Donald Rumsfeld headed to Hannity's show to clarify his opinion on waterboarding, information extraction, and the Bin Laden timeline. In the process, he manages to use careful language and sleight of hand to distort what he really said the day before, while confirming that indeed, waterboarding KSM did not yield any usable information that led to Bin Laden.

I'm guessing Bill O'Reilly and Donald Rumsfeld just don't get along, because Rumsfeld was glad to subject himself to a little softball on Hannity's show not even an hour after O'Reilly tried to take a bite out of Alan Colmes.

Let's review the actual timeline, courtesy of Marcy Wheeler:

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, months after he was waterboarded and via “standard” interrogation, admits he knows someone named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, but denies he has anything to do with al Qaeda.
• Hassan Ghul, who was captured in Iraq in 2004, reveals that Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was an al Qaeda courier
• Under CIA interrogation, Abu Faraj al-Libi admits he learned he was replacing KSM through a courier, but denied knowing al-Kuwaiti so strenuously CIA figured he must be important
• Via still unclear means, CIA learns Abu Ahmed’s real name
• US picks up Abu Ahmed talking to someone else it was monitoring, speaking from a location away from the compound
• US tracks Abu Ahmed back to compound

Marcy follows up later with this post, proving the "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not yield Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's name. Instead, KSM lied to interrogators while he was being tortured.

There's your timeline. Now listen to Donald Rumsfeld try to distort it. I'll add the transcript below with some occasional interruptions for commentary.

Continue reading »

Is there any end to the lengths that these folks will go to justify torture? Particularly Bill O'Reilly, who was puffed up like a blowfish with poison tentacles over Alan Colmes' assertion that Rumsfeld is correct about the fact that information leading to Osama bin Laden did not emerge from "enhanced interrogation techniques."

In fact, BillO was so bent he just about came over the table at Alan Colmes, who wasn't putting up with the nonsense even for a second.

This question of how the information was obtained -- by torture or standard techniques -- is important for a number of reasons, and not simply because torture apologists want us to believe it's an effective way to extract information. It's important because it reveals the priorities and motives within the Bush administration at different times. In 2003, their focus was on Iraq, not Bin Laden. In 2007, they were still focused on Iraq. In Bush's own words, Osama bin Laden was just someone he didn't think about very often.

So watch Bill O'Reilly go after Alan Colmes in this segment. This is actually round two -- round one was right at the top of the show where Colmes tries to get a word in edgewise while BillO claims Rumsfeld's statements on torture are just wrong. Plain wrong. After Crowley goes through some fairly boring and benign apologetics, BillO comes after Colmes with his fangs out.

Continue reading »

How We'll Know Rain Storm

Since Donald Rumsfeld has never been able to come up with a way to measure whether or not we are winning the global war on terror (GWOT), one of my fellow army veterans is willing to suggest one:
“When United States military recruitment shows steady growth, and terrorist/insurgent recruitment shows steady decline, we have turned the corner and are now winning the war.”

Ed also notes that Pat Buchanan may have a clearer understanding of terrorist motivation than those bright civilians in the Pentagon, or their neo-con masters at the AEI and the Project for the New American Century.

The "Falling Revenues" of "Liberal Hollywood"      Lawyers, Guns and Money

Via

“When Unites States military recruitment shows steady growth, and terrorist/insurgent recruitment shows steady decline, we have turned the corner and are now winning the war.”

Ed also notes that Pat Buchanon may have a clearer understanding of terrorist motivation than those bright civilians in the Pentagon, or their neo-con masters at the AEI and the Project for the New American Century.

