David Corn

Come on DC, you know Pelosi is lying. Shes changed her story three times now.

If this were Bush or Cheney you would be writing a book right now about how they lied.

Democrats rewarding thier base:

$millions in stimulus going to dead people!

"Being dead is not an excuse to stop voting!"

Moveon.org

Come on now freddie, are you saying the CIA's inability to produce a record of what was covered during the briefing is not, itself, suspect?

The CIA has had some history of withho9lding information from even Presidents (plausable deniability), so why not hold information from Pelosi, especially given her penchant for a loud mouth?

Again, what Pelosi did or didn't know will never make torture and war crimes justified.

Open the investigations and let the sun shine in.

The CIA lie to Congress? I'm shocked, shocked! The R's have once again successfully changed the subject thru counterattack.

The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney

[...]

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.

He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?

When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends.

Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/05/the_truth_about/

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Obama will not be able to rid himself of the torture debate. It is already well underway in America … and now Bush's legacy is becoming more of an issue for Obama than he had hoped. First the back-and-forth over the internal memoranda with which Bush's legal team sought to justify torture. Now the wrangling over photos. Coming soon will be a dispute over the unspeakable military tribunals for the Guantanamo detainees. And it will only continue. Muddling through is not an option."

"Obama has to take a painful step. In the name of America, the US has to confront and work through its use of torture and abuse -- much in the same way that other countries have dealt with the dark chapters in their own histories. It would be a correct move to call into existence a committee in the image of the Truth Commission in South Africa. Otherwise the ignominy of his predecessor could weigh on Obama as well."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,625068,00.html

Rep. Murtha Should Step Down from Chairmanship of Defense Appropriations

http://tinyurl.com/pvr7nv

I can only reiterate again, read "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner. The CIA has lied to almost every President since Eisenhower so they would have no compunctions from lying to a mere member of congress.

The photos America doesn't want seen

MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Tonight the SBS Dateline program plans to broadcast about 60 previously unpublished photographs that the US Government has been fighting to keep secret in a court case with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Although a US judge last year granted the union access to the photographs following a freedom-of-information request, the US Administration has appealed against the decision on the grounds their release would fuel anti-American sentiment.

Some of the photos are similar to those published in 2004, others are different. They include photographs of six corpses, although the circumstances of their deaths are not clear. There are also pictures of what appear to be burns and wounds from shotgun pellets.

http://tinyurl.com/o95nul

******

Sadly, the media down under makes fools of our media and this makes blocking the release of the pictures even weaker.

Cheney Is Hurting The Party, Say Republican Insiders

A National Journal poll of top GOP political insiders and strategists finds that Republicans believe former Vice President Dick Cheney has hurt the party since leaving office.

Of 100 insiders polled, fully 57 percent believe Cheney has hurt the party, and only 33 percent believe he has helped. The poll also includes quotes from unnamed insiders.

"Anything that reminds the public of the Bush administration harms the party's ability to turn the page. If he'd had any concern for his public image when he was in office, he wouldn't have to worry as much about defending his reputation now."

"There is nothing Dick Cheney can say or do to help the Republican Party today. The best thing he can do is disappear for the next 10 years."

"Let's face it: The guy doesn't know anything about winning elections outside of Wyoming."

"Not even a close call. With Cheney out there, Obama doesn't even need to remind the American people about the mess that was the Bush years."

"Cheney represents the grumpy intolerance that has come to characterize the GOP. Get off the stage!"

http://tinyurl.com/ob5mzx

Come on now freddie, are you saying the CIA's inability to produce a record of what was covered during the briefing is not, itself, suspect?

~~~

According to Obamas hand picked CIA director, Leon Panetta, the CIA is not the one lying!

If she hadn't changed her story more times than Obamas flip flopped on issues, you might have a point!

The CIA lie to Congress? I'm shocked, shocked! The R's have once again successfully changed the subject thru counterattack.

~~~~~~~~

The R's changed the subject? Are you kidding me?

Pelosi's big moronic mouth changed the subject. Pelosis foot in mouth disease gives Biden a run for his money!

Media Shocked - Shocked! - That Pelosi Criticizes The CIA

--Here's Marcy Wheeler accusing the CIA of lying to ABC News a couple of times, and ABC not learning a lesson from it.

--In 2007, British intelligence officials accused the CIA of misleading them "over the arrest and treatment of terrorist suspects who were the subjects of rendition to Guantanamo Bay."

--Also in 2007, Federal prosecutors "said the CIA misled federal judges regarding the evidence against Zacarias Moussaoui."

--In 2004, the CIA had to acknowledge that they "did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons."

