they suddenly realized that if any of the detainees were found Not Guilty, they'd be free on US streets.

they suddenly realized that if any of the detainees were found Not Guilty, they'd be free on US streets...WOOPSIE!!

Of course it's ALL compounded by the fact that Congress just shot down the closing of GITMO...

Republican's Common Wisdom on Guantanamo

Here's Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) today discussing the Guantanamo detainees on Hardball
We know that the ones that are left in Guantanamo are the meanest, nastiest killers in the world....

What I'm saying is that once you put 'em on Americal soil, then all of a sudden they become eligible for a lot of rights that American criminal have and these are combatant detainees. These are not ordinary bank robbers or the nasty folks who they might be asociated with at these prisons.

These are folks that either have killed or tried to kill Americans.

I just want to take this chance to note that 60 of the 244 detainees at Guantanamo face no criminal charges, they just haven't been released for fear that they will be tortured or face persecution if returned to their home country. They are currently in purgatory.

I'm sure that some of these people are dangerous, as Chambliss says, but how many?

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

The idea that every one of these Gitmo detainees, "getup every day thinking of ways that they can kill and harm Americans" as Chambliss argues, is ridiculous.

Fox News hosts and contributors have advanced the claim by former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen that the use of harsh interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed "stopped an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles." But the claim conflicts with the chronology of events put forth on multiple occasions by the Bush administration, as Slate.com's Timothy Noah has noted. Indeed, the Bush administration said that the Library Tower attack was thwarted in February 2002 -- more than a year before Mohammed was captured in March 2003.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904220032

"Terror Plot" Reporting Lacks Skepticism
Networks treat White House allegations as fact

2/13/06

When George W. Bush announced on February 9 that an Al-Qaeda plot against a building in Los Angeles had been "thwarted," many television newscasts took the administration's claims as fact.

ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson reported (2/9/06) that "President Bush today revealed some details of a terrorist plot that was foiled," later putting this question to ABC reporter Pierre Thomas: "So what were the details of the plot and how was it foiled?" After a brief summary of the administration's story of the plot and some soundbites from terrorism experts on the general threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Thomas concluded that "disaster was averted."

CNN's Miles O'Brien (2/10/06) displayed a similar lack of skepticism: "The president was talking terror yesterday, and lifting a veil on a thwarted Al-Qaeda attack that aimed to fly a hijacked airliner into a L.A. skyscraper in early 2002." Unsurprisingly, conservative commentators like Fox's Bill O'Reilly were upset that the media weren't credulous enough; O'Reilly (2/10/06) singled out the New York Times (2/10/06) for failing to give the story prominent placement: "Of course, on page 22 is the terror thing that they stopped an attack on Los Angeles. Page 22."

CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer announced (2/9/06) that "for the first time President Bush confirmed today that in the months after 9/11, the government broke up another terrorist plot to fly a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles." The fact that Bush says something does not "confirm" that what he is saying is true—and in fact, earlier reporting by the Los Angeles Times casts doubts on Bush's claims.

As an NPR report (2/10/06) recalled, "Elements of the plot have been described before, notably in the L.A. Times." But the earliest Times report (3/31/04) included a significant caveat about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda operative who allegedly planned the L.A. attack: "Law enforcement officials, however, caution that Mohammed's statements since his capture have been viewed with a degree of skepticism by U.S. intelligence."

The next Times story (10/8/05), headlined "Scope of Plots Bush Says Were Foiled Is Questioned," cited "several counter-terrorism officials" as saying that "the plot never progressed past the planning stages.... 'To take that and make it into a disrupted plot is just ludicrous,' said one senior FBI official." "At most," the story suggested, "it was a plan that was stopped in its initial stages and was not an operational plot that had been disrupted by authorities."

In the current round of reporting on the story, some newspapers have noted the dissent over the alleged plot. The Washington Post (2/10/06) cited "several U.S. intelligence officials" who "said there is deep disagreement within the intelligence community over the seriousness of the Library Tower scheme and whether it was ever much more than talk." And the New York Daily News (2/10/06) cited one senior counterterrorism official who said: "There was no definitive plot. It never materialized or got past the thought stage."

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

As the controversy surrounding revelations of the Bush administration’s torture program builds, the CIA has attempted to diffuse the furore by claiming that the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed prevented a terror attack on an L.A. skyscraper, a completely ludicrous assertion since the credibility of the alleged “L.A. attack plot” was debunked by scores of intelligence professionals years ago.

“The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles,” reports CNS News.

