14 a group of lawyers and other experts will come before the German federal prosecutor and ask him to open a criminal investigation targeting Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other key Bush Administration figures for war crimes. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Act provides a central argument for the legal action, under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction: It demonstrates the intent of the Bush Administration to immunize itself legally from prosecution in the United States, even for the most serious crimes.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the President promoted and recently signed into law, provides retroactive immunity for civilians who violated the War Crimes Act, including officials of the Bush Administration. Such an attempt to provide immunity for their crimes, it will be argued, is in itself evidence of an effort to block prosecution of those crimes. Indeed, according to Scott Horton, chair of the International Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, when Yugoslavia sought to immunize senior government officials, the United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.
“The United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.â€
“The United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.â€
“The United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.â€
December 30th, 2007 at 5:25 amThe Decider is more ridiculous than his parodies!
December 30th, 2007 at 6:53 amSo? Those laws became outdated on 9/11.
Comment by Frank M — December 30, 2007 @ 6:10 am
So Iran can proceed with whatever they meant by wiping Israel off the map?
December 30th, 2007 at 8:06 amThis is nothing out of ordinary. Many high level leaders such as those in Senate’s Intelligence and Military committees, choose to opt out of information they do not need. It’s common sense. If you don’t know something sensitive, you can’t accidentally blurt it out in public.
Comment by Frank M — December 30, 2007 @ 6:09 am
It’s more like if you’re not aware of illegal activity then there’s no way you can be prosecuted.
December 30th, 2007 at 8:15 amSo? Those laws became outdated on 9/11.
Comment by Frank M — December 30, 2007 @ 6:10 am
So, Al Qaeda in attacking the US, negated rule of law in the US, according to you?
If that is the case, they already won and have brought down the US Constitution along with the Twin Towers, in one attack.
Also, since all laws before 9/11 are now “outdated” according to you, then it should be perfectly legal for us to put 2 in your noggin, right on a streetcorner in public view, since you are a self professed fascist, right Frankie Twinkletoes?
December 30th, 2007 at 9:21 amIf not, explain why some laws aren ow outdated, but some are not? How do you determine which laws are still in force?
Compare a soldier, police officer, firefighter or even other CIA agents willing to willing to die to protect the public to the cowards afraid of jail time for something they claim is “just interrogation”.
If there was a ticking time bomb, which there wasn’t, would you be willing to risk jail time in order to save lives? You’d most likely be pardoned anyway.
Having said all this; I’m not justifying it and find torture abhorrent and I find their lack of conviction just as abhorrent.
Have the courage not to put yourself in that position in the first place.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:26 amClearly the CIA is a renegade agency that appears to answer to nobody. It also appears that the Bush administration rather keep its head in the sand so it can offer plausible deniability whenever anything goes wrong. Instead of taking these huge blunders and wanton illegal activity as lessons learned, we tacitly approve how these Keystone Kops go about their business.
http://13martyrs.blogspot.com/
December 30th, 2007 at 9:33 amCompare a soldier, police officer, firefighter or even other CIA agents willing to willing to die to protect the public to the cowards afraid of jail time for something they claim is “just interrogationâ€.
Comment by toc001 — December 30, 2007 @ 9:26 am
I was a soldier, and the Army Field Manual clearly states torture ( waterboarding included ) is against US AND International Law. Period. It states explicitly that prisoners of war are not to be abused, tortured, or beaten.
Any soldier worth his ( or her ) salt will refuse to follow illegal orders.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:35 amFrom the NY Times article:
But interviews with two dozen current and former officials, most of whom would speak about the classified program only on the condition of anonymity, revealed new details about why the tapes were made and then eliminated. Their accounts show how political and legal considerations competed with intelligence concerns in the handling of the tapes.
TWO DOZEN officials talking “anonymously” about a CLASSIFIED program. Some would be self serving….an organization which will torture in the national interest will LIE in the national interest.
