Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Bush Officials
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of senior Bush officials who helped draft the policies for EITs. They state that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller cannot be held accountable for an incident with a Pakistani Muslim that occurred back in 2002.
Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002, had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining Muslim prisoners in highly restrictive conditions and subjecting them to strip searches and brutal beatings. He has since been deported to Pakistan.
The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, said there was nothing linking the two Bush officials to Iqbal’s treatment. The court’s liberal justices — David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens — dissented, so even a liberal pick by President Obama to replace Souter would not change the mix.
But as we all know, the liberals won’t stop there. They are planning, if not already, bringing up charges against various Bush administration officials that were also party to the documents, legal memos, and policies used on Gitmo detainees. Earlier on C-Span radio and the Washington Journal, Mr. Kessler who is a journalist for Newsmax, and an author of various books regarding the CIA, Secret Service, and Intelligence Community, gave his take on the CIA memos, waterboarding, EITs, what the true technical definition of torture is, and why terrorists and pirates do not fall under the Geneva Convention. The hate and vitriol from liberal callers was astounding. Just when I think that people couldn’t get more vile and hateful they always seem to surprise me!
A coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups filed complaints today with five state bar associations, accusing a dozen former Bush administration lawyers — including Ashcroft and ….
…former attorneys general Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey — of violating professional standards by approving the use of torture on terrorism suspects. The punishment: They want the lawyers disbarred in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and the District of Columbia.
Also on the list: John Yoo, now a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, Jay Bybee, a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Pentagon lawyer Douglas Feith, and David Addington, legal guru for former Vice President Dick Cheney.
If we are going to have these truth commissions, maybe we should have had one for Vietnam and lined up LBJ or we should have interrogated FDR for his concentration camps in the United States during World War II. We should also interrogate all the Democrats who were part of the financial melt down and make them take lie detector tests to get at the bottom of who is honest in the government. I would say we should also go back to the Clinton administration and go back over the Kosovo conflict and the fact that his foreign policies lead to much of the 9/11 attacks in the first place… But it’s always the hate on the left that feels the need to act like the new McCarthyites and go on these despicable witch hunts.
Democrat Double Standards: Schumer on Terror “Do What You Have to Do.” (2004)
Democrats love to grandstand on torture and wars, but behind closed doors when they think nobody is watching or listening, they are for it. Double standards run amok. Please look in the mirror Dems – it may be helpful!
So again, can we please put these Democrats making statements and approving of waterboarding up on the stand during the truth commissions as well? I feel it would only be fair so the Americans can get the full picture!
So here is the new audio that was uncovered of Schumer’s statement in 2004… and then his latest MSNBC mumbo jumbo about interrogations just last month!
CIA Will Not Release Rest of Memos Per Cheney’s Request; UPDATE: Cheney Will Appeal Initial Memo Decision
The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.
“In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review,” Nelson wrote in the letter to the National Archives, the agency responsible for handling Cheney’s request.
This is bad news, but also good – it means that these memos do in fact exist, they are just unfortunately caught up in bureaucratic red tape. This will most likely lead Dick Cheney to continue his offensive against the “truth commission,” the reference of “torture,” and the release of the CIA memos in the first place.
UPDATE:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will appeal a CIA decision denying his request for the release of memos he’s contended are crucial to proving the success of “enhanced interrogation techniques” of detainees.
Cheney’s office released a two-sentence statement reacting to the denial, “The Obama Administration has denied Vice President Cheney’s request for the declassification of two documents that provide information about the effectiveness of the detainee program. Vice President Cheney is preparing his appeal to this denial.”
San Fran Nan Continues to Spin
Nancy Pelosi continues to dig herself a deeper hole. She says one thing then another, but then she says something else entirely a week later. It’s quite obvious that this woman is a lying weasel. She should be interrogated intensely or at least strapped to a lie detector test. I’m so tired of this woman and uber liberals who spin information for a political agenda without any regard for national security.
Nancy Pelosi stated that she received inaccurate and misleading information. She continued to say that the CIA misled the Congress, even though other members who attended the briefings state otherwise and have a different recollection of the information provided. The CIA is not an entity I would want to mess with or malign for self-centered political gain.
Republicans and Democrats are requesting that the CIA release and declassify the notes from the briefings. What political motives does the CIA have to “mislead” the public? They don’t get voted in or need to worry about what they say or do to make a constituency happy…
It should be appalling to everyone that Piglosi actually stated that she was more concerned with politics than the security of Americans when she admitted that she was not aware of the policies, although ranking members are usually kept completely abreast of any and all information in Congress, but rather, the next elections to gain a Democrat majority.
At what point can you impeach or fire a member of Congress for lying or perjury?
Here is a video clip of Piglosi lying out of her teeth:
For Republican reaction go here…
San Fran Nan Piglosi ~ Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
We all knew that Ms. Piglosi was lying from the get go when new information came to light regarding who was privy to the CIA briefing about interrogation methods, namely waterboarding. She came up with a Bill ‘Clintonesque’ to attempt to confuse anybody who can’t read or surf the net.
She admitted the CIA briefed her and others on interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison. BUT her excuse was she didn’t know that they would ACTUALLY use those methods on the terrorists. She then asked what the definition of IS, is.
Most of us were not born yesterday, so it was obvious she was grasping at straws during her press conference. However, there was no proof, only “he said, she said,” of the briefing; that is until the CIA released their briefing report yesterday.
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
*EITs = Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Human Events obtained the list of those who were briefed and privy to the interrogation techniques in 2002 – and not surprisingly, Democrat after Democrat is listed on this document:
- Nancy Pelosi
- John Rockefeller
- Harry Reid
- Dianne Feinstein
- Jane Harman
- Babs Mikulski
- John Murtha
- Adam Schiff
- Carl Levin
- Russ Feingold
- Evan Bayh
- Bob Graham
They are going to need another made up CRISIS to get out of this one!
