With the Democratic leadership continuing to block any impeachment effort or any serious effort to hold officials liable for the U.S. torture program, Congress was free to hold another bizarre hearing today to calmly discussed our use of torture. Even though current Attorney General continues to evade the question, former Attorney General acknowledged and defended water boarding.
This is not the first hearing where the value of our use of torture was addressed as a routine matter of discussion, click here. Indeed, we have now gotten to the point where we openly compare our acts of torture with those of other nations, click here.
Thus, it was no surprise to see members bantering about on the use of a war crime today like it was some chicken subsidy going to mark up.
For his part, Ashcroft fulfilled his stereotype as more general and attorney. When asked if he felt that other nations could legitimately waterboard our own soldiers when captured, Ashcroft did not contest that possibility. Instead, he gave a non-answer: “Well, my subscription to these memos, and my belief that the law provides the basis for these memos persisted even in the presence of my son serving two tours of duty overseas in the Gulf area as a member of our armed forces,.” Some could easily read that response as affirming that it would be permissible to waterboard our own soldiers when captured.
With the International Red Cross informing the Administration that high officials could be tried for war crimes over our torture program, here, many of us are left with this out-of-body sensation in watching these hearings unfold. Just yesterday, Speaker Pelosi reaffirmed that (no matter how strong the evidence might be that President Bush committed crimes, including war crimes, in office) she would not allow impeachment proceedings to begin. So, instead, we just sit around and calmly discuss war crimes like some interesting factoids and conversation points.
For the full story, click here.
Patty C
1, July 18, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Get your own blog – for people who are really interested in
‘All Bartlebee All The Time’
So 13 out of 95 posts, is what equals “Bartlebee All The Time”?
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Well…don’t worry. Its not your fault.
I’ve always said homeschooling failures are the shortcomings of the parent, and not the child.
Get your own blog – for people who are really interested in
‘All Bartlebee All The Time’.
Last time I checked, this was still jonathanturley.org and ‘we’, managed to conduct a fairly polite and orderly exchange. One could follow it, especially if you’re a regular, ie who was responding and
to what.
We can’t do that with your machine-gun approach to the same article.
It’s rude.
Oh and by the way, you might want to pick up a new calculator while you’re out. The one you have seems to be broken.
Prior to your unprovoked insult to me, this thread had a total of 95 comments, out of which only 13 comments were Bartlebees.
So something’s clearly up with your calculator.
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Or your ability to interpret the data.
Well gee Patty, thanks for bypassing the actual discussion to launch another unwarranted and ignorant attack on me.
And I wasn’t aware that this blog suffered from such an overwhelming surplus of comments, or that I was keeping you from doing something…. but by all means, if you don’t “have time”, then don’t let me keep you.
Feel free to not let the door hit you on the way out.
I believe I know what torture is – being “BartleBoarded” every time
I see all that is available for posts is 8 out of a possible 15 comments belonging to him – with 6 out those 8 being on the same article…
I don’t have time.
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case.
You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned,
Christopher Hitchens
“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body.
Taken from the Waiver the Military requires anyone voluntarily allowing themselves to be waterboarded to sign, first.
Perhaps since Congress is still debating over whether or not it constitutes torture, someone could show them THIS?
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It does pretty much remove all questions, both moral, and legal.
Sorry.
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I know Obama would like us to forget.
Bartlebee,
Don’t remind me of HR 6034!
Course, now its all legal-like.
Thanks to HR 6034, Barack Obama, and a congress who couldn’t be bothered to worry about our 4th Amendment protections.
The ones we used to have.
The other key, is in the digitized voice. The program was completed during the Clinton admin, but was “not in place” until Bush took over. Thats because the telecoms were updating to digitial switching technology from the old analog switches. Analog switches would require actually recording the calls, and would not be searchable (mined).
Digital switches however mean the voice data can simply be switched off in binary form, and searched like any other computer data, assuming you had the proper software and equipment, as well as physical access to the switching hubs.
Its all there in public. We just need people to start putting the pieces together. Assuming people can get their heads around the magnitude of the program, and what it means about their personal communications.
Jim Burrows
1, July 18, 2008 at 3:31 am
How bad was what they wouldn’t go along with? What was it?
Well, its pretty simple actually. All you have to do is connect the dots.
It’s been spelled out for us for years now. Bush alluded to it when he spoke of “digital switching hubs” back in 2003, and the “data warehousing” and “data mining” efforts, which he did right about the same time CNN took us inside an “NSA” listening center. All the pieces are there. We just have to put them together.
The main clue, lies in revelation about the program, revealed on national television when CNN gave us our inside look at the NSA spying capabilities. The un-named analyst with the face blurred told us that whenever certain words are spoken over a telephone, super computers “start” recording the conversation. Words like “b0mb”, “airplane”, etc, will “trigger” these computers to “start” recording.
