The Obama Worldwide Apology Tour

[tieguy]

[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]The single most pertinent question that Dick Cheney is never asked -- at least not by the admiring interviewers he has encountered so far -- is whether he, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush used torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. As he tours television studios, radio stations and conservative think tanks, the former vice-president hopes to persuade America that only waterboarding kept us safe for seven years.[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, "enhanced interrogation" was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence -- the aims that he constantly emphasizes -- but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida." More[/FONT]


[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]From Lawrence Wilkerson:[/FONT]
First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.
There was absolutely no policy priority attributed to al-Qa'ida by the Cheney-Bush administration in the months before 9/11. Counterterrorism czar Dick Clarke's position was downgraded, al-Qa'ida was put in the background so as to emphasize Iraq, and the policy priorities were lowering taxes, abrogating the ABM Treaty and building ballistic missile defenses.
Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11--much touted by Cheney--is due almost entirely to the nation's having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation."
Those troops have kept al-Qa'ida at bay, killed many of them, and certainly "fixed" them, as we say in military jargon. Plus, sadly enough, those 200,000 troops present a far more lucrative and close proximity target for al-Qa'ida than the United States homeland. Testimony to that fact is clear: almost 5,000 American troops have died, more Americans than died on 9/11. Of course, they are the type of Americans for whom Cheney hasn't much use as he declared rather dramatically when he achieved no less than five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. More


Can you be more specific here? Exactly what intelligence did we get through torture that we wouldn't have gotten any other way, and how many lives were saved because of it?

Sounds like a bunch of made up bunk to distract us from pelosi knowing about our mild forms of torture. An AlQa'ida operative was openly living in Bagdad before the war. Even this attempted hatchet job on the bush adminstration proves that point. The link was there not sure why you libcons keep trying to deny it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

 

[wkmac]

Can you be more specific here? Exactly what intelligence did we get through torture that we wouldn't have gotten any other way, and how many lives were saved because of it?

It's a secret and if I told you I'd have to kill you!
Revealing it would place the country at risk!
I can't tell you as this would lead to the loss of innocent lives!


That's even better than Plausible Deniability! It's like trying to disprove a negative, you know, "did you beat your wife again this morning?"



oppps! Another post in support of a liberal democrat!

Jones! You should come out of the closet about such things!

 

[Jones]

Sounds like a bunch of made up bunk to distract us from pelosi knowing about our mild forms of torture. An AlQa'ida operative was openly living in Bagdad before the war. Even this attempted hatchet job on the bush adminstration proves that point. The link was there not sure why you libcons keep trying to deny it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

Tie, did you actually read the article that you linked? It doesn't say that Zarqawi was "living openly in Baghdad", it specifically says that he was working out of Kirma, in a Kurdish controlled area in the northern no-fly zone where, ironically, he was protected from the Iraqi regime by our Kurdish allies on the ground and US airpower in the air. The article is making the point that the reason the Bush administration didn't take action is because in doing so they might have had to explain why an al-qaeda operative had to hide out in northern Iraq where he was safe from the Iraqi regime, an explanation that would have undermined one of the key rationales for the war, ie, that there was cooperation between Saddam and AQ.

As far as protecting Pelosi, you've got the wrong guy. I have no doubt the democratic congressional leaders were complicit in enabling the Bush administration's torture policies. My own preference is for an indepenent prosecutor, with unlimited time, scope, and funding, who's job would be to investigate if war crimes (that's torture, in case you're wondering) were commited, and to bring charges against any and all involved. "I was just following orders" would not be an excuse either, any more than it was at Nuremberg or My Lai.

It's a secret and if I told you I'd have to kill you!
Revealing it would place the country at risk!
I can't tell you as this would lead to the loss of innocent lives!


That's even better than Plausible Deniability! It's like trying to disprove a negative, you know, "did you beat your wife again this morning?"



oppps! Another post in support of a liberal democrat!

Jones! You should come out of the closet about such things!

Strange world isnt it? I remember when all good americans, regardless of politics, opposed things like torture, secret prisons where detainees were held for years without being charged with any crimes, warrantless wiretapping, to name just a few. Now apparently the only people who oppose them are "liberal democrats". Reminds me a little of Animal Farm, and how the 7 Commandments kept changing.

