NYT: Un-American Liars
The New York Times just like their uber-left counterparts care more about islamofascist terrorists than their own country and its citizens.
NYT also lied in an article last weekwhen describing the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The NYT claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, which will become a typical liberal talking point when arguing about Gitmo detainees and interrogation methods. Khalid was only waterboarded a total of 5 times. Let me repeat that again, 5 times! Each of those times is timed specifically which was defined by law in order to meet specific conditions that would not be considered torture. There is also a physician on site when waterboarding is used.
The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The “183 times” was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.
It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed’s face — not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of “five sessions of ill-treatment.”
Our own soldiers have been trained and waterboarded more times than all the detainees combined. Only 3 of the detainees were ever waterboarded and 2 of those were major leaders in the radical Islam movement who had valuable information. That information was disclosed to us through waterboarding. If these detainees were only waterboarded 5-10 times total imagine how easy it would be for them to train for that now.
“The water was poured 183 times — there were 183 pours,” the official explained, adding that “each pour was a matter of seconds.”
The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.
And again that would be 83 pours of water… entirely different than being waterboarded 83 times. Each sessions consists of short and long pours of water and the specific time allotted per session was all laid out.
The Justice Department memos described the maximum allowed use of the waterboard on any detainee, based on tactical training given to U.S. troops to resist interrogations:
– Five days of use in one month, with no more than two “sessions” in a day;
– Up to six applications (something like a dunk) lasting more than 10 seconds but less than 40 seconds per session;
– 12 minutes of total “water application” in a 24-hour period
These lying Democrats have now put our country at incredible risk and have given our enemies plenty of ammo and ability to train and be more difficult to glean information from. As an FYI to the peaceniks – people are evil, they are not all good in this world and there is nothing you can do to change that or control that even if you can’t understand that. Sharing tea and crumpets with them will not resolve anything, nor will it keep your country safe.
Real American…./Sarc! Hey NYT – did your article happen to mention that Khalid is the one who chopped off Daniel Pearl’s head? I guess that’s acceptible to the likes of NYT… and the hypocrites on the far left.
Obama Breaks Promise to Armenians
Barack Obama was unequivocal during the campaign: As president, he would recognize the nearly century-old massacre of Armenians in Turkey as genocide.
In breaking that promise Friday, the president did the same diplomatic tiptoeing he criticized the Bush administration for doing.
Like George W. Bush before him, Obama did not want to alienate vital ally Turkey by declaring the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians to be genocide — especially with Turkey and Armenia now exploring reconciliation.
Instead, he said he had not changed his view from the campaign, even as he declined to state it, and added: “My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”
In a statement on the anniversary of the start of the killings in 1915 — a day when U.S. presidents typically honor the Armenian victims — Obama said: “Each year, we pause to remember the 1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”
The statement was less than the full and frank acknowledgment he promised Jan. 19, 2008, when he vowed that as president, “I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,” and repeatedly used the word.
The only president to fully recognize the first genocide of the 20th century has been Ronald Reagan.
In a proclamation on April 22, 1981, Reagan stated,
“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it – and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples – the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
Obama has become just the typical politician, playing to his own special interests and trying not to offend anyone in the name of political correctness and political expediency. But as we have begun to see, he is actually offending a greater number of people as his term rolls on.
An excerpt from that 2008 campaign statement, one of several he released on the subject:
“I also share with Armenian Americans — so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors — a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide.
“Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term ‘genocide’ to describe Turkey’s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary (Condoleezza) Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy.
“As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”
Typical, just another broken campaign promise that many fell hook, line, and sinker for. Just like those kids who ran for class president in high school ~ I’m still waiting for chocolate milk to replace water in the fountains…
White House and CIA Lied, Cheney Wrote Request for Full Memo Release
The cat is out of the bag and Cheney did make a hand-written request to the CIA to release the entire documentation/memos of the detainee interrogations.
The White House and some CIA officials were denying that Cheney ever made that request, however, this documentation has been found and it appears that both the White House and the CIA members who were scared to go against the orders of the current Executive Branch lied to try and discredit Cheney so they could get away with only releasing the “torture.”
You can find Cheney’s hand-written request here.
Politico reported on this:
The form filed with the National Archives’ Presidential Libraries section on March 31 of this year shows that Cheney asked for declassification review of the two items from a folder called “detainees” within “OVP Cheney immediate office files.” The titles of the memoranda or reports were blacked out for classification reasons, however, one memo sought was dated July 13, 2004, and totaled eight pages, and another dated June 1, 2005, totals 13 pages.
Cheney filled out the request himself–it’s in his handwriting. The Archives later amended Cheney’s request to describe the two records simply as CIA reports (probably more vaguely than the ex-veep did). The archvists also upped the page counts to a total of 31.
I’m looking further at those dates to see whether we can identify the documents indpendently. However, June 1, 2005 seems to coincide with a time frame involving a lot of action surrounding the legal justifications for the interrogation program. One Justice Department memo released last week, finding the techniques did not constitute torture under international law, was issued on May 30, 2005, just a day before the document Cheney asked for.
National Archives officials said earlier this week that the request has been routed to the CIA for action.
POLITICO obtained Cheney’s request under the Freedom of Information Act.
UPDATE: The July 13, 2004, memo seems to coincide roughly with a meeting the CIA held with the so-called principals of the National Security Council to discuss the status of the interrogation efforts and perhaps to discuss a May 2004 report from the CIA’s inspector general on the program. The meeting was revealed in a chronology issued this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
UPDATE 2: Blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that the July 13 date is also the same as a CIA report called “Preeminent Source” about Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. The report is referenced in the same May 30, 2005 legal memo. So likely that’s one item Cheney was after.
Obama: “It Was Only a Handshake.”
As we see here it was not just a handshake, it was a casual conversation with a man whom only a couple years ago called us an evil imperialist and had a seething hate towards the United States. This is perfect for the idealists who believe in Utopia and that all men are kind-hearted and value peace and equality, however, that is just not reality and meetings like this are detrimental to us as a nation. This was a casual meeting with no real understanding of what was said between the two (obviously no preconditions). Read more
