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THEY AREN'T LETTING HIM SLEEP He's accused of killing a medic, and his lawyer wants sympathy because the little fucker has been sleep deprived. What a world!
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(1515 of 1515)
Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 4, 2009 11:29 PM
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> Russ
>
> The Stewed Condi would be fun to watch.
Jet,
We might get our chance yet...
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(1514 of 1515)
Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 4, 2009 10:54 PM
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The poow wittle tewwowist is getting a lot closer to home..
'Little Guantanamo' Prisons- Secretive and Unprecedented ?CMU? Prisons Designed to Restrict Communication of Jailed Americans
With little public scrutiny, the Bush administration opened two secretive prisons in Indiana and Illinois known as Communication Management Units, or CMUs, that are designed to severely restrict prisoner communication with family members, the media and the outside world. Dozens of Muslim men are still being held at the CMUs, as well as other prisoners, including environmental and animal rights activists.
--
"If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies" - Einstein
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 3, 2009 9:44 AM
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Oh boy, I guess "slobbering over terrorists" is the new Rush/Bill catchphrase. Doesn't make much sense, but it does have a nice sound.
I wonder if it's the same as "seeing a terrorist behind every tree", the Cheney/Bush paradigm.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 3, 2009 7:03 AM
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The Stalinist young man child is the commander in chief of slobbering over terrorists. Rather sickening, I would say.
--
"Opinion of The Right"
The #1 thread on the RT board, Again.
Doctordog, a board legend.
Slobbering over terrorists=
Saboteur being in league with the enemy.
If Liberalism fails, America wins.
Rule #1, DON'T FEED The Trolls.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 3, 2009 1:48 AM
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WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration may revamp and restart the Bush-era military trial system for suspected terrorists as it struggles to determine the fate of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and fulfill a pledge to close the prison by January.
The move would further delay terrorism trials and, coupled with recent comments by U.S. military and legal officials, amounts to a public admission by President Barack Obama's team that delivering on that promise is easier said than done.
Almost immediately after taking office, Obama suspended the tribunal system and ordered a 120-day review of the cases against the 241 men being held at the Navy prison in Cuba. That review was supposed to end May 20. But two U.S. officials said Saturday the administration wants a three-month extension.
The delay means that legal action on the detainees' cases would continue to be frozen.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 2, 2009 8:46 PM
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I'll bet!
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 2, 2009 4:55 PM
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Still slobbering over terrorists, disgusting I say.
--
"Opinion of The Right"
The #1 thread on the RT board, Again.
Doctordog, a board legend.
Slobbering over terrorists=
Saboteur being in league with the enemy.
If Liberalism fails, America wins.
Rule #1, DON'T FEED The Trolls.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 2, 2009 3:25 PM
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.000001 prefers to fellate terrorists, methinks.
Russ
The Stewed Condi would be fun to watch.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 2, 2009 2:10 PM
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From The Times (London)
May 2, 2009
?Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush? lawyers claim
Charles Graner plans to appeal against his conviction for abusing prisoners
Tim Reid in Washington
Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.
The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking ?bad apples? who were acting on their own.
The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.
Some of the guards who were convicted of abuse want to return to court and argue that the previous administration sanctioned the abuse but withheld its role from their trials.
The latest reaction to the released memos came as it emerged that the two psychologists hired by the CIA to craft the techniques that were used on terror suspects were paid $1,000 (£673) a day. Neither had carried out nor overseen an interrogation.
Twelve guards at Abu Ghraib were convicted on charges related to the abuse, which included attaching leads to naked prisoners, terrifying them with dogs, beatings and slamming them into walls. The wall-slamming was a technique authorised by Justice Department officials at the time, who also said that the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding was not considered to be torture.
Charles Gittins, a lawyer who represents Charles Graner, the ringleader of the guards who is serving a ten-year sentence, said that the memos proved his long-held contention that Graner and the other defendants, including his former lover Lynndie England, could never have invented tactics such as stress positions and the use of dogs on their own.
?Once the pictures came out, the senior officials involved in the decision-making, they knew. They knew they had to have a cover story. It was the ?bad apples? led by Charles Graner,? Mr Gittins told The Washington Post.
Ms England, a poorly educated Army reservist, was pictured holding a dog leash attached to a naked detainee, and also pointing at another being forced to masturbate. She was convicted in September 2005 of abusing prisoners and one count of an indecent act. She was sentenced to three years in a military prison and was paroled after 521 days. Shortly after leaving Iraq she gave birth to a son fathered by Graner. She lives in her home state of West Virginia.
Mr Gittins said the refusal by the Bush Administration to acknowledge that it had authorised such techniques during the trials of the prison guards ? and the judges? refusal to call senior administration officials to testify ? undermined their defences.
Mr Gittins wants to take the case of Graner, who is halfway through his sentence, to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to argue that top Bush Administration officials kept their complicity from the defence.