But is sounds like people are coming out of the woodwork with information about these tapes. Congress needs to sift through this information to get at the truth…And the Bush Administration needs to worry.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:37 amIf plausible deniability were any thiner it would be invisible.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:46 amHow long are we going to permit torture to be committed in our names? The only way America can begin to find its way back to respectability is to start enforcing our laws for even those who think they are above them – starting with turning over everyone suspected of any violations of the Geneva Conventions to The Hague for trial. Then can deal with breaches of our own domestic laws such as lying to congress, illegal wiretapping, etc..
December 30th, 2007 at 10:43 amFrank M. is not a troll. He is a neanderthal, and is very very concerned about the fact that his kind is slowly (but surely, mind) being superceded by a species that has a cortex that _can_ adapt and learn.
December 30th, 2007 at 11:49 amThe tapes might visually identify as many as five or six people present for each interrogation — interrogators themselves, whom the agency now prefers to call “debriefersâ€; doctors or doctor’s assistants who monitored the prisoner’s medical state;
What kind of people are they? How can they live with themselves and what they have done? They will have to compartmentalize what they have done and justify it somehow (not sure how they can do that). Otherwise, it will drive them crazy.
December 30th, 2007 at 11:55 amFrank M. is not a troll. He is a neanderthal, and is very very concerned about the fact that his kind is slowly (but surely, mind) being superceded by a species that has a cortex that _can_ adapt and learn.
Wrong! Francine definitely is a troll. The only reason why he is here is to throw feces on the wall and watch for people to react. He is a lilly-livered little coward who is fine with allowing other people’s sons and daughters to die to keep him safe but when confronted on why he isn’t in Iraq, his reaction was that it wasn’t in his best interests since he might get hurt. I pity him.
December 30th, 2007 at 11:57 am…especially since the public wouldn’t be seeing what the captive was doing prior to his capture and interrogation, to balance the coverage.
Comment by Jason M. Hendler
And neither did the CIA or anyone else in charge. Many of the people they are torturing are being tortured based on the word of the person who sold them to the USA. Yes, SOLD, for money.
JMH is a black-hearted lilly livered scardy cat troll like Francine. He is fine with other people’s children dying to keep him safe. No matter that the chances of him being killed in a terrorist attack are one in a million, he’s fine with trashing the constitution and giving up our moral high ground just so he can feel safe. I pity him.
BTW, anyone besides me notice that the one-day-hit-troll that showed up the other day when JMH was missing in action is now missing in action? Trying on a new moniker JMH? That one didn’t work any better than this one does. You are still a creep.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:02 pmComment by plunger — December 30, 2007 @ 5:23 am
Plunger – try a synopsis and then a link. Your lengthly cut-and-paste posts are more than irritating. Do you think they make you look intelligent? Anyone can cut and paste, even kindergarteners.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:05 pmSo? Those laws became outdated on 9/11.
Comment by Frank M
So Francine thinks that that laws making torture a crime became outdated on 9/11. I guess, then, that Francine would be fine with our enemies torturing our soldiers because if the laws against torture became outdated, they were outdated for everyone, not just us. What a sorry little creep Francine is. I pity him.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pmWayne,
I agree, which is why I qualified my post at the end with “Have the courage not to put yourself in that position in the first place.”
The Nuremburg defense didn’t work then and won’t work now.
These CIA agents should have refused in the first place.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pm#49 – Good point. Would you rather run the risk of losing your job or being hanged by the neck until dead?
December 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm“Wrong! Francine definitely is a troll. The only reason why he is here is to throw feces on the wall and watch for people to react. He is a lilly-livered little coward who is fine with allowing other people’s sons and daughters to die to keep him safe but when confronted on why he isn’t in Iraq, his reaction was that it wasn’t in his best interests since he might get hurt. I pity him.”
