He was seriously wounded by shrapnel from a mortar blast in 1992, sustaining head injuries that left him with severe memory problems, which still linger.
Author Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Solution, gave the background on Zubaydah. Here's a synopsis:
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" - a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics - travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There's a word for this: it's evil.
Where to start?
In one short news article, we combine Xristian Xrazies, anti-gay marriage, the Alabama House, and Miss USA, Miss California, and celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton. Is there like a prize, or something, for the most retrograde news article of the year? As sort of anti-Pulitzer?
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So what's the deal with Dick Cheney? After spending nearly 8 years hiding in the shadows while pulling the strings of marionette George, all of a sudden Cheney can't seem to get enough on-camera time to bash the new president and the things he's done to change to tone and tenor of American politics.
As if the 8 years of Bush-Cheney propduced such stellar results for this nation…
And where is Bush in all of this? Not interested in defending "his" policies anymore? Or perhaps old Georgie knows there is little defense for the torture and the bankrupting of the nation and the illegal spying and the rest of the nonsense that will always define the Bush-Cheney "legacy."
So shotgun Cheney rides to the rescue (or at least to the Faux News studios), ready to set the record "straight." Either that, or he's trying to head off a legal indictment.
Note to Dick: You're history bub…and no amount of wrangling can change what you've already done.
Lieberman claims the country has such a hold on American politics that it would be ideal to "bring the U.S. and Russia closer."
Lieberman is controversial and caused an outburst last year when he told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. ally, to "go to hell." Sounds ideal for a diplomat in the new Israeli government.
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Could it be Cheney told the wrong guy to go f- himself?
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for Judge Jay Bybee to resign in light of his central role in the torture program and memos. Leahy declared that "[t]he fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed."
The expression of outrage from Democrats have civil libertarians grinding their teeth. Many civil libertarians, including myself, opposed his confirmation and raised his role in the torture program. Democrats refused to pursue the allegations, refused to block the nomination, and only asked him questions at this hearing. Only 19 democrats voted against his confirmation.
As with the torture program, the unlawful surveillance program, the AIB bonus scandal, and other recent scandals, the Democrats are now claiming shock over information that they ignored at the time of their votes.
If Bybee answered questions untruthfully, he should be charged with perjury and false statements to congressional investigators. He can then be impeached.
In the meantime, former Judiciary Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) rejected calls for the impeachment and said that Bybee was "one of the most honorable people you'll ever meet." Well, as long as you do not meet him in a CIA interrogation room or near a waterboard.
I certainly agree with Leahy that "The decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign. And if he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign." However, these memos do not exactly speak well of Bybee sense of morals or responsibility — or humanity for that matter.
For the story, click here.
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Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is embroiled in an expanding controversy over her introduction of legislation to give $25 billion to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp that awarded a highly generous contract to her husband. Feinstein is notably not on any committee with jurisdiction in this area and this legislation was unusual for her. The scandal, once again, shows the calculated decision of Senators to preserve loopholes that allow them to invest or have interests in areas where they legislate and vote.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/04/21/feinstein-accused-of-self-dealing-in-25-billion-legislation-for-fdic/
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Hilzoy points to an article in the NY Times which says the Bush administration adopted torture because leaders in the CIA insisted that the administration use it.
Guess who are not apportioned any blame in this piece. Why it is ole Dead-eye Dick and his puppet commander in chief, GW Bush.
Where have we seen this MO before? Oh, that's right. It was the nasty CIA that led the Bush administration to invade Iraq because they insisted that Saddam was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction and was planning to bomb the White House in 45 minutes. And they forced old Dick and George to bomb Iraq even though the threat was not real.
Geeze. Can the NY Times just stop with running with the Bush lies and their deflecting culpability on others? It was Dick Cheney who has been running his mouth off lately that torture works and he can prove it if they will just declassify the reports. How much convincing did it take to make him a believer?
And it was Mr. Bush who had been totally into the torture game because his gut told him it worked. As reported by Ron Suskind in 2006:
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each ... target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
Here's a quote from Dead-eye Dick when he was all gung ho for torture:
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do agree. And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth, we've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that.
So today, we are supposed to believe that they were gullible innocents who never, ever would have considered torture if it wasn't for that mean ole George Tenet? Puleeze.
And another thing - as we know, torture was used to find a link between Iraq, al Qaeda and 9/11. How'd that work out?
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Jesus worshippers run amok in Florida public school http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/04/22/jesus-worshipers-run-amok-in-florida-public-school/
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Why is anyone even listening to Dick Cheney? He's a loon who dragged the country into one of its worst periods in modern history. He deserves to be mocked and thankfully, Hillary wasn't shy today. Good for her. CNN:
In the latest sign that the war of words between the Obama administration and Dick Cheney isn't letting up, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday mocked the former vice president's call to release additional classified CIA documents.
As Clinton made her first appearance before Congress as the nation's top diplomat, California Republican Dana Rohrbacher asked if the administration planned to heed Cheney's call to release documents showing information gained as a result of the Bush administration's aggressive interrogation techniques.
"Well, it won't surprise you that I don't consider him to be a particularly reliable source of information," Clinton said, to laughter from many in the committee room.
Outside of the radical right lunatics, Cheney has zero credibility. The problem for the Republicans is that he is the GOP. Too bad the rest of the country despises him.
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Mark Morford: Cuddlin' With Evil
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Amish workers hit hard by recession: http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/?p=17498#more-17498
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In a letter to President Obama today, patriotic senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) asked him to resist prosecuting Bush administration officials who wrote legal memos authorizing torture. "Pursuing such prosecutions would, we believe, have serious negative effects," wrote the three senators.
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On Monday, the New York Times confirmed that in December 2005, its Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, "met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish" its story on the National Security Agency's wiretapping. So who are those other "Congressional leaders"? CQ's David Nather tries to narrow down the possibilities:
But during the period before the NSA program became public, the members of the Gang of Eight would have included House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.; Nancy Pelosi, initially the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and later the House minority leader; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and later Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leaders at the time; Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence; House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; and Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence after Pelosi became minority leader.
A "Democratic aide" told CQ that Pelosi wasn't at the NYT meeting. Nather adds that GOP members of the Gang of Eight "would have had more incentive to try to kill the story, since most GOP lawmakers later said the Times jeopardized national security by running the story."
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Dumb Congressman Brags About 'Stumping' Nobel-Winning Energy Secretary With Stupid Question: http://wonkette.com/408012/dumb-congressman-brags-about-stumping-nobel-winning-energy-secretary-with-stupid-question#more-408012
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Rice gave early waterboarding green light: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rice_gave_early_waterboarding_green_light_0423.html
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This is an old, tired joke that has just been posted on the site of a right-wing moron's radio show. I have heard it quite a few times before, usually by smug nitwits who think they've delivered a knock-out themselves: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/bad_joke_bad_poll.php
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