Smearing Patriots Altercation

There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all the theories and counter-theories, plus the spin and propaganda being thrown out in the hopes of deflecting attention from the actions of the Rove/Novak diabolic duo. One thing worth keeping in mind is the quality of the people they are seeking to smear. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were both life-long public servants. Wilson, whom the right is seeking to smear as a partisan-minded Democrat—not that he wouldn’t have the right to be if he chose—contributed to the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, and took many hazardous and unpleasant duties on behalf of his country. When the CIA sent him to Niger, he knew that the politically smart—and self-promotional course to take would be to hew to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle line without gumming up the system. Instead he told the truth and they came after him.
Valerie Plame, meanwhile, lived her entire life under cover—no small or easy thing—in the service of her country. (How many journalists and Republican pols or consultants can say the same?) And for her trouble, she has seen her cover revealed and both herself and her husband smeared across the land. Her former colleague, Larry Johnson, writing in TPM Café, tells you what kind of person and patriot she was, here.
Can you spell “desperate?”  They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that.  Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical.  Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.”  Read the whole thing.

How We'll Know                     Rain Storm

Since Donald Rumsfeld has never been able to come up with a way to measure whether or not we are winning the global war on terror (GWOT), one of my fellow army veteran's is willing to suggest one:Can you spell “desperate?” They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that. Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical. Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.” Read the whole thing.

Nightline: Janice Karpinski says Rumsfeld knew about Abu Ghraib

Download | play -Real Audio

Download | play -WMP this is from ABC World News Tonight

She's mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore.

White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

War and Piece
The WaPo's Al Kamen reports that Wolfowitz is leaving too:

There was buzz early in the week that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had seen President Bush and informed him that Wolfowitz would be leaving and that Rummy wanted a big-time corporate type to be the new deputy.

We quickly rounded up the usual suspects to see if this was true, but they only said things like: "There may be something there," or, "You'll just have to be patient," or, when asked who might know, suggested we call Newt Gingrich.

Rumsfeld and the Powell Doctrine!

USATODAY

By John Diamond, Steve Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

excerpt:

Rumsfeld's plan

The strategy outlined by Rumsfeld and other top officials this week has three components:

• Use overwhelming ground force backed by artillery and air power to take control of the insurgent haven.

• Move in immediately with reconstruction efforts to repair battle damage.

• Leave a force in Fallujah large enough to prevent a collapse back into violence.

The goals are simple: to win the gratitude of Fallujah civilians who will no longer have to cope with Iraqi and foreign fighters in their midst; and to demonstrate to other insurgent-dominated towns and cities what can happen if they refuse to participate peacefully in the Iraqi political process.

Why didn't Rummy use this plan at the begining of the Iraq war? It sounds a lot like the Powell Doctrine!

Media Matters:

Following the publication of the April 20 New York Times front-page article on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon, the Department of Defense has released to the public numerous documents regarding the analyst program. One of the documents released is an audio recording of an April 18, 2006, meeting that several military analysts attended with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the meeting, one of the attendees tells Rumsfeld, "[W]e get beat up on television sometimes when we go on and we are debating" and says that he would "personally love" for Rumsfeld "to take the offensive, to just go out there and just crush these people so that when we go on, we're -- forgive me -- we're parroting, but it's what has to be said. It's what we believe in, or we would not be saying it." The individual adds: "And we'd love to be following our leader, as indeed you are. You are the leader. You are our guy." The transcript released by the Pentagon does not identify the person who made this comment; the Pentagon has provided this list of "confirmed" "[p]articipants." Media Matters for America has documented the consistent unwillingness of most of the outlets mentioned in the Times article to discuss the military analyst story.

Will media outlets try to determine if they have hosted the person who asserted that Rumsfeld was "our guy" and suggested that he would "parrot[]" Rumsfeld's statements?

Media Matters provides a list of all those attending the meeting that day. The Times article quotes one ABC analyst, Gen. William Nash, as being "repulsed" by the meeting and most of its attendees, but clearly there are others only too happy to play this psyops game on the American people.

Facing South: Who is Women's Voices Women Vote, and why are they making shadowy and legally-questionable calls that are causing voters in North Carolina and other states so many headaches?

The OpenHelix Blog: GINA passes the Senate. Kudos to Rep. Louise Slaughter.

The Rude Pundit live from Eschacon08 on disrespecting John McCain

Robert Reich's Blog: The best thing to have occurred during the Bush administration is something that didn't happen.

Politico: Why am I not surprised that the Republicans oppose a bill allowing recounts?

Crackpot Press: LSD, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld