Hugo Chavez declares President Obama to be sulphur-free.
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It was not a liberal who did this: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/04/it-was-not-liberal-who-did-this.html
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Yankee fan sues after being tossed out of the stadium for going to the bathroom during the singing of God Bless America: http://jonathanturley.org/2009/04/18/yankee-fan-sues-after-being-tossed-out-of-stadium-for-going-to-the-bathroom-during-the-singing-of-god-bless-america/#more-10047
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Torture - Nor For Information, But For Sadism
From today's New York Times:
Second, what is clear is the signal that is being given by the CIA: They are not going to take the bullet on this one.
Third, color me hugely unsympathetic that the torturers are suffering psychological problems as a result of torturing people.
The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.So now, if you connect the dots, it becomes clearer (at least to those who are not still drunk on Bushie-Brand Kool-Aid). The program to torture people was run out of the Vice President's office by Dick Cheney and David Addington. They bear direct responsibility for ordering it, and Bush, of course, is guilty under the doctrine of command responsibility.
The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.
Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.
Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, "seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect."
Second, what is clear is the signal that is being given by the CIA: They are not going to take the bullet on this one.
Third, color me hugely unsympathetic that the torturers are suffering psychological problems as a result of torturing people.
Fact: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 (6 times per day) and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002. Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel: "The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn't sound very effective to me."
And here's the Vulgar Pigboy:
LIMBAUGH: The idea that torture doesn't work– that's been put out from John McCain on down– You know, for the longest time McCain said torture doesn't work then he admitted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer that he was broken by North Vietnamese. So what are we to think here?
What I think is that I remember McCain saying that he gave his captors the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, and said they were members of his squadron. And when asked to identify future targets, he recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.
As Media Matters notes, during his program yesterday, Limbaugh began slapping himself to mock anyone who believed slapping detainees in U.S. custody qualified as mistreatment. "I just slapped myself. I'm torturing myself right now. That's torture according to these people," Limbaugh said.
And in a torture-related story, the United Nation's top torture investigator has suggested it is illegal under International law for President Barack Obama to announce that the United States government has no intention of prosecuting low-level CIA officers who carried out torture sanctioned by the Bush Administration.
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United States reaches out to Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba
America's foreign policy is finally being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It's about F#$%!# time.
1 comment:
Here's an idea: a "Headlines for Today" podcast. I could download the podcast in the morning and listen to it on my way to work? Come on, say yes!
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