Day: June 1, 2009

Cheney’s lies


If you think, as I do, that Dick Cheney is off his rocker, you’ve hit the jackpot.  If you think, as I do, that Cheney’s a liar you’ve won the daily double.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims — that classified CIA memos show enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked — are wrong.

Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association’s annual dinner in New York on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse charges over the use of the techniques — now deemed torture by the Obama administration — “gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims.”

The Michigan Democrat told the crowd that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released “say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques.”

“I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction,” he added.

Cheney is a mentally unstable man with a mean streak a mile long running down his back. He gave in to the animal side of human nature and has led the rally cry for other Americans to join him on this dark, unstable journey of lawlessness and inhumanity. He managed to do so, thus far, through the bully pulpit and an obsequious press that parroted his every proclamation. Now that the curtain has been removed and the wizard exposed, why do we continue to be threatened by such a sick individual?

A tortured confession


I found this confession story interesting in light of all the talk about what is and is not torture and how legitimate it as an information gathering method.  Take a look and see if you’re persuaded:

Mitchell, 44, said yesterday that he was tortured into confessing crimes that he did not commit. He was arrested in 2000 after Christopher Rodway, a British engineer, had been killed in the first attack and his wife injured.

Mitchell said he was made to stand for nine days with his hands chained above his head and prevented from sleeping.

He added that each night he was tethered hand and foot and suspended with a metal bar behind his legs to expose his buttocks and the soles of his feet. He also claimed he was beaten with an axe handle until he gave the answers his jailers were looking for.

He said: “It went on and on. I used to consider myself a strong person but everybody has their breaking point. I was alone and in pain and if it wasn’t me being beaten it was others and I could hear their screams.”

He eventually confessed to being part of a bomb plot masterminded by the British embassy. “It was a ridiculous story, but that was what they wanted,” he said.

Now finish the story and say whether you still agree that you have to do what you have to do to get information on terrorist activity, even it means torture.

Mitchell said: “The turf war did not exist. That was made up by the Saudi secret police to justify their own existence.”

He was locked away in solitary confinement for almost a year before he saw a lawyer.

When he eventually was given access to a legal representative he discovered he had already been sentenced to death without a trial. No evidence other than his confession was ever brought forward.

If we condemn such acts of barbarity, as we should, let’s not stop at the Saudi gate!

Netanyahu whines


Of course that’s the way it’s portrayed to the West, but we all know, Netanyahu threatened, but the essence of what happened is this:

after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton’s call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do they want from me?”

For starters Ben, how about respecting the territorial integrity of your neighbors and cease and desist from IAF overflights of Lebanese airspace?  In fact, gearing up for another war, Israel has threatened to attack Hizbollah forces, read Lebanese Hizbollah forces, on Lebanese soil if they attempt to defend themselves from such Israeli aggression!  Talk about chutzpah.

Meanwhile, since the US president has stated he would like to see a cessation of settlement activity in the West Bank, he should make it conditional on the uninterrupted flow of US aid in dollars and materiel to Israel.  If they want to keep it, they have to give up settlement expansion. Perhaps Israel thinks the American empire is in decline and cannot make such demands on them, which accounts for their refusal to entertain the idea of halting settlement growth.  The message to Netanyahu is ‘if you want your settlements, you build them with your own dime, or shekel as it were, but not with US tax payer dollars’. The US economy could certainly use the money it gives in aid to Israel to strengthen not only our own economy, but our backbone when it comes to dealing with the recalcitrant Israelis as well.  Are you listening Mr. President?

Are Americans that dumb?


Paper runs ad urging Obama’s assassination
which stated:

May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!

and then added the mea culpa, the advertising staff did not make the connection between Lincoln, Kennedy and the other two American presidents? Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you in the Florida Keys.  Noting that the publisher of the newspaper in question, The Warren Times Observer, did not reveal who placed the ad, I suggest his newspaper be closed for aiding and abetting al-Qaida terrorists!