 

[av8torntn]

Sounds like a bunch of made up bunk to distract us from pelosi knowing about our mild forms of torture. An AlQa'ida operative was openly living in Bagdad before the war. Even this attempted hatchet job on the bush adminstration proves that point. The link was there not sure why you libcons keep trying to deny it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

Great article. I cannot believe msnbc has an article about al queada members operating in Iraq before our invasion. I did find it interesting that they advocate the attack of Iraq before our invasion but now after the invasion it is somehow wrong or illegal and they oppose it.

 

[diesel96]

Diesel this rhetoric sounds good but the fact remains countries do not respect weak apologetic leaders.

Even with military and CIA background, during his campaign bid, there were many in the GOP and Media who opposed GHW Bush and categorized Senior with "fighting the wimp facter". Same went for Presidential hopefuls Kerry and Dukakis. Swaggering machismo, as Republicans tried to appropriate not just patriotism but also masculinity as a GOP virtue. Attacking the manhood of the opposition has become a signature tactic of the GOP. So it isn't surprising that presidential election cycles have been played out over masculinity since the Reagan days. Be it Obama's "apologetic sensitivity" on American arrogance during the Bush era, or the war on terror, or "girlie-man" preoccupation with the lack of jobs, health care, and education, Obama has no need to defend himself from a barrage of rhetoric but to expose the GOP of carefully designing to cast him, and the entire Democratic slate as the party of weakness to sway public opinion back in their corner.

I'm afraid you keep missing the point here. We're not some overzealous prosecuter trying to get a confession. We're a country trying to get hard intelligence that would save american lives. we did that and we did save lives doing so.

We can not ignore that a bulk of the torturing was allegedly for tying Al Qeada with Iraq. If true, that hardly had anything to do with saving lives, but saving one's own administration's hide. And w/o classified documents released, to the public, we don't know for sure whether detainee's confessions were done before enhanced torture or by SOP methods. You post as if you have inside information....

Sounds like a bunch of made up bunk to distract us from pelosi knowing about our mild forms of torture.
http://

The other way around my friend....GOP wants all eyes focused on Pelosi as a distraction.

 

[tieguy]

The other way around my friend....GOP wants all eyes focused on Pelosi as a distraction.

Au contraire. We're not the ones pissing away 3.5 trillion a year in a blanket move towards total socialism.

funny how the dems wanted to hold Bush and Chaney torture trials until Pelosi got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

 

[wkmac]

Strange world isnt it? I remember when all good americans, regardless of politics, opposed things like torture, secret prisons where detainees were held for years without being charged with any crimes, warrantless wiretapping, to name just a few. Now apparently the only people who oppose them are "liberal democrats". Reminds me a little of Animal Farm, and how the 7 Commandments kept changing.

After reading your comments, I happen to read a piece by Chris Hedges that as I read, your words kept echoing in the background.

I did like the Animal Farm/7 Comandments reference. Very good!

 

[wkmac]

Jones,

Just ran across this. Jesse makes a lot of very good points IMO.

 

[Jones]

Good find, Jesse is right on point about torture being unequivocally wrong regardless of the politics, while Hasselbeck seems stuck on trying to turn it into a political "gotcha" game of dems vs repubs.

 

[tieguy]

Jones,

Just ran across this. Jesse makes a lot of very good points IMO.

YouTube - Elisabeth "Right Wing Idiot" Hasselbeck PWNED by Jesse "The Body" Ventura on the issue of torture

Jesse is a current events leech begging for some notoriety.

The left is doing everything they can to make a totally illogical argument here. Which basically is that we could have gotten the information by playing nice but chose to use torture because we prefer using less effective means of gathering intelligence.

We rightfully show a lot of love for our military folks serving their country but somehow forget that we also have a lot of dedicated "soldiers" in the intelligence fields who are also fighting to keep America free and free of the terrorist threat. If water boarding became the means then those same dedicated servants asked for it because other means did not work. We did not all of sudden decide we wanted to try torture when others means had already gotten us the information we needed. Jesse's argument along that line is just plain idiotic.

 

[wkmac]

Good find, Jesse is right on point about torture being unequivocally wrong regardless of the politics, while Hasselbeck seems stuck on trying to turn it into a political "gotcha" game of dems vs repubs.

You mentioned Zarqawi in an earlier post, GlobalSecurity.org has a pretty good piece on him which confirms not only his earlier movements via Iraq but also his presense in the Kurdish region. It also sez connections to Saddam Huissein are very unlikely. Colin Powell in his infamous UN speech reported a connection between Zarqawi and Saddam which with Powell's credibility made this nexus a slam dunk.