This claim was made the day after after former Vice-President****Cheney urged the CIA to “put out the memos that show the success of the effort….reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

The “planned attack on Los Angeles” refers to an announcement made on February 9th 2006 in which it was claimed that an Al-Qaeda plan to fly a plane into the LA Library Tower was thwarted in 2002. The release of the news that the plot had been prevented by means of tapping terrorist suspect’s phone, and not torture as the CIA now claims, was politically timed to coincide with the start of legal hearings on the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

Fox “News,” the White House’s PR mouthpiece, immediately began showing footage from the movie Independence Day, in which the famous tower is destroyed.

CIA Ludicrously Claims Torture Prevented Debunked L.A. Terror Plot 240107tower

Hours after the announcement, the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, went public with his absolute bewilderment concerning the alleged plot.

“I’m amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” the mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t expect a call from the president — but somebody.”

The day after the announcement, twenty three separate intelligence experts, all with either CIA, FBI, NSA or military credentials, both in and out of service, angrily disputed Bush’s remarks about the alleged L.A. plot, with one going as far as saying that the President was “full of shit.”

Another described the claims as “worthless intel that was discarded long ago.”

A New York Times story cited “several counter-terrorism officials” as saying that “the plot never progressed past the planning stages…. ‘To take that and make it into a disrupted plot is just ludicrous,’ said one senior FBI official.”

The New York Daily News cited another senior counterterrorism official who said: “There was no definitive plot. It never materialized or got past the thought stage.”


The Washington Post also dismissed the alleged plot as nothing more than talk, noting that no actual attack plan had been thwarted.

The LA attack plot arose from the same discredited informant who said that Washington and New York financial institutions were being targeted, which led the White House to raise the terror alert right as the 2004 election campaign was beginning.

“The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world,” said a veteran field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. “He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington.”

In June 2004 John Pistole, the FBI’s counterterrorism director, said he was “not sure what [the CIA] was referring to,” after a CIA counterterrorism official who testified under the alias “Ted Davis” said that the US had prevented aviation attacks against the east and west coast.

Despite the alleged plot being thoroughly debunked a year prior, President Bush again cited it in his January 2007 State of the Union speech.

Now the CIA has recycled the same hoax in order to try and deflect accusations about its involvement in the torture program.

Indeed, by announcing that the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to his “confession” of being behind the non-existent L.A. attack plot, the CIA is only reaffirming the fact that the torture program was designed to elicit false confessions that could then be used as terror propaganda on the fearful and gullible American public.

As Senator Levin highlighted on the back of the release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, the techniques (known as SERE) authorized by officials to be used on detainees, “Are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes.”

In addition, the senior Army SERE psychologist warned in 2002 against using SERE training techniques during interrogations in an email to personnel at Guantanamo Bay, because, “It usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low.”

Little wonder then that KSM confessed to everything under the sun, and only stopped short of admitting to being the real Santa Claus, assassinating JFK and creating AIDS. He even “confessed” to plotting to attack a bank that wasn’t even founded until after his arrest.

The idea that waterboarding KSM six times a day for a month, as well as torturing his children, would lead to anything other than false confessions is absurd on the face of it.

However, by regurgitating the confirmed hoax that KSM “confessed” to a plot that never even existed because of the “success” of waterboarding, the CIA has once again highlighted the fact that not only was the torture program an insult and a disgrace to everything America is supposed to stand for, but that it was also a complete waste of time and only put Americans in more danger because false confessions were taken as gospel so that they could be used not to protect the country from terrorists, but to propagandize to the American people and enlist their support for the thoroughly deceptive and insidious “war on terror”.

I sincerely hope you are NEVER put in a similar position. You’d probably not only wilt under the pressure, but be quick to pass blame if things go wrong instead of stepping up and taking responsibility for your actions, or in your case "inactions".

... this thread is talking about waterboarding high-profile, intelligence-rich terrorists in the months immediately following 9-11, when the possibility of followup attacks that could very well have included "dirty" nuclear bombs and/or biological weapons was at its highest. Time was of the essence. As was shown earlier, the CIA didn't have the luxury to spend months getting buddy-buddy with their subjects to extract information.

Bringing in all these extraneous arguments only clouds the issue and has nothing to do with the central question, and is just another tactic to avoid facing the question squarely.

MediaWeek
December 6, 2004
Brent Bozell's PTC files 99.8% of all FCC indeceny complaints!

In an appearance before Congress in February ... Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.

The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, "a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes."

What Powell did not reveal — apparently because he was unaware — was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by [Brent Bozell's] the Parents Television Council, an activist group.

Ripper, that you and those that think like you believe in such drivel tells me all I need to know about how you think. Not a pretty visual.

