Condi Rice admits that Senior Cabinet members held meetings in the White House to discuss torture
By John Amato Thursday Sep 25, 2008 11:00am
OK, it's not like we didn't know about it, but it's still horrifying.
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Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators. Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods...read on
Alex Gibney, the Academy Award winning director of "Taxi to the Dark Side" discusses this revelation with Rachel Maddow.
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What a sad pathetic group of Americans we've been.
What we have allowed to happen to this country is criminal.
Shame on us.
Bush, Cheney, Rice et al to the Hague.
yay :(
Look for Condi Rice's entire career to be discredited by the Republian Slime Machine later today.
So, why does McSame get all the sympathy for being harshly interrogated as a POW when we gladly do that to brown people? After all, he was an enemy combatant, wasn't he?
BobbyG @ 2:
I'd almost sign on to the bailout shit to see these f*ckers cuffed before Nov 4.
Why is it that THEY can discuss ways of torturing people,
yet if any other group of people were to do the same, would
be labled terrorist? Who the "F" do they think they are?
Fuck you, Condi!
You helped destroy the Nation's name worldwide and motivated our enemies to torture OUR TROOPS......you raggedy bitch!
BobbyG @ 2:
Amen. These are rogue criminals. Time for a Nuremburg-type tribunal.
How far we've sunk. The beacon on the hill has been extinguished. Lady Liberty weeps in New York Harbor.
I don't think the Bushities will see justice in the the United States!
It would be nice, but it ain't gonna happen.
leftminded @ 5:
Part of the "exceptionalism" Moosegirl keeps blathering about, I guess ...
Why is this a surprise? Of course the Bush Administration first discussed it privately before informing the bipartisan congressional leadership about it.
Looks pretty torturous to me:
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/06/05/PH20080...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/432216445_d00a381121_o.jpg
I wonder what they said in that meeting. Did they sit around a table and talk about how they were going to do this? One of them suggested bamboo under the fingernails. They drank coffee, farted, joked around, and talked about how to do this. Condi wanted to mash their little bones and make bread out of them. Cheney wanted to cut their ears off and make necklaces out of them. Rumsfeld wanted to put electrodes on their genitals and shock em. Karl Rove wanted to sodomize them and pour hot wax on their nipples. Laura Bush served oatmeal raisin cookies and milk. Oh goody goody! The Presidents favorite. After much carefully deliberation on how to role back human civilization to the dark ages, it was Bush (the decided) that decided to water-board them like witches and make them pose for naughty butt-pyramids pictures.
This isn't a surprise, but it makes me cry nonetheless for the country we were supposed to be. I'm so tired of being ashamed of my country.
BobbyG @ 2:
Along with the evidence and our best prosecutorial team.
What a clusterfuck of an Administration.
America will be paying for all of Bush's indiscretions for decades.
12 peaceful easy feeling Says: Why is this a surprise? Of course the Bush Administration first discussed it privately before informing the bipartisan congressional leadership about it.
__________________________________________________________________
I've been to bi-parties too.
And if Condi Rice is looking for absolution...there is none.
She and the entire Administration can burn in hell.
If there is an afterlife, I hope she spends all of eternity being tortured by those that were tortured.
The last time it was revealed that the Bush admin officials had openly discussed torture, I wrote to my US Representative, a supposed Democrat named Jim Marshall, that this was something that required congressional action. That we could not let this behavior and violation of the law to just have happened with no response. His reply? There's an election coming and this admin would be gone, so we should let that settle it. He actually said "we should let the dead bury the dead." But, this is not a political problem, it is a legal one. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. It doesn't matter if the administration will be gone. It matters that we enforce our laws regardless of the political calendar.
rice is just a tool .. don't get to angry with her. Save it for the hidden controller .. Cheney. Her personal beliefs don't echo Cheney and Co.
Besides. War is hell - torture goes along with war. Don't want torture? Don't unleash war.
McCain already has ads online showing he won tonight's debate. You can't make this shit up.
LINK
There was a little blurb in yesterday's Chicago Tribune that the Italian court is considering issuing a subpoena to have Condi appear as a witness in the case of the CIA agents going on over there. I wonder if this will have any bearing on their decision?