Now, given that revelation, all you have to do, to answer the question of “what they’re doing”, is to ask yourself a question.
That question?
If they can “start” recording when you say certain keywords, then how did they “know” you said them?
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Once you answer that question, you’ll get it.
They’re listening to everyone. Everyone, every word, every conversation, everywhere in the US.
How? Simple. Using technolgies we’ve already been told about, that is, “mirroring” traffic using “cable splitters” placed at key traffic hubs around the country, they are able to copy all traffic, voice and data, that passes through these central switching hubs and send it to that “secret room” that we read all read about that was set up in key telecommunication companies who agreed to support Bush’s program.
From those rooms, the data is most likely switched off to be data warehoused offsite, for later “data mining” efforts.
All if this is public knowledge. They’ve actually been fairly open about it, its just no one wants to put the picture together.
If you doubt it, then ask yourself the magic question.
IF they can ‘start’ recording when certain keywords are spoken, how did they ‘know’ those words were spoken in the first place?
What has always gotten me about the Comey hospital story is that while Ashcroft may view himself as a Highly Moral Person, that has never been my view of him. I thought it was a terrible thing for justice in this country the day the he was appointed AG, and the fact that he is willing to go along with renaming the “(non-chinese) water torture” or “waterboard torture” “waterboarding” so as to be able to decided that after all these centuries it is no longer torture, and is willing to do that even being intimately aware of what that means to the treatment of all combatants and alleged combatants.
So, we come to the hospital room and Comey’s story and we find something so horrific that a large group of Justice Department and perhaps FBI officials were willing to stand up against the President and his stooges, willing to quit en mass. How bad was what they wouldn’t go along with? What was it? We know about the programs that were an acceptable replacement. What was unacceptable? To Ashcroft?
Any chance that it was a “High Crime or Misdemeanor”? Seems likely, actually. The OK stuff seems to reach felony level.
I really want to know. I really wish Congress had the nerve to ask. I fear that some of them know and realize we must never know that they knew.
Kiddo,
You are absolutely correct. There is no grey areas here. Only smoke and mirrors from the Bush regime.
Damn. Well said.
Its almost a like a mindset. Just the idea that cruelty called something else, is somehow less cruel.
I wish this discussion were over for good, but: Would you torture an animal (say a dog) if there was an absolute certainty that, as you did so, you would become ever more privy to iformation on an imminent terrorist event certain to kill thousands? Let’s say the torture takes five minutes. How about ten? An hour? You may believe it feels a different when the tortured being is known to be innocent, but if you search your soul, you will see it isn’t different at all. Torture hurts the torturer in ways which echo through the ages. Deliberately torturing something or someone feels the same to the torturer and his or her family and friends no matter what the circumstances. We can’t really be still arguing about the meaning of the word torture. It has been defined and that definition is refined everytime evil spurs another way to effect it. That is just common sense. There is no trying not to torture only torturing and not torturing.
I know one thing. If investors thought a democratic president, even Nancy Pelosi, was going to take over BEFORE Jan 20th, I bet we’d see a rebound in trader confidence like you wouldn’t believe.
Also, then congress could stop sitting on their hands, and do something about the current mortage crisis.
Right now of course they won’t do anything, because they don’t want to make Bush look good.
I’m glad though that this article addresses the real culprit here. The one we really need to focus our attention on. And thats Speaker Pelosi, who refuses to do anything more than a little smoke and mirror act over impeachment, which I think everyone in the country would be happy to see.
I think the problem is she’d be next in line perhaps? I’m not sure how the succession would play out, but I believe if Cheney and Bush were both impeached, for the same “high crimes and misdemeanors” then the mantle would fall to her, naturally, being the Speaker of the House. Then Robert Byrd, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and then, …wait for it…. Condie Rice. So I don’t if they’d make some sort of deal, where Condie gets to be pres (making her the first black and first female president before Obama gets in) in exchange for republican votes of impeachment, or if they’d be compelled to follow the Constitutional line of succession, but I guess maybe Pelosi’s afraid of a confrontation of some sort. After all, Bush is technically at war, and perhaps he’s threatened, or more likely, Cheney, has threatend to institute martial law, and arrest congress as trying to overthrow his govt?
Some might laugh at the idea, but I remember Dan Rather and Peter Jennings talking about Bush using the Military to arrest Al Gore if he didn’t concede back in the 2000 election. it was breif, and they only mentioned it once or twice, but I remember it clearly.
I doubt Cheney’s planning on going down without a fight, and I imagine its possible that members of Congress have been threatened in some things. Look at the fear in Pelosi’s eyes, whenever she talks about the spying scandal, or impeachment. She looks like a person who has something to hide.
Bartlebee,
I figured it was directed towards me. Thanks.
Jill,
I like your definition of BFF better.
Mespo,
Maybe you can sell your show by having Ashcroft answer the title question concerning waterboarding!
Sorry for the Typo’s Rafflaw, that was in response to you.