Gary Myers, a lawyer who represented Ivan L ?Chip? Frederick on the abuse charges, said that he was going to try to use the memos to have his client?s dishonourable discharge removed from his record.
?What we know is that we had at the time a rogue government that created an environment where this sort of conduct was condoned, if not encouraged,? he said.
He added, however, that relying on illegal opinions or orders would probably not be a defence.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 1, 2009 5:30 PM
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My but we are touchy about slobbering over terrorists. My my. If you wish to slobber over them in my thread feel free to do so.
--
"Opinion of The Right"
The #1 thread on the RT board, Again.
Doctordog, a board legend.
Slobbering over terrorists=
Saboteur being in league with the enemy.
If Liberalism fails, America wins.
Rule #1, DON'T FEED The Trolls.
--
Edited by Justice101 at 05/01/2009 2:31 PM PDT
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 1, 2009 5:21 PM
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Rainy, are you still slobbering over terrorists. *tapping toe*
--
"Opinion of The Right"
The #1 thread on the RT board, Again.
Doctordog, a board legend.
Slobbering over terrorists=
Saboteur being in league with the enemy.
If Liberalism fails, America wins.
Rule #1, DON'T FEED The Trolls.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
May 1, 2009 5:16 PM
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Waterboarding, Interrogations: The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists
New Focus on Two Retired Military Psychologists Called the 'Architects' of the CIA's Techniques
By BRIAN ROSS, MATTHEW COLE,
and JOSEPH RHEE - ABC News
April 30, 2009?
As the secrets about the CIA's interrogation techniques continue to come out, there's new information about the frequency and severity of their use, contradicting an 2007 ABC News report, and a new focus on two private contractors who were apparently directing the brutal sessions that President Obama calls torture.
According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.
Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.
Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed and implemented the CIA's interrogation program.
Click here to see Jessen refusing to talk to ABC News.
"It's clear that these psychologists had an important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Click here to see Mitchell refusing to talk to ABC News.
Former U.S. officials say the two men were essentially the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan that culminated in waterboarding.
Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.
"The whole intense interrogation concept that we hear about, is essentially their concepts," according to Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator.
Both Mitchell and Jessen were previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics if captured.
Mitchell and Jessen Lacked Experience in Actual Interrogations
But it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them.
"They went to two individuals who had no interrogation experience," said Col. Kleinman. "They are not interrogators."
The new documents show the CIA later came to learn that the two psychologists' waterboarding "expertise" was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was "medically safe" or effective. The waterboarding used on al Qaeda detainees was far more intense than the brief sessions used on U.S. military personnel in the training classes.
"The use of these tactics tends to increase resistance on the part of the detainee to cooperating with us. So they have the exact opposite effect of what you want," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich).
The new memos also show waterboarding was used "with far greater frequency than initially indicated" to even those in the CIA.
Abu Zubaydah was water boarded at least 83 times and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed at least 183 times.
Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Says Waterboarding is Torture
That contradicts what former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who led the Zubaydah capture team, told ABC News in 2007 when he first revealed publicly that waterboarding had been used.
He said then, based on top secret reports he had access to, that Zubaydah had only been water boarded once and then freely talked.
Kiriakou now says he too was stunned to learn how often Zubaydah was waterboarded, in what Kiriakou says was clearly torture.
"When I spoke to ABC News in December 2007 I was aware of Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded on one occasion," said Kiriakou. "It was after this one occasion that he revealed information related to a planned terrorist attack. As I said in the original interview, my information was second-hand. I never participated in the use of enhanced techniques on Abu Zubaydah or on any other prisoner, nor did I witness the use of such techniques."
A federal judge in New York is currently considering whether or not to make public the written logs of the interrogation sessions.
The tapes were destroyed by the CIA, but the written logs still exist, although the CIA is fighting their release.
A CIA spokesperson declined to comment for this report, except to note that the agency's terrorist interrogation program was guided by legal opinions from the Department of Justice.
Matthew Cole is a freelance national security reporter. His book, about the CIA rendition program, will be published later this year by Simon & Schuster.
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
Apr 26, 2009 2:01 AM
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John W. Dean
Beyond the Pale: The Newly-Released, Indefensible Office of Legal Counsel Terror Memos
By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, March 6, 2009
On March 1, the Obama Department of Justice released nine memos written in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Seven of these documents, written between 2001 and early 2003, outlined the authority of the president to fight terror, but they gave a misleading picture of that authority as virtually unlimited by ignoring treaties, statutes, and even the Constitution itself. (Others have summarized the content of these documents.) These documents are extraordinary, as were the previously-released OLC legal opinions justifying torture.
Even the Bush Administration, at its very end, finally retreated from the seven memos' conclusions. Memos dated October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009, issued by the acting head of OLC, Steven Bradbury, in effect repeal, reject and repudiate the conclusions of the seven prior memos. The question for historians now is how the memos came about, and the issue for policymakers is how to avoid similar disgraces in the future.