But now Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of Staff is shedding new light of how the CIA "coooked" the connection in order to justify the war with Iraq. Ray McGovern has written a very good piece of this and Ray is not to be taken lightly. Not only a Army officer but 30 year analyst with the CIA. But this is just further comfirmation of a spin job whose wheels started coming off several years ago like in April 2007' when the Army declassified a report confirming the lack of connection.

Even the hard association with bin Laden didn't really materialize until late 2004' as this timeline shows. But by late 2004', even the CIA was having to admit the truth. I guess you can do that when Cheney's dogs aren't standing over you!

Isn't it funny that the Bush adminstration turned down chances to kill Zarqawi but nobody mentions that in public. I guess Vietnam had the myth of the Gulf of Tonkin so Iraq needed it's own equal myths.

Some say there is an "American Myth Industry" and to be honest, I think some of it's employees visit here!

 

[wkmac]

As far as protecting Pelosi, you've got the wrong guy. I have no doubt the democratic congressional leaders were complicit in enabling the Bush administration's torture policies. My own preference is for an indepenent prosecutor, with unlimited time, scope, and funding, who's job would be to investigate if war crimes (that's torture, in case you're wondering) were commited, and to bring charges against any and all involved. "I was just following orders" would not be an excuse either, any more than it was at Nuremberg or My Lai.

Pelosi may end up being "the plan" that backfired. I've no doubt of her complicity in all this but as she is backed into a corner, she will also begin to "spill the beans" so to speak in order to save herself and then this whole thing esculates toward a large and wider probe as the rotten fruit falls to the ground for all to see. I can understand Obama wanting this thing to disappear as he's already juggling more dishes that IMO he's capable of doing. I don't think anyone is capable so there you go! But then I'll admit I'm the guy on the side hoping more dishes will be thrown at him not because of him personally or that he's a democrat even. The gov't of the 2 party system is a house of cards and just the right wind will blow it all down. It's just a matter of opening the right window.

I just read this on the real chance that this whole thing could explode far bigger and republicans as well as democrats may get what they least want IMO which fits in to what you said above you'd like to see.

But here's the real wildcard in all of this. The international community! Now I'm against foreign intervention and I'm against foreign entanglements but the fact is, our gov't is signatory on numerous international treaties and these treaties become binding upon us as law even if it goes against our self interest. Self interest may say take a crusie but reality of contract may dictate making the house payment instead. We agreed to various contracts and some have application to this very area. As the dirty laundry flies it catches international eyes (move over Jesse ) and the real pressure could come from that area. Rumblings in Spain just one example.

It would appear the grass beating is working to some degree and I'm all for all the truth coming out, everything on the table and where ever the "dead bodies lay" let it be exposed, the culprits exposed if any and let's wash it all out clean. Gov't on both sides IMO gave up it's position of trust a long, long time ago and now also IMO can't be trusted with anything. Make everything transparent and open, make em' prove everything including down to why they need to spend money for pencils and copy paper.

jmo

 

[diesel96]

Au contraire. We're not the ones pissing away 3.5 trillion a year in a blanket move towards total socialism.

funny how the dems wanted to hold Bush and Chaney torture trials until Pelosi got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

I don't see where blowing a Pelosi smokescreen on torture memos, has anything to do with TARP or Recovery Act...

$3.5 trillion move towards socialism ? More like a $3.5 trillion move away from another "Great Depression" era thanks for Elephantitus GOP policies.....

Jesse is a current events leech begging for some notoriety.

The left is doing everything they can to make a totally illogical argument here. Which basically is that we could have gotten the information by playing nice but chose to use torture because we prefer using less effective means of gathering intelligence.

We rightfully show a lot of love for our military folks serving their country but somehow forget that we also have a lot of dedicated "soldiers" in the intelligence fields who are also fighting to keep America free and free of the terrorist threat. If water boarding became the means then those same dedicated servants asked for it because other means did not work. We did not all of sudden decide we wanted to try torture when others means had already gotten us the information we needed. Jesse's argument along that line is just plain idiotic.

I wouldn't call following the rule of the law idiotic.....
Spare us the Conservative guilt trip of using our love for the military psycology routine, it's not whats in play here. The orders come from the top. The grunts are not the "deciders" as to what specific info they trying to obtain. It's cut and dry, either it's legal or not. Whether the ex-VP and his legal team can parse words from torture to enhanced interrogations to evade legalities....

 

[wkmac]

Au contraire. We're not the ones pissing away 3.5 trillion a year in a blanket move towards total socialism.

funny how the dems wanted to hold Bush and Chaney torture trials until Pelosi got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

SA @ Takimag - War is Generational Theft

Amen!