Sue @ 20:
I too wrote my Congress Critter about this (Rahm Emmanuel). The only thing it got me was an increase in emails begging for contributions.
Scooter takes the fall for Cheney, who is Condi taking the fall for? She has admitted to having commited war crimes, for who?
Indict; convict; hang.
LiberalANDProud @17:
"America will be paying for all of Bush’s indiscretions for decades."
We have already BEEN PAYING for the crimes of the Bush family for decades. Prescott and mostly GHWB put a lot of this crap into motion a long time ago.
Bush junior and his co-horts are sick and evil people - all of them selected for this administration because of their sociopathic tendencies and their deft LYING skills.
I've said several times on different threads that we're living in the Matrix (e.g., in the movie of the same name). Our reality in the US has been carefully crafted and manipulated by the Bush clan and their fascist buds. Now they're trying to cash out before too many people catch on and march them to the Hague (or worse).
I still have hope that there's enough time to save ourselves.
“It’s Addington,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.” Powell was referring to David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and his longtime principal legal adviser.
Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.”
Addington’s high-school friend Leonard Napolitano said Addington told him that he and Cheney were merging the Vice-President’s office with the President’s into a single “Executive Office,” instead of having “two different camps.” Napolitano added, “David said that Cheney saw the Vice-President as the executive and implementer of the President.” Addington created a system to insure that virtually all important documents relating to national-security matters were seen by the Vice-President’s office. The former high-ranking Administration lawyer said that Addington regularly attended White House legal meetings with the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency. He received copies of all National Security Council documents, including internal memos from the staff. And, as a former top official in the Defense Department, he exerted influence over the legal office at the Pentagon, helping his protégé William J. Haynes secure the position of general counsel. A former national-security lawyer, speaking of the Pentagon’s legal office, said, “It’s obvious that Addington runs the whole operation.”
Almost immediately, other Administration lawyers noticed that Addington dominated the internal debates. His assumption, shared by other hard-line lawyers in the White House counsel’s office and in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was that the criminal-justice system was insufficient to handle the threat from terrorism. The matter was settled without debate, Berenson recalled: “There was a consensus that we had to move from retribution and punishment to preëmption and prevention. Only a warfare model allows that approach.”
At the Pentagon, Addington took a particular interest in the covert actions of the Special Forces. A former colleague recalled that, after attending a demonstration by Special Forces officers, he mocked the C.I.A., which was constrained by oversight laws. “This is how real covert operations are done,” he said. (After September 11th, the Pentagon greatly expanded its covert intelligence operations; these programs have less congressional oversight than those of the C.I.A.)
Richard Shiffrin, the former Pentagon lawyer, said that during a tense White House meeting held in the Situation Room just a few days after September 11th “all of us felt under a great deal of pressure to be willing to consider even the most extraordinary proposals. The C.I.A., the N.S.C., the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department all had people there. Addington was particularly strident. He’d sit, listen, and then say, ‘No, that’s not right.’ He was particularly doctrinaire and ideological. He didn’t recognize the wisdom of the other lawyers. He was always right. He didn’t listen. He knew the answers.”
Shortly after September 11th, Addington and Cheney, without alerting Shiffrin, held meetings with top N.S.A. lawyers in the Vice-President’s office and told them that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, had the authority to override the FISA statutes and not seek warrants from the special court. According to the Times, Addington and Cheney pushed the N.S.A. to engage in practices that the agency thought were illegal, such as the warrantless wiretapping of American suspects making domestic calls.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact1
July 2002 -- Richard Shiffrin, a deputy general counsel in the Department of Defense, called Lt. Col. Daniel Baumgartner Jr. from the military's SERE school. Shiffrin wanted information on SERE training techniques. Baumgartner testified on Tuesday that during this period, he received similar requests from the Defense Intelligence Agency and "another agency" he declined to name.
July 25 and 26, 2002 -- Baumgartner responded to the Pentagon request by sending two memos to the Pentagon's general counsel's office describing SERE training techniques. The memos discuss (among other things) sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, waterboarding, slapping, sensory overload and diet manipulation. The hearing on Tuesday did not go into what information was sent to the DIA or the "other agency."
