"Do you know how to make God laugh? You tell him your plans." Hari Sheldon – Foudation's Fear
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 25th, 2010
The Unreal Universe A Book on Physics and Philosophy “For thinking laymen.” Are there no limits of civilized behavior that’s not subject to be waived away by legal sophistry? At the core of the legal arguments were the views of Yoo, strongly backed by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal counsel, that the president’s [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 21st, 2010
The Unreal Universe A Book on Physics and Philosophy “For thinking laymen.” Seth MacFarlane, on last nights Real Time with Bill Maher, says: “If Ronald Regan was President, he’d try Dick Cheney for war crimes.” This was in response to Bill asking if anyone has seen Dick Cheney brag about personally ordering water boarding on [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 20th, 2010
The Unreal Universe A Book on Physics and Philosophy “For thinking laymen.” That’s quite a defense, but it’s hard to disagree with that headline. If you haven’t been following this, it’s regarding the investigation of DOJ lawyers who provided the White House and DOD legal cover to torture detainees as long as it didn’t result [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Sep 22nd, 2009
An upcoming article to be published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, discusses the science behind the assumption that torture works: …captives have information in long-term memory that they choose not to share. Extended application of techniques that will induce stress and discomfort will make the captives release the information. The underlying assumptions are that the [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Aug 31st, 2009
Attaurk was not amused by Dick Cheney’s, Liz Cheney’s and John McCain’s weekend appearance on the usual weekend echo chambers: It was quite a juxtaposition this weekend. If Saturday was for remembering the Kennedys, Sunday was for dealing with the Cheneys. Camelot vs. Torture-a-lot. Dick was mumbling up a storm about how awesome torture was, [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Aug 23rd, 2009
Not so much… A Central Intelligence Agency inspector general’s report set to be released Monday provides new details about abuses that took place inside the agency’s secret prisons, including details of how C.I.A. officers carried out mock executions and threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and a power drill. via Report Provides New [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jun 8th, 2009
ABC News’ interview with Lakhdar Boumediene and our current policies – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com. First of all Glenn Greenwald deserves a lot of credit for championing basic human rights for US prisoners. In this piece he recounts the plight of Boumediene: …who, while living in Bosnia working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by [...]
Posted in Blog Post on May 15th, 2009
via The Take: Pelosi’s Comments Raise Interrogation Debate to New Level – washingtonpost.com. She seems to be having a problem coming to terms with conflicting statements she made about when she knew about torture as a Bush era policy: Pelosi’s performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 22nd, 2009
So it would appear Cheney’s assertion that “it worked” is not working for intelligence and counter-terrorism official who saw the reports. Another trumped-up pile of BS brought to you by the Dick? So it seems… via U.S. officials slam Dick Cheney’s claim that waterboarding 9/11 mastermind 183 times was a ‘success’. “Cheney is full of [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 22nd, 2009
Grand unified scandal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com. Krugman ties the torture program to a desperate search for a way to link 9/11 to Iraq. The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 21st, 2009
MSNBC is showing clips of Dick “The Penguin” Chenney asking for the de-classification of additional memos that he claims show that torture “enhanced interrogation” works. This is so we can have an “honest debate”. CHenney wants and honest debate? That’s just so loaded with irony it’s hard to know where to begin. Andrea Mitchell notes [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 21st, 2009
Obama, Bush And The Rule Of Law | The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan. Sully accurately makes the point that neither Bush nor Obama have the authority to torture, that Congress alone as the authority to make rules regarding captures. Laws and treaties have been passed that make torture clearly illegal in the US., [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 17th, 2009
And we need no investigation? He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 29th, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist – Putting Torture Behind Us – NYTimes.com. Kristoff seems to suffer from the common illusion that Republicans want to work together for the good of the country and putting them in charge of investigating Bush Administration abuse of detainees and blatant law breaking will somehow win them over. They only want one thing: [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 14th, 2009
Detainee Was Tortured, a Bush Official Confirms File this under “no shit?” The senior Pentagon official in the Bush administration’s system for prosecuting detainees said in a published interview that she had concluded that interrogators had tortured a Guantánamo detainee who has sometimes been described as “the 20th hijacker” in the 2001 terrorist attacks. The [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Dec 18th, 2008
Committing war crimes for the “right reasons” – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com. Glenn Greenwald weighs in on Ross Douthat’s post at the The Atlantic. Douthat believes that while Bush et al. may have violated international laws, treaties and domestic laws against the torture of prisoners, but it was justified, and still is, by a real [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Dec 18th, 2008
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect. Ezra defends Andrew Sullivan by way of an actual real world example of interrogation techniques that work, as opposed to the Reuel Marc Gerecht fantasy created whole cloth from episodes of 24. Important points to note: Torture and abuse at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib was a prime motivating factor [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jul 16th, 2008
It seems bizarre that it’s necessary to explain why torture is bad. I found this Rolling Stone piece via Andrew Sullivan on the path taken by a 15 year old prisoner from the early months of the action in Afghanistan. What happened to him at the hands of Americans is flatly, obviously torture. They took [...]
Posted in Blog Post on May 16th, 2008
Tortures Blowback – washingtonpost.com THE GHOSTS of interrogations past have come back to haunt the Bush administration. This week, the legal officer supervising the military trials at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed capital charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, who allegedly would have been the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 10th, 2008
Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ They should be in jail, but you know they’ll never see the inside of a court as defendants.
Date: 04/17/2008