The Once Highly-Respected OLC's Damaged Reputation
At the outset, it should be noted that there is no reason to impute evil motives to the Bush attorneys involved in writing these legal opinions. Bradbury states in his memorandum for the files nullifying the seven opinions that when the opinions were prepared, policymakers "fear[ed] additional catastrophic attacks were imminent," so they sought "to employ all lawful means to protect the Nation." No doubt, they were scared as hell, but to call these "lawful means" ? as Bradbury states ? is questionable. After all, Bradbury himself is repudiating these opinions precisely because, in many instances, they clearly employ unlawful approaches. In addition, it is remarkable that long after the imminent fear had subsided, these legal opinions still remained applicable, and were not revoked.
These newly-released opinions have badly damaged the reputation of OLC, which had always been the least political operation within the Department of Justice. This small, elite office, staffed by the best and brightest attorneys, once prided itself as an office that followed the law, and so advised the president, regardless of what the White House wanted to hear. From personal experience, I know that during the Nixon years ? with a president not known to be shy about wishing to exercise his powers to the fullest ? OLC was a consistent restraining influence, regarding both foreign and domestic legal matters.
One example will suffice: Nixon wanted a clear signal from OLC that he could ? and ideally should ? criminally prosecute the New York Times for publishing classified information associated with the Pentagon Papers. Then-OLC head William Rehnquist (no shrinking violent either regarding presidential powers), in essence, advised against it.
In reading these newly-released memos, along with the previously-released documents relating to the use of torture as an interrogation technique, it is pretty clear who was the bad apple at OLC, it was the lead attorney in pursuing these extreme and baseless OLC positions law professor John Yoo. It is likely that Yoo did the drafting, and then either he or his boss, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of OLC, Jay Bybee, signed off on the memos. Bybee now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
John Yoo's Legal Scholarship
Anyone familiar with Yoo's dubious scholarship, and his radical views, cannot be surprised by these latest revelations.
John Yoo, who received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his law degree from Yale, was mentored by the most conservative members of Washington's legal establishment. He clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit, and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Next, he served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96, when ultra-conservative Orrin Hatch chaired the committee. While on a leave of absence from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, Professor Yoo served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which is where he was working when the attacks of 9/11 occurred.
Because Yoo became the leading legal adviser to the Bush White House after 9/11, many have looked closely at his scholarship, and more will likely scrutinize Yoo's work with this new release of his OLC work product. When writing Broken Government, I paused to look at Yoo's work and frankly was shocked to find such an intelligent person engaging in blatant intellectual dishonesty. It was not merely occasional excesses. Rather, when I examined his book War By Other Means, I found page after page of his material to be filled with deliberate distortions. In my book, I set forth example after example of his technique, and in doing so, I did not even scratch the surface of his deceitful methods of advocacy.
Also, I found that I was not alone in questioning Yoo's intellectual integrity. For example, Georgetown law professor David Luban, when reviewing Yoo's book War By Other Means for the New York Review of Books (Mar. 15, 2007), reported that "Yoo argues forcefully and intelligently, but not always honestly. Half-truths, straw men, double standards, selective quotations, significant omissions, and caricatures of his opponents' positions ? all are characteristic of War By Others Means." [Emphasis added.] Unfortunately, this is how Yoo wrote legal opinions for OLC as well, which was very much contrary to the prior standards of that office.
Incidentally, Yoo seems to think that it is merely liberals and moderates who are critical of his work, yet conservatives too find his scholarship deficient, as this release of more of his OLC opinions has confirmed. Many conservative legal scholars are embarrassed by his work, and some are speaking out. "I agree with the left on this one," said Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University. Kerr explained that the approach in Yoo's memos "was simply not a plausible reading of the case law," a reality confirmed by even the Bush OLC's "eventually reject[ing the] memos because they were wrong on the law, and they were right to do so."
Just as when his torture memos caused uproar, the always pleasant and polite John Yoo continues to defend his work, often with the same type of bogus arguments that initially enabled him to reach his alarming positions. Even now that the new memos have been released, he is unconcerned. Although there is one matter that clearly bothers him, and it should: the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating his work. When asked about this investigation, Yoo said, "I wish they weren't doing it."
The Current Office of Professional Responsibility Investigation of Yoo and Others
In a February 18, 2008 letter to Senators Durbin and Whitehouse of the Senate Judiciary Committee, H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), acknowledged that he was investigating whether the OLC legal opinions given to the White House for dealing with terrorism were "consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."
Shortly after the November 2008 election, an enterprising online reporter with apparent sources in the OPR reported that Marshall Jarrett would "rebuke" Yoo and Jay Bybee's work in advising the Bush Administration regarding interrogation techniques and torture. And earlier this year, February 18, 2009, he reported that OPR had completed its investigation before the Bush Administration departed, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey had stifled the negative report.