Sept. 25, 2002 -- David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel; acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo, Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes; and Michael Chertoff, then head of the Criminal Division at the Justice Department; all traveled to Guantánamo. They attended briefings on "intel techniques," according to a military after-action report.
September 2003 -- SERE instructors are deployed to Iraq to assist interrogators, in response to a request from commander of the Special Mission Unit Task Force.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/18/interrogation/index.html
if obama gets in office we're going to hear a lot more about 'torture'.
there will interest in finding out more about 'torure' performed in
other countries:afghanistan,libya,turkey,..and on ships
Can we try them for Treason NOW Nancy? Harry?
Go Rachel!
Amitola...I meant the latest iteration.
Boy, it's a good thing the economy is collapsing, otherwise the media would be talking about THIS.
Whew....George dodged another bullet.
We The People
must
Stop torture
Liberal AND Proud @ 31:
exactly and they're NOT talking about troops/helicopters in pakistan
either
Oh, but PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give us more of this "gang" (now in McShame suits) because they haven't quite finished off the Constitution/country yet!!! Still a breath or two left in the public school system - that must be KILLED so we can keep the sheeple ignorant...GOLLY, the MSM can't do ALL THE HARD WORK!!!
Looking back over the past eight years of this administration,
I see incompetence on a grand scale, an economy on the brink
depression, a declining stock market, hundreds of thousands of
jobs lost, huge deficits, borrowing money from China and other
countries that are not necessarily our friends, high gas prices,
a failed foreign policy, domestic uncertainty, the most secretive
administration ever, dirty political tricks that make Richard
Nixon look like a Boy Scout,outright lies, a war of choice,
corrupt politicians, the housing crisis, the mortgage crisis,
large and small businesses going under, tainted goods from China,
global warming, our world-wide reputation ruined, our tainted food
supply, WMD, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Abu Ghraib, and a host of
other ills.
And now an admittance to torture by the people in charge.
Who in his or her right mind would vote for another four years of
a republican administration?
Oh wait ...... I forgot about the MORON FACTOR of right-wing-nuts.
Spurious voter@21
"War is hell - torture goes along with war."
Bullshit. Go after Dumbya's hoe and hope that she will sing. And please, no subtle justifications for torture, OK? Ever heard of Geneva? Read a history book....or ask someone to read one to you.
with a blessing in disguise,
God gave many of us NOW the time to FIX the mess we find our selves in.
Many of us NOW find ourselves UNEMPLOYED; without our home; about to lose our home; our brothers, sisters, husband, wife, children friends or neighbors DEAD from an illegal war; OUR tax-dollars squandered and looted; our health nearly neglected for lack of medical care and rising cost of medical treatment and cost; rising prise of gas; and a nearly collapse of our economy; a OUR great cities under water dead from neglect and blight ALL at the watch of the BUSH/CHENEY regime and the SPINELESS-give crooks the blank-check CONGRESS through the MISGUIDED leadership of our ineffective representatives at all levels in the FEDERAL level through the "off-the-table" Speaker Gable, Pelosi.
It's time to UNITE AMERICA. It's time to DO OUR JOB to OVERSEE our OWN GOVERNMENT when they have failed immensely in just about every immportant aspect of governing and take OUR discontent to the street from east to west and north to south UNTIL they LISTEN to US. They ARE damaging OUR NATION to a NEAR COLLAPSE.
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE and demand them to do the right thing!
NOOOOOOO to corporate bailout. those who lose their job from the sins of the emperor will soon find a new job from a more effective corporation is rebuilt. Government can rebuild a MORE effective bank with $700 billion capital. Let this Quasi-government bank be operated by the very best people; the People of United State who will OWN and OPERATE these banks.
There is something particularly odious about Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps its her sanctimonious manner, or her academic background that she seems to think makes her an expert on everything. But I think more than anything else, she has everything you need to be a Bush/Neocon stooge: all the trappings, none of the substance, and a willingness to be spoon-fed your lines like a novice newsreader.
