Comments on: House Dems call for special counsel investigation into torture.

By: sacopenapa

sacopenapa — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:25:39 +0000

Where is the WAR CRIMINAL, Rice? She is lying low trying to avoid accountability! RiceMustGo.com !!!! Rice, you are a LIER and a WAR CRIMINAL!

By: ralph the wonder llama

ralph the wonder llama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:00:05 +0000

TheRight Says:

It is very hard to educate you regressives. Very hard indeed.

You might try using sound facts and logic sometime. We progressives generally respond to that, but those elements are seldom to be found in an argument from a regressive like yourself.

By: dbadass

dbadass — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:05:30 +0000

oops. I used the b word to mean complain. House of Roberts’ point is well made. I just lack the energy to retype my entry

By: House of Roberts

House of Roberts — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:43:58 +0000

Why is that ‘pukes use examples of other countries to argue against anything this country needs? Don’t they have the confidence in the USA to believe we can do it better than any other nation on earth? I think they actually encourage American failure by doing this.

By: dbadass

dbadass — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:25:52 +0000

Yet I haven’t met a Canadian woman who had her child anywhere but a hospital. What gives?

By: Max-1

Max-1 — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:21:55 +0000

http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/US-quits-Human-Rights-Council,3184
US quits Human Rights Council

Carole Vann/Juan Gasparini/Human Rights Tribune – The news that the US has completely withdrawn from the Human Rights Council spread like wildfire Friday afternoon (June 6) through the corridors of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. There was general consternation amongst diplomats and NGOS. Reached by phone, the American mission in Geneva neither confirmed nor denied the report. Although unofficial, the news comes at a time of long opposition by the Bush administration to the reforms which created the Human Rights Council in June 2006. Washington announced from the beginning that the US would not be an active member but its observer status would mean that it could intervene during the sessions. To date even this has rarely happened.

“We don’t understand the reasons nor the timing of the decision”, said Sebastien Gillioz of Human Rights Watch. “There have even been some positive signs during this Council. For example Belarus was not re-elected as a member in 2007 nor Sri Lanka this year”.

…(continued at link)

Not only does the law not matter to this administration, neither does human Rights.

Torture IS the law to these scum!

By: OneCitizen

OneCitizen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:35:49 +0000

In the event a special counsel is appointed (and I seriously doubt that there will be), my senator will have some serious ’splainin’ to do about his role in the Bush Administration’s use of torture.

…long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Jay Rockefeller is the only reason I’m not voting straight ticket Dem this year because I am ashamed to say that he’s from my state. But his not standing up and doing the right thing about torture isn’t the only problem I’ve got with the Chairman of the Senate Select Defense Intelligence Oversight Committee.

That one exception was not Sen. Rockefeller.

His failure to stand up then was even worse than the lack of judgment he showed when he scrawled that little letter to cover his own political backside over Bush’s wiretaps in 2003, sticking it in his desk instead of actually directly telling them that it was the wrong thing to do. And instead of at least raising a stink about it in the Senate beck then (perhaps behind closed doors) as the Chairman of the oversight panel, he now wishes to grant retroactive immunity to companies who knew damned good and well that what they were doing was illegal!

By the way, Larry Franklin, the former Bush administration official who is in jail for spying is also from West Virginia making Senator Rockefeller his congressional representative. I seriously doubt that Bush’s “justice” department ever offered Mr. Franklin a lighter sentence for more information about possible complicity by other members of the Bush administration. But given its history of covering the Bush administration’s glaring problems, is it any wonder that Sen. Rockefeller never used his position and rank on the Defense Intel Oversight panel to see why Mr. Franklin never produced any collaborators?

Then, of course there’s his committee’s total lack of oversight regarding the Bush administration officials “outing” of Valerie Plame. Hadley, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Addington, Feith, Rice, Rove, Libby – none have ever been held accountable for their complicity in the loss of CIA covert agent. Nor have they issued any public report of what the loss of her assets cost the US intelligence community, or even any recommendations of how to prevent it from happening again.