Fox News hosts and contributors have advanced the claim by former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen that the use of harsh interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed "stopped an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles." But the claim conflicts with the chronology of events put forth on multiple occasions by the Bush administration, as Slate.com's Timothy Noah has noted. Indeed, the Bush administration said that the Library Tower attack was thwarted in February 2002 -- more than a year before Mohammed was captured in March 2003.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200904220032

Torture never saved lives ... in fact it's still contributing to taking lives and forever altering thousands of lives ... daily.

Cotter, I’ve got some questions for you ....

Why do you think the Bush administration promulgated enhanced interrogation techniques (including waterboarding) after 9-11 in the first place?

Why do you think the CIA felt compelled to use them?

Do you believe “any” post-9-11 attacks were exposed and stopped due to the techniques?

Do you believe the Bush administration and CIA officials intimately involved in the events are purposely lying; if so what do you think their motives are?

Do you believe all the EIT techniques should never be used under any circumstances, even in an extreme case like a “ticking time bomb” scenario?

Bashing, Insulting, Slamming other Posters

Report Posters who post Messages that insult, bash and slam other POF Members.
Same goes for Thread or Messages warning others of previous dates or meetings you have had in order to embarrass, slam or humiliate them.

You can slam & bash the Topic or Subject under Discussion all you like, but you cannot insult, bash and slam other Posters.

Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Abuse?

by Ari Shapiro

All Things Considered, May 20, 2009
It is clear that increasingly abusive interrogation techniques were used on Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee, in the months between his capture and the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations. But the legal guidance that authorized those early interrogations remains shrouded in secrecy.

Zubaydah was picked up on March 28, 2002. The Justice Department issued its first memo on torture four months later on Aug. 1. Zubaydah's lawyer, Brent Mickum, believes documents and testimony in the public record establish "beyond question that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to torture before the issuance of the Aug. 1 memorandum."

'Harsher and Harsher Methods'
The public record includes testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who was with Zubaydah during April and May of 2002. Soufan told Congress last week that "contractors had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods."

Soufan testified that in the first two months of Zubaydah's interrogation, a CIA contractor used nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during interrogations. That contractor has been identified as a psychologist named James Mitchell. Mitchell has not commented publicly in recent years, and he could not be reached for this story.

Soufan told senators of describing Zubaydah's treatment to FBI supervisors as "borderline torture."
The use of "borderline torture" against Zubaydah months before the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations raises the question of whether Mitchell hadLEGAL PERMISSION to use ABUSIVE techniques.

The CIA suggests that he did.

"The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice was not the first piece of legal guidance for the interrogation program," according to agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano.
But the CIA will not describe what the first legal guidance was.

Top-Secret Cables
One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source's account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah's black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

"At the very least, it's clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site," says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. "But there's still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of WHICH senior officials were driving this process."
Gonzales did not respond to a request for comment through his lawyer.

'A Complete Charade'?
Attorneys who have worked in the White House counsel's office describe it as "highly unusual" for the White House to tell interrogators what they can and cannot do. Bradford Berenson worked in the counsel's office under President Bush, though he had no role in authorizing harsh interrogations.

"These were highly unusual and extraordinary times after 9/11," says Berenson, "but ordinarily the White House counsel's office is not in the business of providing advice to anyone outside the White House itself."

All through the summer of 2002, top officials across the government were trying to sort out the ground rules for legal interrogations.

"I can't believe the CIA would have settled for a piece of paper from the counsel to the president," says one former government official familiar with those discussions.

"If that were true," says the former official, "then the whole legal and policy review process from April through August would have been a complete charade."

The “ghost prisoners” captured with Abu Zubaydah
The most extraordinary revelation in the Post’s article, however, concerns Noor al-Deen, a Syrian teenager who was captured with Zubaydah in Pakistan. According to the former officials who spoke to the Post, al-Deen, who, like Zubaydah, suffered gunshot wounds during his capture, “worshiped the older man as a hero.” Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou explained that al-Deen was terrified, and feared that he was about to be executed. “He was frightened — mostly over what we were going to do with him,” Kiriakou said. “He had come to the conclusion that his life was over.”

Unlike the handful of other men seized with Zubaydah, who ended up being sent to Guantánamo (without extensive stays in secret CIA custody), al-Deen and another man, Omar Ghramesh, were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and sent to third countries to be interrogated. Aspects of Ghramesh’s story have been known about for several years, via Abdullah Almalki, a joint Syrian-Canadian national, who was seized by Syrian intelligence agents in May 2002, at the request of the Canadian authorities, and imprisoned and tortured for 22 months in the notorious military prison known as the “Palestine Branch,” before being released without charge. In 2006, Almalki was interviewed by Stephen Grey for his book Ghost Plane, and explained that two suspects seized with Zubaydah — Omar Ghramesh and an unnamed teenager — were rendered to the “Palestine Branch” on May 14, 2002, along with Abu Abdul Halim Dalak, a student seized in Pakistan in November 2001. Ghramesh explained that in Pakistan US agents had shown him photos of Abu Zubaydah looking battered and bruised, and had told him, “If you don’t talk, this is what will happen to you.”