 

[tieguy]

I don't see where blowing a Pelosi smokescreen on torture memos, has anything to do with TARP or Recovery Act...

in jesses case blowing may be an accurate discription.

$3.5 trillion move towards socialism ? More like a $3.5 trillion move away from another "Great Depression" era thanks for Elephantitus GOP policies.....

sounds like a delayed depression to me.



..

 

[Jones]

U.S. Congress to finally stand up against torture?

Obama's proposed agreement with the UAE is in jeopardy because of their tolerance of torture and lawlessness.
Glenn Greenwald
May. 22, 2009 |
Yesterday, President Obama approved a proposed civilian nuclear technology-sharing agreement between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates and requested its execution, but CNN -- in one of the all-time most unintentionally hilarious articles ever written -- reports that its ratification is in doubt:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama on Thursday sent a civil nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates to the Senate for ratification, but its passage remains uncertain, thanks to a recently disclosed video.
Senior U.S. officials said lawmakers critical of the deal could use the video, which shows a member of the UAE government's royal family torturing a man, to argue the United States should not have such nuclear cooperation with a country where the rule of law is not respected and human rights violations are tolerated.
​

How anyone could write or even read that last sentence without succumbing to painful, prolonged cackling is genuinely mystifying.

The videos in questions involve torture by a single individual citizen of the UAE, not an entire government. The individual torturer isn't even part of the UAE's government: he never worked in its Justice Department, doesn't currently sit as a judge on a high-level court, doesn't teach law in a prestigious university, doesn't have his torture-defending speeches broadcast on national television by UAE news networks, isn't constantly defended by admiring journalists any time he's criticized, and doesn't have hordes of TV pundits demanding that nothing be done to him. Also, the UAE legislature never passed any laws on a bipartisan basis retroactively immunizing him from the consequences of his torture.

And one other thing: the torturer in question -- in the UAE -- has been arrested while a criminal investigation takes place. More here. Nonetheless, entering into an agreement with a country like that -- one that is so tolerant of "human rights violations" and "where the rule of law is not respected" -- would degrade our lofty moral standing and betray our steadfast commitment to the rule of law.

-- Glenn Greenwald​

 

[tieguy]

Should be interesting to see what happens if we have another terrorst attack takes place in the US. Will Obama suddenly find these methods more appealing. Will he be able to explain why his apologies and "terrorist tell me what you know, cause I'm your friend" tactics did not work.

 

[JimJimmyJames]

I think his whole "World Apology Tour" just shows that he is a hopeless globalist, just as most of the elites who run the show are. And why is that? Why do we give two cents about the world? Because we actually care?

No, we don't. Yes we give token help to countries that have no real strategic interest to us. But that is all a public relations stunt. The bulk of our global involvement seems to me to be rooted in securing access to energy and cheap labor. It is surely for nothing noble, unless doing the bidding for corporate America can be considered such.

In my lifetime only two countries, because one actually has the capability to destroy us, and one is quickly gaining it, have been, in my opinion, a threat to us: Russia and China. No other country or terrorist group, have really been a threat to us unless we allowed them to be.

Folks, we live essentially on an island, in regards to the rest of the world, with nuclear missles pointing outward. Why are we so fearful?

Let's protect our borders, actually pay attention to who immigrates to our country, and stop involving ourselves with the national security of foreign countries. Low and behold, many of our problems will disappear.

 

[wkmac]

And what about the fact that one of the reasons we waved the flag and sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic as we marched into Iraq was to free the Iraqi people from the brutality and "TORTURE" of Saddam Hussein and his 2 sons.

I'm sure Saddam could make a quick case that he tortured to protect Iraq and it citizens.

And it's no secret that we exploited the practices of the Taliban (so easy a caveman could do it ) for propoganda reasons for leverage to heighten more support for war in Afghanistan. The treatment of women alone was good leverage to put the feminist movement, especially the anitwar segment in at least some form of political check.

And dare I point out our righteous indignation towards Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda for killing 3000k innocent people on 9/11 but when we kill multiple times that many innocent people ourselves in the advancement of american justice, we soldier onward singing the chorus of "Onward Christian Soldiers!"

It's funny that when a person or group or persons kill innocent people outside some formal structure of democratic gov't model they are murderers and yet we can collectivize ourselves declaring some manifest destiny assigned by God, assign leadership roles to annointed persons among our midst (democrats and republicans equally) and they can decide to kill innocents in the quest for a so-called greater good and yet they are not called murderers among our midst. We call them great leaders, giants of society, patriots. I won't post it here as you can go to YouTube and see it for yourself but the opening 5 minutes of the movie 1984 comes to mind right now. Funny how the fiction from paper and celluloid can be a true mirror of ourselves.