When her "husband" tortures her, does he do it doggie style?
Liberal AND Proud @ 39:
Yeah, he TALKS to her...
Gibney totally hits the nail on the head when he talks about the reason the administration embraced a policy of torture when the reliability of information derived through torture has been proven to be so unreliable. The administration didn't need confessions to be true, it just needed confessions - in order to justify its every attempt to grab for more executive power and control over the rights and privacy of Americans.
The country is doomed. Nothing will be done ... nothing. The next thing we will be hearing is a push to get Dubya carved in the remaining space on Mt. Rushmore, and a lot of America will be for it.
Rachel is so right. The issue of torture is indeed unfinished business. We wrote a song called "extraodinary rendition" and put the bush administrations denials together in a mash up. Have a look and listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaK3a3XSPA8&feature=related
Clint Eastwood comes to mind for some reason - one of his "spaghetti westerns" in particular, entitled "Hang 'em High"...
♠♠...Bangkok Bob...♠♠ @ 35:
I think I would extend that "right-wing-nut" handle to describe practically all repuglicans, going by McCain's still absurdly high poll numbers.
PorridgeGun @ 22:
Well, of course he won, he's now announced he's actually going. Now that he created all this drama and lowered expectations so far, all he has to do to win IS show up.
32 gv Says: We The People
must
Stop torture
____________________________________________________
But American Idle is so popular!
Is Condi trying to avoid something? Must not be any opportunities to shop for shoes in prison....
Left&Left @ 36:
Not to mention, bringing torture to the table in the so-called war on terror adds an unnecessary element of danger to the coalition troops and all of the citizens of their participating countries.
and clay aiken is gay.
no shit.
Bangkok Bob @ 35:
"Looking back over the past eight years of this administration,
I see incompetence on a grand scale,....................."
This has not been "incompetence" (that is the facade, the manipulation, the distraction).
It's the implementation of full-blown fascism right in front of our eyes. This financial crisis is just the latest "shock" (in keeping with the popular vernacular)
to entrench the elitist corporate-class. When they're done messing with this crisis, the dollar will eventually collapse, inflation will go through the roof, and the "shock" troops will be called onto the streets to quell the insurrection.
ebone @ 50:
It's as if Jeff Gannon is chief editor of the entire American news media these days.
Yellow Elephant Safari @ 24:
Did you make it to the "No Fly List"?
Relating to my post at #51, this is a quote from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now website that she announced on Sept. /22/08:
"Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations -
Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds."
Sue Says: This isn’t a surprise, but it makes me cry nonetheless for the country we were supposed to be. I’m so tired of being ashamed of my country.
I no Sue I have been ashamed of America but more importantly the republican half of america since the nixon days.
I truely is a terrible country we live in today. I think we need some vigilante justice since we no longer are a nation of laws.
It is truely a sorry place we live in and it won't get any better if we allow the idiotic morons the republicans, to go on their merry way as though they have done nothing wrong.
The republicans voted for bush because they hate the American people. Why? because their church and the msm told them they should hate the people that wanted to help them.
I ask every republican I meet if they are ashamed of having helped the bush administration destroy America? Most are to stupid to understand the question.
Amitola @ 54:
Next step .................................Marshal Law
Bangkok Bob @ 56:
'Fraid so. Martial law is certainly on the agenda. Not only because of the 3rd Infantry's deployment and training, but because the US signed an agreement on February 14, 2008 between the US Army North Command and the Canadian Command.
The pact ensures the availability and use of Canadian military troops in the US in the event of a natioanal emergency and civil unrest, and vice versa should unrest occur in Canada fo some reason. Guess they needed to do that because so many US troops are deployed abroad and there aren't enough Blackwater thugs to keep all of us in line.