Until now, the identity of the “unnamed teenager” was unknown, but it is now apparent that he was Noor al-Deen. The Post explained that the US officials had stated that, “perhaps because of his youth and agitated state,” al-Deen “readily answered US questions,” confirming that Zubaydah “was a well-known functionary with links to al-Qaeda, but he knew little detailed information about the group’s operations.” Nevertheless, his questioning “went on for months,” first in Pakistan, then in Morocco, and then in Syria.

The Post noted that “attempts to firmly establish his current whereabouts were unsuccessful,” but in truth the disappearance of Noor al-Deen — and of Omar Ghramesh and Abu Abdul Halim Dalak — is actually a more important story than that of Abu Zubaydah. I do not state this to play down the significance of Zubaydah’s futile and counter-productive torture, because it remains, I believe, a key element in demolishing the myths that former Bush administration officials — and especially D!ck Cheney — are still using in an effort to shield themselves from prosecution, but because these three men are just a few of the hundreds — or thousands — of men whose whereabouts must be accounted for if Barack Obama is to succeed in his mission “to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

I’ll never agree a foreign terrorist dedicated to killing Americans deserves full constitutional rights and better treatment than those who fight them.

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the
Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary
and appropriate in order to—

(1) defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.—In connection with the
exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force
the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter
as may be feasible, but

no later than 48 hours after exercisingsuch authority,

make available to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his
determination that—


(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent
with the United States and other countries continuing to take
the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist
organizations, including those nations, organizations, or
persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

How do you know he/she is a terrorist.

Due process and a judgment must take place

Rights deserved human rights. Our value dating back to George Washington, further to Lincoln. Basic US values.

We all know the smoking gun crap, You bet extreme measures have been taken in the past. The issue today, WE are told only three people were given the treatment.

Ego and swagger of those in charge. You accuse of broadcasting our methods.....These should have never been discussed openly. A person proud of the fact that he executed more people than anyone else, and he spent no time reviewing for clemency, want everyone to know.

Ascroft ask why were they talking about this in the White house?
...and
something to the effect history would judge harshly.

NO big deal? No this attitude infected the entire military system. How many idiots went too far? This was out of control.

The Military prosecuted a group, all low in rank.

Where did they find the motivation for their behavior? Do you really believe their conduct was not encouraged or they were not mirroring what the saw?

If your not With us YOU are against us.

Liberals don't support the troops because they ask about body armor???

The GOP ran everything from the office of the VP.

Delay and company accused many patriots of being traitors...........

The house had no debate regarding the conduct of the war from Oct 2002 to June 2006?????????

When 366 tons of $100 bill disappeared there was no hearing or investigation?
The largest transfer of cash ever from the treasury? GONE....

There were protests, Rockefeller could not have anyone prepare his letter to the President
A hand written document so secret no staff could see it.............

The purpose of torture is to obtain a confession. The confession that was needed by the White House was a connection between Iraq and 9-11.

Fact The White House never fulfilled the requirements of House Joint resolution 114.Granting President Bush the powers of war.

How do you know he/she is a terrorist.

That's just it ... we don't know. Most of the prisoners that we have that the previous administration consider to be so-called "enemy combatants" were SOLD to the US.

They WERE NOT "picked up off of any so-called "battlefield" as they would have us believe. They WERE NOT caught trying to do any American any harm. Yet they were assumed to be guilty and then tortured into saying things that weren't even true just to get out of the torture ... as was the case with Al Libi. And in the case of Zubaydah, they were torturing a mentally ill man who had already told them all he knew long before the torture took place. In his case, he was tortured for nothing more than that the "C0ck" needed a connection/tie-in with Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Many people in here speak of these people as not fighting a "conventional war". I don't think it matters how a war is fought ... conventional or otherwise. Prisoners should NEVER ever be abused and certainly NEVER tortured.

That's just it ... we don't know. Most of the prisoners that we have that the previous administration consider to be so-called "enemy combatants" were SOLD to the US.

The problem with us using anything remotely related to torture, is that we are supposed to be the good guys. We are supposed to be fighting for freedom for all, human rights for everyone, a world without torture. How can we be the shinning beacon of freedom, when we resort to the very same tactics that makes the otherside evil? This is not the path our country should be taking.