I wonder what almight God will call those so-called great leaders of ours on that day they stand before him and then what of those who blindly follow and support them? Something about "depart from me because I never knew you" comes to mind!

The flipside of Glenn's piece concerns transfer of nuclear technology to another Middle Eastern State and looking out long term, we've not had raving success when we've done this in the past so I question opening the atomic "genie bottle" any wider in this region.

This was done last year by the Bush Adminstration under cover of low profile, little fanfare with Saudi Arabia and the most interesting fact of all, where were the loud and vocal objections of the Israeli's? I mean if we'd done this with Iraq or Iran, OMG! What about Syria? Or Libya even? And yet, here is Saudi Arabia, the fertile cresent of radical islam and seedfarm of terrorist and terror organizations and we give them nuke technology and the Israeli's are quiet as church mice!

Here's a quick geopolitical quiz: What country is three times the size of Texas and has more than 300 days of blazing sun a year? What country has the world's largest oil reserves resting below miles upon miles of sand? And what country is being given nuclear power, not solar, by President George W. Bush, even when the mere assumption of nuclear possession in its region has been known to provoke pre-emptive air strikes, even wars?
If you answered Saudi Arabia to all of these questions, you're right.
Last month, while the American people were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more, the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.

Wall Street Journal 6/10/2008

This piece was written by Sen. Markey of Mass. and I appreciate many of the things he said/asked in this piece. And if you think Markey's comments in the first paragraph above is some form of BS or looney tunes, then you have to consider the 2004' comments of VP Cheney of equal lunacy.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "[Iran is] already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. No one can figure why they need nuclear, as well, to generate energy."

The Israeli Noise machine has been most vocal about Iran in respects to it's nuclear potentials but where is that noise in respect to Saudi Arabia and now the UAE's? IMO the silence of the Israeli gov't and it's American muscle (AIPAC,etc) speaks volumes and just makes a case that in fact all is not truly as it seems!

Then again, just a quick look around that at the very least, seems that suspicious suggestive evidence is/might be everywhere and maybe we aren't willing to look. From July 2007' Washington Post

Question of the day. Who/What is Bridas?





Send me the tax bill Moreluck, I'll gladly pay it for this one!

 

[diesel96]

YouTube - SA@Takimag - War is Generational Theft

Amen!

Good video, too bad most here ignore the reality here....all I can say is one spending spree will benefit us citizens rather than the US military Ind Complex....both however have consequences to the next generation..

Should be interesting to see what happens if we have another terrorst attack takes place in the US. Will Obama suddenly find these methods more appealing. Will he be able to explain why his apologies and "terrorist tell me what you know, cause I'm your friend" tactics did not work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html

And dare I point out our righteous indignation towards Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda for killing 3000k innocent people on 9/11 but when we kill multiple times that many innocent people ourselves in the advancement of american justice, we soldier onward singing the chorus of "Onward Christian Soldiers!"

It's funny that when a person or group or persons kill innocent people outside some formal structure of democratic gov't model they are murderers and yet we can collectivize ourselves declaring some manifest destiny assigned by God, assign leadership roles to annointed persons among our midst (democrats and republicans equally) and they can decide to kill innocents in the quest for a so-called greater good and yet they are not called murderers among our midst. We call them great leaders, giants of society, patriots. I won't post it here as you can go to YouTube and see it for yourself but the opening 5 minutes of the movie 1984 comes to mind right now. Funny how the fiction from paper and celluloid can be a true mirror of ourselves.

I wonder what almight God will call those so-called great leaders of ours on that day they stand before him and then what of those who blindly follow and support them? Something about "depart from me because I never knew you" comes to mind!

Wkmac, although some of these quotes and images may inspire me personally.....however injecting church into state in a public/gov't forum and claiming God is on our side for political purposes is just plain wrong. I'd much rather not see my religion embellished with flying death machines, but rather with repairing human suffering and injustices and spreading goodness.....



Pentagon: No More Bible Quotes In Briefings
May 19th, 2009, 11:36 AM EDT

It's remarkable that the Pentagon even has to make such a statement, but it now says it will no longer send the White House intelligence briefings adorned with quotes from the Bible. This, of course, is in response to the GQ story that former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld (r), did just that.


The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers’ deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine.