Our wonderful President pushes legalising torture

Vice President for Torture
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A18
VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.
His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.

It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.
The senators ignored

My talented friends at DU did this.

Happy Halloween

Wellsville/East Liverpool

I remember a time not so long ago when this area flourished. People had real jobs and benefits, storefronts were open, the streets were busy most of the evening and if you wanted to see a movie there was a theater in EL. Now today you can drive downtown at nine o'clock and it looks like a ghostown. The difference between the seventies and this decade are amazing. No more movies, no more busy streets, no more good jobs. Its depressing as Hell.

What happened to those days? I doubt if good jobs will ever return to this area in our lifetimes. They have all gone to China or the Philippines and we get people wearing WalMart smocks making 6 bucks an hour in return. Where did we go wrong here?

No indictments yet

Looks like Friday . Once Rove ,Bush, Libby and Cheney get their papers we will have everyone in the leadership on the reicht side with indictments and investigations. Royal Flush. So tell me again, who is the party of morals and personal responsibility? The ones who have been busted for corruption or their puppets who defend these criminals?

Are you ready for ANOTHER WAR??

The chimp said this very same thing right before he invaded Iraq. Last resort means first resort to the lying warmonger. Afghanistan has become more dangerous than Iraq, Iraq is a never ending quagmire and now the evil one wants to add another country to be at war with. Someone better fire this mother fuker before he ruins this country beyond any hope of repair.


Bush says military action against Syria "last resort"Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:24 AM ETDUBAI (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said military action was alast resort in dealing with Syria and he hoped Damascus wouldcooperate with a probe into the killing of former Lebanese premierRafik al-Hariri."A military (option) is always the last choice of a president," hetold Al Arabiya television in an interview aired on Tuesday when askedabout a U.N. investigation that implicated Syrian officials in thekilling of Hariri."I am hoping that they will cooperate. It (military action) is thelast -- very last option," he said. "But on the other hand, you know-- and I've worked hard for diplomacy and will continue to work thediplomatic angle on this issue."

Cabal

Cancer King Delay gets a lift from Big Tobacco

Tom Delay gets a ride to his court appointment by the industry that loves hi. Delay pushes cigarrettes like the true psycopath he is. He profits from your Fathers cancer and your sisters emphysema.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20... snip-DeLay's staff disclosed that he flew to Houston on Thursday morning on a corporate jet owned by R.J. Reynolds, a longtime contributor that has flown him to Puerto Rico and other destinations; they said the jet was "used in compliance with regulations." The company, which has also given $17,000 to DeLay's legal defense fund, did not have a comment Friday.

Treason ; How its handled today.

poetic justice

Man, did it rain out east?

"It was raining so hard in Washington, D.C., Tom DeLay didn't have to launder his money." -- Dave Letterman