But, gosh, he’s _awfully_ brave hiding behind his keyboard, listening to his Toby Keith records! Give the guy a break. ;^)
December 30th, 2007 at 12:47 pm“This is nothing out of ordinary. Many high level leaders such as those in Senate’s Intelligence and Military committees, choose to opt out of information they do not need. It’s common sense. If you don’t know something sensitive, you can’t accidentally blurt it out in public.”
Comment by Frank M
He’s talking about the ostrich-like, republican-led, 109th congress. Sen. Pat Roberts to be specific.
December 30th, 2007 at 1:17 pmFinally, senior agency officials decided that written summaries of prisoners’ answers would suffice.
There was too much screams and muffed sounds, and the noise of runing water was making it dificult to understand what was going on. It was looking too much like TORTURE!
December 30th, 2007 at 1:27 pmWATERBOARD FRANK M!
December 30th, 2007 at 1:29 pmSo Bush knew all about the Not Torture, but didn’t want to know where the Not Torture was not taking place?
Comment by RUCerious
December 30th, 2007 at 1:30 pmExcellent comment!!!
WATERBOARD FRANK M!
Comment by sacopenapa
With his own urine…
December 30th, 2007 at 1:35 pmI was a soldier, and the Army Field Manual clearly states torture ( waterboarding included ) is against US AND International Law. Period. It states explicitly that prisoners of war are not to be abused, tortured, or beaten.
Any soldier worth his ( or her ) salt will refuse to follow illegal orders.
Comment by Wayne
December 30th, 2007 at 1:37 pmTHANKS WAYNE!!!
THE CIA COMMITS OVER 100,000 SERIOUS CRIMES EACH YEAR
Comment from above
InLatin America CIA is viewed as a criminal North American Agency. It was involved in the assassination of Che Guevara, in the Torture of thousands of people, and most glaringly involved in the exange of drugs/cocaine (to the US) for guns (from the US). As a joke we say: Cocaine Importing Agency.
December 30th, 2007 at 1:42 pmInteresting that you keep trying to lump posters in with me. I guess you aren’t getting any traction slamming what I’ve posted, so you have to seek out worst posters and link my name to theirs.
I am so glad those CIA tapes were erased, because Dems would have used them in this election to win votes. Now, the only tapes we watch are terrorists shooting and bombing a muslim woman. No coincidence, Hill’reh’s numbers are way up, and Reps vs. Dems must be up, because no pollster will post the results, which likely show Hill’reh, Obama and Edwards waaaaaaay down against the likely Reps.
THAT is fair and balanced – woo hoo!
December 30th, 2007 at 3:45 pmThat leaves an ‘image’ of OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE….nice trade off?
December 30th, 2007 at 4:35 pmIn the bigger picture, as I remember it, Daddy Bush had / has significant CIA ties. Now this is happening with Sonny Boy Bush. The main players seem to be replete with people who were thoroughly vetted with the Iran-Contra mess.
How do the pieces fit together to something bigger than even the stupidity of Shrub ?
December 30th, 2007 at 5:03 pmLets say the tape recorded a conversation like this.
Question: WTF didn’t you guys hit the Capitol and White House. We paid for 5 targets. Now POTSUS can’t relocate the White House to Crawford and still has to deal with an elected Congress.
Answer: We did our best but your lousy airlines can not take off on time, so one plane could not take off and you shot down one of our other flights.
Why you do that?
Question: It was too slow. Well, we want our money back, where is it?.
Answer: He invested it in some SIV’s. It is making really good returns and Greenspan promised to give him a heads up for when he pulls the plug on the sub-primes, so he can sell at a big profit.
Question: Where is he now?.
Answer: He is setting up a video production company in Crawford. He has a nice big government contract for making up to 3 videos per year on request. He even hired a speech writer from America but I can not remember his name.
Question: How did he get out of Afghanistan?. He made us look real bad, we were supposed fly him to Crawford ourselves.