--In 2008, then ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Pete Hoekstra -- who has Pelosi under fire today -- himself "called for a criminal investigation into whether the CIA lied to Congress and withheld information from the Justice Department during its inquiry into the 2001 shoot-down of an American missionary plane by the Peruvian air force with help from a CIA counternarcotics spotter plane."

--Heck, if you cast your mind back, waaay back, to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, know what you'd find? People accusing the CIA of misleading! From Howard Jones' The Bay Of Pigs: "No one accepted blame for the failure at the Bay of Pigs. The Joint Chiefs insisted that the CIA misled them. The CIA countered that the military failed to execute a sound plan. The White House held both parties responsible, asserting that they did not provide the proper advice."

--And of course, the CIA famously destroyed some ninety-two videotapes that pertained specifically to the very detention and interrogation program that's at the center of this dispute, a move that truly exemplifies the agency's towering affection for honesty and openness!

http://tinyurl.com/oso3an

*****

The CIA are paid to be good at misinformation, it is their forte'

Panetta to CIA employees: We told Pelosi the truth

CIA Director Leon Panetta just sent a stern message to his employees defending the agency against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's criticisms.

His message: We didn't mislead Congress; stay focused on your job.

Panetta's note was sent to reporters via the CIA press office. Here's the key graph:

"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless you're Nancy Pelosi who's more concerned about getting botox shots than telling the truth!

The CIA are paid to be good at misinformation, it is their forte'
~~~~~

When it comes to Valerie Plame, I would have to agree 100%

RE: "The R's have once again successfully changed the subject thru counterattack."

Ugh, the left strikes again!!!

The REAL question is, why did the CIA (supposedly) lie to Nancy Pelosi, but tell EVERYONE else briefed the truth?

Yea, capt, let's get 'em ALL under oath, and let the lying Dems fall where they may.

And BTW, if Pelosi lies under oath, she should be prosecuted, unlike BJ Clinton.

If Obama would just release all the memos like Cheney asked this could all be resolved.

What's Obama afraid of?

After all he's the one who started this whole mess by cherry picking memos to release in the first place.

What an amateur!

Now he has his Admin (Panetta) against Pelosi~

Cheneys laughing his ass off right now!

Rep. Murtha Should Step Down from Chairmanship of Defense Appropriations

~~~~

Step down? How about prosecuted for racketeering!

George Tenet wrote in his book "At the Center of the Storm", -

"After 9/11, gripped by the same emotions and fears, Congress exhorted the intelligence community to take more risks to protect the country."

Civil rights? Then-Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., noted at a 2002 Senate intelligence committee that "we are not living in times in which lawyers can say no to an operation just to play it safe."

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz defended the use of rough treatment -- "the third degree" -- in order "to elicit information from terrorists about continuing threats."

"Once "enhanced techniques" were used on KSM, interrogations "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' … to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner' into a building in Los Angeles."

Bob Graham and Alan Dershowitz - stalwarts of the great Right-wing conspiracy!!! The list of "Truth Commitee" litigants grows.

"The whole point of this storm about Pelosi is that her critics want her to be embarrassed and stop supporting a Truth Commission or any sort of examination of what happened. But she's not. She still says there should be an investigation. Her critics still want the book closed. That says it all. She'll have to stand or fall with the results of an actual investigation. Her opponents on this are simply risible hypocrites. "

http://tinyurl.com/q3edny

All this talk about what Pelosi was briefed on and when is all SO interesting. But, the most it shows is that the Dems were reluctant to object to whatever torture techniques they may have known about -- because they were afraid that the Republicans were hoping to paint the Dems as soft on fighting terrorism in the 2002 elections. (And the Dems should have had more backbone on an issue as grotesque as torture.)

However, the most important issue is still that the Cheney/Bush Administration tortured prisoners, in violation of US and international law, resulting in the deaths of some prisoners. Under US law, anyone who uses torture (including ordering torture or otherwise conspiring to use torture) and kills someone in the course of that torture can, if convicted, be sentenced to death.

How's that for a thought, Dick?

I'm sure if Pelosi disclosed classified information from a briefing - the GOP would have stood by her and taken on the criminals in the White House.

I think Pelosi should be challenged and her seat given up for taking impeachment off the table. Clearly that would have been one way to show she stood up for the consitution.

Let the investigation begin. Torture has to be worth at least half as much as a presidential BJ so $35 +/- million.

Antidote speaks FOR all Libs, AS all Libs.

The liberal left is devoid of character, and INCAPABLE of speaking the truth!!!!

"kills someone in the course of that torture " is a POWERFUL statement, but TOTALLY DEVOID OF BASIS IN FACT.