Treasongate: It's Not Just Karl Rove

Treasongate: It's Not Just Karl Rove
by Ted Rall

Since Karl Rove surfaced last week as the White House official who probably unmasked a covert CIA agent, new developments appear to confirm that the deputy chief of staff and chief Bush political strategist has committed treason:
Newsweek has published, and Time has authenticated, a Time reporter's notes about his crucial conversation with Rove. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two [minutes] before he went on vacation," Matt Coopers' notes read. Rove told Cooper that "[former ambassador and Iraq war critic] Joe Wilson's wife...apparently works at the [Central Intelligence] Agency on WMD issues."
In the past Bush Administration officials have repeatedly denied that Rove was involved and promised to fire whomever outted Plame. Now, rather than proclaim his innocence, Bush and his PR flacks are stonewalling. "This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation," his press secretary repeats to an increasing torrent of journalists' pointed questions.
Denizens of official Washington invariably issue a powerful, categorical denial--sometimes accompanied by the threat of libel litigation--whenever an allegation is untrue. Rove's silence on Treasongate can't convict him in a court of law. That comes later. Still, it speaks volumes.
Imagine, for a few paragraphs, that you were the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence. Rove's seditious behavior requires you to wonder about the possible extent of his inside job against U.S. national security. Did Rove act alone? Probably not. His Plame operation, no doubt conceived in league with Dick Cheney and other high-ranking scoundrels, may merely represent the tip of a huge iceberg of duplicity. How else did "Bush's brain" subvert our intelligence community? Are Rove's intimates, who include Bush himself, running interference for him out of personal loyalty, or are they trying to cover up their own treasonous acts? Someone at Langley provided highly classified personnel information to Rove, a dirty tricks specialist and pollster. Who?
In 1985 CIA traitor Aldrich Ames sold the KGB the names of every U.S. spy in the Soviet Union in return for $2 million. Arrests and executions soon wiped out America's human assets in the Soviet Union. As they were caught unprepared by one shocker after another--glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the USSR--intelligence professionals suspected a well-placed mole as the culprit. But Ames wasn't caught for another nine years.
Karl Rove, on the other hand, has already been found out as a likely traitor to the United States. Now we must work backwards. Does his exposure help to explain some of the Administration's most baffling foreign policy blunders?
No matter how remote, we must now consider the possibility that Karl Rove may in the employ of, and/or receiving money from, a terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda. Alternatively, could he be in the employ of a hostile foreign government? If he betrayed a CIA agent, Rove is a traitor and therefore capable of anything. Only an exhaustive investigation of his and his associates' anti-American activities, up to and including those committed by George W. Bush, can resolve these questions.
Internal sabotage offers a tempting explanation for the fact that so much has gone wrong for the United States since 2001. After 9/11 Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan--which had financed the Taliban and trained the hijackers at its camps--but Bush shocked analysts by attacking Afghanistan and Iraq instead. Was Bush's refusal to search for bin Laden in his nation of residence the result of spectacular incompetence--or a continuing alliance with the same Islamists his father's presidency had armed and funded? Are we losing the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq because of Rumsfeld's stubborn insistence on understaffing the military? Or are our leaders intentionally dragging out combat to accomplish their masters' aims: increasing the popularity of radical Islam and the recruitment of terrorists? Even Bush's domestic policies, from tax cuts paid to the rich people least likely to stimulate the economy to his attack on Social Security, seem designed to undermine U.S. stability and prosperity. Was Bush crossing his fingers when he swore to preserve and defend the constitution?
Maybe. Maybe not. The point is: we don't know. But we must find out.
National security is bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans may be divided over various ideological conflicts, but all patriotic Americans should be able to agree on a zero-tolerance policy for treason. Rove, those who worked with him and anyone who protected him must go.
© 2005 Ted Rall

Pictures tell a thousand stories....

No money, no hope.....

Just when I was getting used to low rider jeans..

Waistlines are inching up on hemlines as fashion's barometer. Navel-obscuring in the '80s, they were navel-baring a few years ago, and this fall they're creeping up toward the bellybutton again.

I like the low riders on the ladies. The bare midriff is very sexy. I hate to see this trend go .

Bullies crying bully . Poor widdle babies

As top Bush aide Karl Rove prepares for his fourth grand-jury appearance, the federal probe into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the media is believed to be wrapping up.
But the investigation has taken a toll on White House aides, many of whom now fear that the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, is intent on issuing indictments.
"Fitzgerald's office, although very professional, has been very aggressive in pursuing people," the adviser said. "These guys are bullies, and they threaten you."
Reporter Judith Miller is set to meet again with prosecutors to discuss notes from a conversation with Cheney aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby that turned up after her Sept. 30 testimony.
Meanwhile, lawyers for possible indictment targets are boning up on the Espionage Act, used to charge Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon papers, say people close to the probe.
Fitzgerald would face fewer hurdles proving a case under the statute, which bars transmitting "information relating to the national defense" to anyone not entitled to receive it, than under the more exacting Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
But national-security lawyer Kate Martin says, "Civil libertarians have always objected to [the Espionage Act] being used to prosecute leaks to the press."
Though Ellsberg's indictment was dismissed, the statute was used to convict naval analyst Samuel Morison, in 1985 for giving a satellite photo to a defense magazine, and Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin last week for passing secrets to a pro-Israel group.
Copyright © 2005 Time Inc

This job ain't bad if you stay stoned.....

unbelievable that you still hear this crap.

Saddam had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with 911, ya MFing morans. Even your bush has admitted it, you embarrassingly stupid gits.

Even Stalin knew the truth

This is what Bush thinks of you, America...