Finally, his statement in the press regarding the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Final Phase II Reports on Prewar Iraq Intelligence reveal exactly what he believes his role to be when he concluded:

“Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to keep the Intelligence Community and the State Department appropriately informed about the meetings.”

Senator Jay Rockefeller is my Congressman. He was the only Democratic congressman from West Virginia to vote for letting Bush have the keys to the world’s most powerful war machine, even voting over the vehement opposition of Senator Byrd, his senior, on the floor of the Senate. He was on the Senate defense intel oversight committee at the time.

It should also be noted that Sen. Rockefeller was also on the Senate Select Defense Intelligent Oversight Committee on 9/11/01, and even when the 911 commission issued its scathing report (p420):

“Congressional oversight for intelligence – and counterterrorism – is now dysfunctional.”

Did Hadley and Wolfowitz forgot to read that to Rockefeller and his vaunted “oversight” panel as well?

By: ralph the wonder llama

ralph the wonder llama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:02:30 +0000

TheTroll must not have any defense of BushCo’s torture policy, because he launched into some weird attack on the Canadian health care system.

Bizarre.

By: Nevar

Nevar — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:57:08 +0000

No hurry….

By: TAGG

TAGG — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:34:47 +0000

Let’s play “What if?”…http://www.tagg-theangrygayguy.com

By: ralph the wonder llama

ralph the wonder llama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:34:26 +0000

Yeah, dbadass, that last Thompney bit was kinda lame. But he shows promise as a troll parodist.

By: House of Roberts

House of Roberts — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:32:51 +0000

Hopefully a President Obama and a Dem Congress can enact some reforms to allow more Congressional oversight of the Justice Department should this kind of ethical conflict ever occur again. I know that breaks down the wall between Separation of Powers, but we can never again have an Executive Branch able to block the necessary investigations that lead up to a possible impeachment.

By: dbadass

dbadass — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:32:30 +0000

Thompney, you make a poor jester but that is just my opinion.

By: McWars

McWars — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:09:45 +0000

Don’t forget to pick up your paycheck and run your errands, dems.

By: RUCerious

RUCerious — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:09:15 +0000

Yeah, and Mucky will appoint a special counsel, sure.
Maybe Donald Duck. He’s special.

By: tarazan

tarazan — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:00:53 +0000

Bush,Cheney,C.Rice,Wolfowitz,and Rumsfeld :
” We don’t use torture,we only use ‘enhanced techniques’” !!

By: ralph the wonder llama

ralph the wonder llama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:00:26 +0000

dbadass: “ralph” is fine. I find myself struggling sometimes with the same issue. For example, I often want to call joe cantwell just “joe”. But it’s tricky since login IDs are not necessarily proper names. Still, I like the easy familiarity of “ralph”.

By: dbadass

dbadass — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:53:43 +0000

Always one step ahead of me ralph. I was just about to invite TheRight to move up one and share with us their “informed” comments as to how the democrats are responsibly for the nation’s failed energy policies. BTW: is it okay to just use ralph. In general I only like to address individuals by their given names but I am also a poor keyboardist

By: ralph the wonder llama

ralph the wonder llama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:49:47 +0000

I like how TheTroll derides Democratic ineffectiveness in their investigations (which is true) but states that these multiple investigations are “useless”. They’re not useless, although they fall far short of what they should achieve.

If nothing else, they keep the focus on the criminal activity of BushCo, which makes it easier to tie Grampy McSame to a corrupt as well as a failed administration and all but assure an Obama administration come ‘09.

TheTroll has also implied, several times, that the Democratic leadership in Congress is responsible for rising gas prices, although it has never made clear HOW they are responsible. Am I expecting too much from a particularly dense troll?

I think that’s likely.

By: dbadass

dbadass — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:48:16 +0000

TheRight in the interest of the suffering of the poor and seniors, I invite you to join in the movement toward an improved healthcare system which will provide affordable quality care and coverage for all. I know I am happy to chip in on behalf of others and I sense the deep concerns you have for those whom have less and struggle.