Who is providing proof that someone died in the course of torture by an American? Pelosi? Murtha?

Let's get 'em all under oath, and see where the lying Libs fall!!!

Hey, while we've got time, let's take a short quiz.

Quick.......Which well-known Republican flunked out after freshman year at a certain school in New Haven that had such lax grading that even the Shrub could coast by on a "Gentlemen's C" average?

Ohhhh............I know, too easy for you all.

Yes, it is our favorite "Advocate of Torture," that dick of all Dicks, the CardioCriminal himself.

And why did the Cheney/Bush Administration torture detainees? To make America safer? To prevent another attack on America?

No........apparently to try to gin up some bit of evidence (phony or otherwise) that might support their pre-conceived notion that somehow Iraq and al-Quaeda were connected, so that they would have a pretext for invading Iraq.

There's patriotism for you.

" ... following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding."
John McCain on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 in a campaign event in St. Petersburg

See: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/18/john-mccain/history-supports-mccains-stance-on-waterboarding/

Since Bob Graham's diary affirms Pelosi's allegations about the CIA, I find it hard to argue with her contentions. The CIA is known far and wide for lying. The CIA lies to everyone about everything.

One of Cheney's reasons for going around the CIA with Doug Feith was that he mistrusted it quite passionately.

Pannetta will never admit that the CIA lies to members of Congress. Graham's diary showed clearly that the CIA never discussed torture under any euphemistic guise with him just as Pelosi claims.

Trusting the CIA to be truthful is like trusting GW Bush to run a government. Such trust is always misplaced.

One last point. Pelosi in 2002 had no power to make effect any changes in the behavior of the administration. She was in the minority party. She had signed an oath not to reveal the contents of the briefing and was threatened with legal action if she committed any part of the briefing to paper which might be made public.

In any event, the Bush administration committed several felonies and both Bush and Cheney need to be sent the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

That is non-negotiable. I may relent if I get to waterboard Bush and Cheney 182 times each in one month since I would not do to them what they did to KSM. Anyway everyone knows that 182 is inadequate it takes 183 to get at any truth.

Dick Cheney, Torture, Iraq, and Valerie Plame

http://tinyurl.com/pduqd5

Fact: We Tortured to Justify War

Many of us realized a while ago that the real purpose of all the torture Bush and Cheney ordered was to elicit false information of an al Qaeda/Saddam connection that would justify an invasion of Iraq, an obsession of the Cheney circle that predated 9/11. But Joe Conason has written an especially compelling essay laying out the evidence piece by piece.

There simply is no good reason why the leading members of the Bush administration who ordered, justified, and implemented torture should not stand trial. And many good reasons why they should.

http://tinyurl.com/pat4ko

Whole thing stinks.

The rotten smell pervades out beyond the Beltway.

Ugh!

I think motivation is critical to evaluating the Pelosi vs. CIA flap. Speaker Pelosi was prevented from publicly discussing the classified torture briefings at the time when she was a leader of the House Intelligence Committee, yet she is pushing for open hearings now. The CIA, apart from making the mistake of going up against former Senator Graham's comprehensive daily logs, is trying to defend its practices when it appears that the goal of torturing prisoners was to obtain FALSE information, not the truth about some pending attack. The first questions asked of 9/11 mastermind K.S.M. concerned his supposed links to Saddam, not whether he was planning to blow up the Sears Tower! It is extremely embarrassing to Democrats that Leon Panetta has muddied the waters with his equivocal statement about the truthfulness of CIA briefing officers, but just on the basis of motivation, I'll side with the Speaker and hope she can convince Barama to hold torture hearings so "Dungeon Dick" Cheney can finally be brought to justice!

Are Conservatives Getting Stupider?


“I sense intellectual deterioration of the once-vital conservative movement in the United States.”

Those are the words of Judge Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Posner is also one of the founders of the Chicago school of law and economics, a cornerstone of modern conservatism.

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=1269

capt --- Its long since moldered away.

Just the smell is left.

Sen. Webb reverses on Obama's Gitmo plans

The Hill ^ | 5/17/09 | Sam Youngman

With Capitol Hill Republicans cranking up the volume on the issue of where to send alleged terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb (Va.) reversed himself Sunday, and questioned President Obama's "artificial timelines" for closing the facility. Webb, appearing on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" with Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, said that after reviewing Obama's plans to close the facility within one year, he doesn't agree with the president's time schedule and he opposes bringing any detainees to U.S. soil. "We spend hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions in...

~~~~~~~~~

The rookie is getting schooled by his own party now folks!

Of course the C.I.A. is telling the truth. It’s a slam dunk.