Bush administration: Worse than al Qaeda
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by Mr Chuckles, Unknown News
Feb. 14, 2006
Even The New York Times has finally said "No mas!" Read this editorial (sidebar, to the right).
And The New York Times scarcely mentions the ongoing
practice of torture inflicted upon
suspects held in American custody
or turned over by the Americans to
other countries for torture (our "enemy"
Syria has been used by the CIA since 9/11
for this very purpose).
Bush has lied on TV, "We don't torture,"
and he is always talking about his religion,
but the fact of the matter is that the US
routinely tortures prisoners. Here is the
latest story:
CIA counter-terror head fired for "misgivings" about torture, rendition, US secret prisons| |
Excerpt: The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed.
Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism center, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was “not quite as aggressive as he might have been” in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the program’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”
Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro. ... |
Dozens of people have been literally beaten
to death -- tortured to the max. And few
prosecutions. Recently a soldier was convicted
of torturing to death an Iraqi and he was
sentenced to a fine and no jail time. But
American protesting the war are prosecuted
to the fullest extent and have been given
6 month sentences in Federal Prison for
non-violent offenses!
The Bush Regime is worse than Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration has killed more than 100,000 innocent
Iraqis and assassinated or tortured untold
numbers more, people who are the new
"The Disappeared." US death squads roam the
planet, while robot drones armed with Hellfire
missiles are used against civilian populations where
it is suspected a "terrorist" might be
lodging. Bush is more evil than Osama bin Laden.
It is not far-fetched to say that George W. Bush
is responsible for mass murder, torture, war
crimes and crimes against humanity.
How long will Americans let him hide behind
his "I am a Christian" facade while he commits
atrocities?
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Bush administration asks Americans for 'trust'
Editorial, The New York Times
Feb. 12, 2006
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers -- and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
Domestic Spying: After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.
The Prison Camps: It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.
On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.
According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.
The War In Iraq: One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.
But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.
As originally published
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© by the author.
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This page tagged at Technorati under
BUSH ADMINISTRATION
CHRISTIANITY
GUANTANAMO
TORTURE
WAR CRIMES
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We appreciate the heck out of everyone who helps.
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The Bush administration has killed more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis and assassinated or tortured untold numbers more, people who are the new "The Disappeared."
US death squads roam the planet, while robot drones armed with Hellfire missiles are used against civilian populations where it is suspected a "terrorist" might be lodging.
Bush is more evil than Osama bin Laden.
It is not far-fetched to say that George W. Bush is responsible for mass murder, torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
How long will Americans let him hide behind his "I am a Christian" facade while he commits atrocities?
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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