My name finally came up on the 'wait list' at the Library for 'The Dark Side' by Jane Mayer and excerpts in #28 up thread ring right out of what I have read so far..a hijacked govt.. The lawyers picked to write opinions to cover their actions were ALL unqualified in ANY counter terroism field, International Law, Treaties..you name it, and the legal opinions given were kept secret with only Bush to decide who could question them. "Some of the arguments Yoo made were legal boilerplate. But others were astounding...for instance,that Congress had no right at all to interfere with the President's response to terrorist threats.Without citing any authority for this view,Yoo simply asserted that no one could limit," the method, timing or place" of the President's war on terror." He wrote,"These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make." pg.64, 65. Yoo's opinions were written under the imprimatur of the Office of Legal Council ,OLC, and as a former head of the OLC , Jack Goldsmith says (pg 65,66)..' the office wields "one of the most momentous, and dangerous powers in the govt.:the power to dispense get-out-of-jail-free cards." " For Yoo's allies in the White House, his position was a political bonanza. I was like having a personal friend who could write medical prescriptions. With Yoo's authority to issue official opinions, their views could be transformed into the law of the land." It goes on to refer to "this insular, unelected,self-reinforcing group ,with virtually no experience in law enforcement, military service,counterterrorism, or the Muslum world, was in position make many of the most fateful decisions in the post-9/11 era."(my bold). I would also like someone to ask McPOW if he was actually tortured, or was it simply ' enhanced interrogation'.
Amitola @ 27:
The fact that Prescott Bush was a Nazi supporter, recruited people for the SS, was working to overthrow America with a coup, AND suggested... in writing... that 70% of the world's population should be exterminated... pretty much confirms the fact that the Bush family are mad dogs.
They're certainly not supporters of America, or it's values.
I still don't know how Prescott escaped the consequences of his High Treason. Do you folk know what the consequences of High Treason are?
Yes.... it's considered to be that serious a crime.
These people need to pay for the crimes they've committed.
♠♠...Bangkok Bob...♠♠ @ 56:
Too many steps put in place not to be used by the Administration responsible for installing them, IMO.
31 Liberal AND Proud Says
"Boy, it’s a good thing the economy is collapsing, otherwise the media would be talking about THIS.
Whew….George dodged another bullet."
It's the peripheral presidency - whenever they do something for attention, look around the perphery to find out what they're doing that they don't want you to see.
Remember color-coded warnings?
Don't forget Condi's humble roots, she was the daughter of a sharecropper in Alabama, that's got to count for something doesn't it?
Thank goodness this is on C and L....I had heard that last night on Rachel Maddow's show, but this morning I was beginning to think I had been hallucinating as I hadn't seen anything about it online.
I wonder if Condi is planning on making a plea deal....so she will be allowed 'stylish' orange suits to wear some of those shoes she has bought.......................
Don't we already know this? I thought the story of these meetings broke months ago. Is it news again just because Condi said it?
Well, there isn't any time to think about hauling all these folks in for war crimes and high treason >>>> we have a financial crisis on our hands and we have to stay busy working on the "bailout."
And, of course we have this election thing going on; and why did McCain pick
Sarah Palin? and isn't she the bomb? and who will win the debates? and, what about the helicopters flying over Pakistan? and the US Navy Fleet and the Russian ships moving into positions in the ME? and, we need to be taking care of all those folks down in LA and TX who just had a disaster? and, we'll have to be paying attention to whatever crisis they dream up tomorrow - anything so we don't really see the puppetmaster behind the smoke and mirrors, slowly packing the U.S. of America into a satchel to be shipped off to Paraguay or Dubai or wherever all these freakin' evil criminals are planning to slink off to .........
In your "nation of laws" (HA!) lawmakers, and their kind, will never apply the law to themselves.
64 J.C. Says: Don’t we already know this? I thought the story of these meetings broke months ago. Is it news again just because Condi said it?
=====================
It should be news every day. The USA tortures people, and just hopes everyone will forget about it. I have never (nor will I ever) forgotten about it. Until this fully comes to light (doubtful) my regard for the USA is greatly diminished (nearing ZERO). It tarnishes every other thing you do.
Every time I hear George Bush attempt the English language, it's torture.
Is it time for the Hague???????
So will someone be prosecuted??
Naaaa
It is this issue above all that indicts the American People. If we run the country, and our representative do these horrible things... WE are responsible.
Every pulpit it the country whose Savior died a tortuous death should be howling to the rafters against this administration.
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