By February 23, 2009, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff (a seasoned Washington reporter) had sources confirming that OPR had sent a "sharply critical" draft report to Mukasey in the final weeks of the Bush Administration, but a Mukasey aide insisted that Yoo and Bybee (and apparently Stephen Bradbury as well) be given a chance to respond to the charges, with their responses included in the OPR report.
According to the New York Times, the release of the OPR report, which will now be issued by the Obama Justice Department, is imminent. The Times reports that the Justice Department "is preparing to release a report that is expected to criticize sharply members of the Bush legal team who wrote memorandums purporting to provide legal justification for the use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees despite anti-torture laws and treaties, according to department and Congressional officials."
The Findings and Consequences of the OPR Report
Give the fact that three people who have headed OLC since Yoo's days there have been highly critical of his work, it would surprise no one if OPR's report were highly critical as well. Even Jack Goldsmith, who is a friend of Yoo's, felt it necessary to revoke several of Yoo's memos when he headed OLC.
Yoo had wanted to take the top post himself, but was blocked by Attorney General John Ashcroft and his senior aides, who reportedly "had grown weary of what they saw as Yoo's end runs to the White House," according to Eric Lichtblau's Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice (2008). Jack Goldsmith reports in his book, The Terror President: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (2008) that it was Yoo who recommended him for the post.
Nonetheless, Goldsmith found Yoo's formal opinions "unsupported," and "argued without any citation of authority," and noted that they contained "questionable statutory interpretations," "errors," "unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis," reached an "extreme conclusion [that] has no foundation in prior OLC opinions, or in judicial decisions, or in any other source of law," offered "cursory and one-sided legal arguments," adopted a "tendentious tone," "lacked the tenor of detachment and caution that usually characterizes OLC work," and commented that their "legal arguments were wildly broader than was necessary" ? to name a few of the problems with Yoo's work that were mentioned by Goldsmith, who says he did not want to render "a painful stab in his [friend's] back."
After Goldsmith resigned, the top spot was never filled during the Bush years. Steven Bradbury, as the top deputy, became the effective head of OLC. In his October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009 memoranda for the files revoking Yoo's work, Bradbury claims that Yoo's past memoranda "do not reflect the current views" of OLC. While this evisceration of Yoo's work product speaks for itself, Bradbury (who is also under investigation, which may in part explain why he retracted Yoo's work) hastens to add his actions are not "intended to suggest in any way that the attorneys involved in the preparation of the opinions in question did not satisfy all applicable standards of professional responsibility." One wonders, however, how Yoo could have fulfilled those standards and still had so much of his work repudiated.
The new head of OLC, as part of the Obama Justice Department, is Dawn Johnsen, a breath of fresh air, whom I have written about in a previous column. Ms. Johnsen, long before she knew she might head OLC, wrote about its work product in the Bush years. For example, writing for the Boston University Law Review (2008), she openly rejected Yoo's approach for OLC's work. Johnsen, who worked in OLC during the Clinton Administration, rejects the idea of OLC's issuing "advocacy opinions" as Yoo did. Rather, she explains, OLC's job is to tell the president what the law is, not what he might like it to be. While she does not question Yoo's sincerity in claiming that he told the White House what, in fact, the law was, she finds him very wrong as to the merits of that claim, and has so stated publicly.
It will be very difficult for the OPR to find anyone who will say that John Yoo has met the standards of responsibility for an attorney in the Justice Department ? other than John Yoo himself, of course.
Yoo is no doubt aware of the contents of the forthcoming OPR report, since he has been given an opportunity to respond. One report notes that Yoo has "informed officials at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is a tenured law professor, [of the report] according to two senior law school officials." Currently, Yoo is a visiting professor at the Chapman Law School in Irvine, California, and in the March 3, 2009 interview (cited above) with a local reporter, he may have foreshadowed his own perception of the consequences of the OPR report: "If I never serve in government again, that would be fine with me. I'm happy with my job as a professor."
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Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
Apr 23, 2009 4:47 PM
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russ,
i'm from michigan and california, now kansas for a few decades. Not sure where I picked up 'batshit crazy' but it has a ring to it kinda like 'dirty rat bastard'...lol
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(1501 of 1515)
Re: Poow wittle tewwowist
Apr 23, 2009 2:46 PM
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Recipe for CONDI RICE W/ COOKED GOOSE:
1. Place Rice and Goose in an undisclosed location.
2. Submerge in water.
3. Turn up the heat.
4. Simmer until Rice achieves desired consistency (with the truth) and Goose is completely cooked.
5. Remove and present, with relish, for public consumption; finish with an ample portion of just desserts.
Serves 15-25 (years).
Burn recipe after reading.
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