Answer: Come on, don’t you know he was in NY on 9/11? He did not want to miss the show in person, plus he needed to see a Doctor for his kidney problem. Hey, how did you get the buildings to fall down, that was pretty cool. But he was very upset, said he ate a lot of dust and complains he has some lung problems now, but his Doctor in Crawford is very good and sends all his bills to the White House.
Question: Well, you look a bit tired. We have a couple of virgins we know you like, they can help you get cleaned up and attend to your needs. We taught them a few tricks, do you mind if we tape the action?.
Answer. Thank you but I prefer my privacy. Do you mind if I dine in tonight?. Please deliver my dinner by 7:30. And please, do not overcook the steak like last time, I prefer it medium-rare.
Those tapes? Burn, baby, burn.
December 30th, 2007 at 8:26 pmWow, well I’m sure glad they managed to “preserve their image”…
December 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pmSo many war criminals and not enough judges.
What an excellent expose
They were playing with fire and got burned by the blowback… we all got burned. Now they will use anything, including torture, to cover their tracks.
I do think that it is naive to believe Cofer Black still does not work for the CIA. “Retirement” of such officers is a spurious business. Blackwater, for which Black is a principal, appears to me to be primarily a CIA asset, and a dangerous one, as the CIA appears to be assembling a paramilitary force with both international and domestic projections.
In the larger scale, this use of reactionary nationalist forces to subdue an adversary has often blown up in the face of imperialists. The U.S.-backed war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was a reactionary war through and through. Movies like “Charlie Wilson’s War” are pieces of propaganda. The same Islamic fundamentalism, backed up by a terror that has raged against women, out-of-favor religious sects, and Enlightenment principles, opposed the secularist Soviet-backed governments. The U.S. was happy then to ally with mullahs and warlords who saw nothing wrong with throwing acid in the face of Muslim women who tried to teach little girls how to read.
Well, now the chickens have come home to roost, America. This war is bankrupting the country, allowing the crumbling of U.S. infrastructure and national destruction from within. It is making the U.S. into a pariah state. And it is eating like a political acid into the body politic and creating a moral, intellectual, and political emptiness so profound it’s unknown if this country can pull back from total disaster even now.
The criminals rule. The rich lord it over the poor. The educated classes stir and fulminate, and are unwilling to sacrifice anything (unless it’s tax deductible). A harsh harsh future awaits us… unless…
unless we can bring these criminals to heel now.
But without an incredibly strong public outcry… forget it.
Let’s start with Daily Kos. If this can’t make it here, then what hope is it for breaking through on this knowledge to the rest of the country.
Help Needed: Stop Torture Now!
December 30th, 2007 at 8:37 pmMaybe we ought to kick out all the GOP and the Democrats who participate in the GOP sham. I am tried of all the complicity and collusion to protect the illegal and unethical behavior of this Administration for over six years. I am ashamed to live in a country where no one will do anything about my President is a War Criminal, his advisers are War Criminals, his former Advisers are War Criminals, and the Vice-President is War Criminal as well. Since the Justice department doesn’t know what constitutes torture and the AG forgot his pledge is to the Constitution not the the Criminal-in-Residence, then can someone do a citizen’s arrest? This is a major bummer!!!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:52 amCIA tapes were destroyed to ’save image.’
So the CIA tortures people, and then destroys the tapes to avoid “being perceived” as a torturer? Maybe not torturing people is an easier solution…
December 31st, 2007 at 7:39 am“interrogators were recycling videotapes, preserving only two days of tapes before recording over them”
So in 2002, the DOD/CIA were using videoTAPES? I find it hard to believe that they were using such old equipment. VHS or Beta? Sounds like a good way to make us think that hundreds of bulky tapes were destroyed, when in reality all the interrogations are on a handfull of hard drives.
December 31st, 2007 at 9:10 amI hope the next President totally reorganizes that most terrifying of all terrorist organizations…the CIA.
They are a disgrace to everything America stands for.
January 1st, 2008 at 8:34 pm