wow, two dudes

in the good ol' boy network WITH STONES

Two Bush officials fire back at Cheney ‘fearmongering’

By Agence France-Presse

Two top Bush-era officials on Friday rejected ex-vice president Dick Cheney’s scathing criticism of US President Barack Obama, saying the country’s national security was not in jeopardy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in the same post under former president George W. Bush, and Tom Ridge, the former head of homeland security, both voiced disagreement with Cheney a day after he attacked Obama’s performance as the new commander-in-chief.

Gates said in an interview that opponents of Obama’s decision to close the “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo were engaging in “fear-mongering,” a reference to Cheney’s stance on the issue.

Defending the president’s decision to shut the detention center at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Gates said the prison was damaging America’s image and served as a propaganda tool for Al-Qaeda..........

i respectfully disagree mr president

i think releasing the photographs and condemning those that committed the atrocities and those that ordered the atrocities will SAVE lives. it will show the world, we as americans will NOT tolerate torture. we as americans DO NOT torture. we as americans will PUNISH THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR TORTURE (and i'm NOT talking the grunts that may have done the physical abuse. i'm talking the big boyz and of course coonnddii as well. make them pay for the disregard they have for america and all she is and all she stands for. make them pay for torture. AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE)

Obama Shifts on Abuse Photos
Releasing Images of Detainee Mistreatment Would Endanger U.S. Troops, President Says

By Scott Wilson

Washington Post Staff Writer
A month after making public once-classified Justice Department memos detailing the Bush administration's coercive methods of interrogation, President Obama yesterday chose secrecy over disclosure, saying he will seek to block the court-ordered release of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees held by U.S. authorities abroad.
Obama agreed less than three weeks ago not to oppose the photos' release, but he changed his mind after viewing some of the images and hearing warnings from his generals in Iraq and in Afghanistan that such a move would endanger U.S. troops deployed there. .......

this is sad and scary

and ugly and horrid and WE yes WE let it ALL happen without a second thought (and don't be fooled it's STILL happening)

How a Man Was Thrown into Gitmo and Tortured for Clicking on My Article
By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com

I like to think that some of the things I write cause discomfort in those readers who deserve to feel it. Ideally, they should squirm, they should flinch, they might even experience fleeting gastrointestinal symptoms. But I have always drawn the line at torture. It may be unpleasant to read some of my writings, especially if they have been assigned by a professor, but it should not result in uncontrollable screaming, genital mutilation or significant blood loss.

With such stringent journalistic ethics in place, I was shocked to read in the February 14
Daily Mail Online

a
brief article

headed "Food writer's online guide to building an H-bomb...the 'evidence' that put this man in Guantánamo." The "food writer" was identified as me, and the story began:

A British 'resident' held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a 'joke' website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night.

Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the 'instructions' after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail..............

sure, i believe there is recividism

sure, i believe some (perhaps a lot) of the people we're holding in places like gitmo ARE terrorists and should NEVER in a million years be set free. i ALSO believe in the united states constitution and the other laws we abide by like the geneva convention. i believe we are a free and wonderful nation. i believe we should NEVER torture. i believe all who are incarcerated should be charged, have counsel and be brought to a trial. i believe that rarely happened during the king george years.

i believe our msm should NEVER take the word of anyone without first investigating it. sure, it's ok for a news source to say, 'the pentagon reported 63 acts of recidivism', but then they MUST follow it up by 'however, we have not confirmed that figure' OR 'the pentagon also claimed 2 acts of recidivism two weeks ago'. i want the WHOLE picture not just a pinpoint.

Pentagon's terror 'recidivism' claims blasted as 'propaganda'
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Ever wonder how many of President Bush's terror war detainees were released, only to "return to the fight"?

"Their numbers have changed from 20, to 12, to seven, to more than five, to two, to a couple, to a few, 25, 29, 12, and then 24," quoted Keith Olbermann on Thursday's edition of Countdown.

The latest figure, 61, which was carried unchallenged by CNN, the MSNBC host noted, appears to be nothing but "propaganda."

A study published by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux on Jan. 15 finds the Pentagon wrongly altered its figures on terrorist 'recidivism' 43 times, with the latest figure being "the most egregiously so."
...................

this should be on the front page

of every paper in america EVERY DAY. along with pictures of our men and women coming home in coffins, with limbs missing and worse

torture in the name of freedom? when others do it they are savages and subhuman. when we do it, we're protecting ourselves from terrorists. everyone knows (including schoolchildren), the information one obtains from a tortured victim is NOT RELIABLE. they will say anything, they will agree to anything, to make the torture stop. yes, i did that. yes, he or she was my comrade.....

we are a supposedly free nation. we have laws and rules and we abide by international laws as well. hmmmmm, let's just say we're SUPPOSED to.

i know the cia and other organizations have done horrid things under different presidents, including democratic ones. i don't believe they've ever achieved the level of evil they have under king george though.

will congress then the senate grow some stones and bring charges against this regime? it must stop

is this the legacy we want to leave our children?
History Will Not Absolve Us
Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial

by Nat Hentoff
If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament—as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).
While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in. ..............

i hear he also confessed to be anna nicole smith's baby daddy

NOT to make light of this really (the death of daniel pearl was horrific and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends). but my point is mohammed DID brag about his roles in terrorist activities BEFORE being tortured. i would confess to just about anything while being tortured as i'm sure most everyone else would as well.

i am sure he had a hand in many evil activities but we ALREADY knew this.

Detainee says he beheaded U.S. reporter

By Carol Rosenberg
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed to murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, personally slicing off Pearl's head and holding it up for a video that appeared on the Internet, according to a revised transcript of a hearing held last weekend at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a panel of military officers who'll decided whether he should be held as an enemy combatant. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."
Pentagon officials had deleted Mohammed's description of Pearl's death from a transcript of the hearing that was originally released Wednesday. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the deletion had been made to give officials time to brief Pearl's family. Once that had been done, a revised transcript was posted on the Defense Department's Web site, defenselink.mil. ...........