Torture Report. If Americans Don't Want Blowback, Don't Be Loathesome Thugs

December 10, 2014, 9:24 am

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Republicans argue the summary will put Americans in danger abroad. "Some leading Republican lawmakers have warned against releasing the report, saying that domestic and foreign intelligence reports indicate that a detailed account of the brutal interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. during the George W. Bush administration could incite unrest and violence, even resulting in the deaths of Americans." Mark Landler and Peter Baker in The New York Times.

WALDMAN: If the release incites violence, then maybe the United States shouldn't practice torture. "The cynicism necessary to attempt to blame the blowback from their torture program on those who want it exposed is truly a wonder. On one hand, they insist that they did nothing wrong and the program was humane, professional, and legal. On the other they implicitly accept that the truth is so ghastly that if it is released there will be an explosive backlash against America." The Washington Post.

"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

"The Iraqi Liar Who Started The War. Let's Torture Willing Informants To Get The Truth?
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-iraqi-liar-who-started-war-torture.html

Full Text Of John McCain's Torture Address From Senate Floor
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/full-text-of-john-mccains-anti-torture.html

"The CIA's First Detainee Spent 266 Days In A Box The Size Of A Coffin"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-cias-first-detainee-spent-266-days.html

Water Boarding: A Clear Explanation
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Tom Toles Cartoon: The CIA Torture Report
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/tom-toles-cartoon.html

CIA Torture Report: Most Shocking Passages
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/cia-torture-reports-most-shocking.html

CIA Torture Report: The Three British Plots That The CIA Falsely Cited To Justify Torture

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/torture-report-articles-great-wonkblog.html

CIA Torture Report: 'Torture Is A Crime And Those Responsible Must Be Tried'
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/cia-torture-report-torture-is-crime-and.html

Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.

Conservatives "Must" See This

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

↧

"Important Takeaways From The CIA Interrogation Report," Washington Post

December 10, 2014, 9:36 am

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The Washington Post's Greg Miller lists the important takeaways from the CIA interrogation report and explains why it is being released now. (The Washington Post)

"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)

Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.

Conservatives "Must" See This

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA Torture Report," Washington Post

By Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Julie Tate December 9, 2014

An exhaustive five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict on a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee delivers new allegations of cruelty in a program whose severe tactics have been abundantly documented, revealing that agency medical personnel voiced alarm that waterboarding methods had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings” and that agency employees subjected detainees to “rectal rehydration” and other painful procedures that were never approved.

[Read: Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program]

The 528-page document catalogues dozens of cases in which CIA officials allegedly deceived their superiors at the White House, members of Congress and even sometimes their peers about how the interrogation program was being run and what it had achieved. In one case, an internal CIA memo relays instructions from the White House to keep the program secret from then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of concern that he would “blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

A declassified summary of the committee’s work discloses for the first time a complete roster of the 119 prisoners held in CIA custody and indicates that at least 26 were held because of mistaken identities or bad intelligence. The publicly released summary is drawn from a longer, classified study that exceeds 6,000 pages.

The Senate Intelligence Committees report on the CIAs interrogation program listed, for the first time, the names of the 119 detainees who went through the agencys secret prison system. VIEW GRAPHIC

[View timeline: The CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation]

The report’s central conclusion is that harsh interrogation measures, deemed torture by program critics including President Obama, did not work. The panel deconstructs prominent claims about the value of the “enhanced” measures, including that they produced breakthrough intelligence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and dismisses them all as exaggerated if not utterly false — assertions that the CIA and former officers involved in the program vehemently dispute.

In a statement from the White House, Obama said the Senate report “documents a troubling program” and “reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as [a] nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.” Obama praised the CIA’s work to degrade al-Qaeda over the past 13 years but said the agency’s interrogation program “did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.”

The CIA issued a 112-page response to the Senate report, acknowledging failings in the interrogation program but denying that it intentionally misled the public or policymakers about an effort that it maintains delivered critical intelligence.

“The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day,” CIA Director John Brennan, who was a senior officer at the agency when it set up secret prisons for al-Qaeda suspects, said in a written statement. The program “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives,” he said.

The release of the report comes at an unnerving time in the country’s conflict with al-Qaeda and its offshoots. The Islamic State has beheaded three Americans in recent months and seized control of territory across Iraq and Syria. Fears that the report could ignite new overseas violence against American interests prompted Secretary of State John F. Kerry to appeal to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Senate committee, to consider a delay. The report has also been at the center of intense bureaucratic and political fights that erupted this year in accusations that the CIA surreptitiously monitored the computers used by committee aides involved in the investigation.

Many of the most haunting sections of the Senate document are passages taken from internal CIA memos and e-mails as agency employees described their visceral reactions to searing interrogation scenes. At one point in 2002, CIA employees at a secret site in Thailand broke down emotionally after witnessing the harrowing treatment of Abu Zubaida, a high-profile facilitator for al-Qaeda.

Almost 13 years after the CIA established secret prisons to hold and interrogate detainees, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the CIA’s programs. The report lists 20 key findings. VIEW GRAPHIC

“Several on the team profoundly affected,” one agency employee wrote at the time, “. . . some to the point of tears and choking up.” The passage is contrasted with closed-door testimony from high-ranking CIA officials, including then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who when asked by a senator in 2007 whether agency personnel had expressed reservations replied: “I’m not aware of any. These guys are more experienced. No.”

The investigation was conducted exclusively by the Senate committee’s Democratic staff. Its release Tuesday is certain to stir new debate over a program that has been a source of contention since the first details about the CIA’s secret prison network began to surface publicly a decade ago. Even so, the report is unlikely to lead to new sanctions or structural change.

The document names only a handful of high-ranking CIA employees and does not call for any further investigation of those involved or even offer any formal recommendations. It steers clear of scrutinizing the involvement of the White House and Justice Department, which two years ago ruled out the possibility that CIA employees would face prosecution.

Instead, the Senate text is largely aimed at shaping how the interrogation program will be regarded by history. The inquiry was driven by Feinstein and her frequently stated determination to foreclose any prospect that the United States might contemplate such tactics again. Rather than argue their morality, Feinstein set out to prove that they did not work.

In her foreword to the report, Feinstein does not characterize the CIA’s actions as torture but says the trauma of 9/11 led the agency to employ “brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values.” The report should serve as “a warning for the future,” she says.

“We cannot again allow history to be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated,” Feinstein says.

The reaction to the report, however, only reinforced how polarizing the CIA program remains more than five years after it was ordered dismantled by Obama.

Over the past year, the CIA assembled a lengthy and detailed rebuttal to the committee’s findings that argues that all but a few of the panel’s conclusions are unfounded. Hayden and other agency veterans have for months been planning a similarly aggressive response.

The report also faced criticism from Republicans on the Intelligence Committee who submitted a response to the report that cited alleged inaccuracies and faulted the committee’s decision to base its findings exclusively on CIA documents without interviewing any of the operatives involved. Democrats have said they did so to avoid interfering with a separate Justice Department inquiry.

The program’s start

At its height, the CIA program included secret prisons in countries including Afghanistan, Thailand, Romania, Lithuania and Poland — locations that are referred to only by color-themed codes in the report, such as “COBALT,” to preserve a veneer of secrecy.

The establishment of the “black sites” was part of a broader transformation of the CIA in which it rapidly morphed from an agency focused on intelligence-gathering into a paramilitary force with new powers to capture prisoners, disrupt plots, and assemble a fleet of armed drones to carry out targeted killings of al-Qaeda militants.

The report reveals the often haphazard ways in which the agency assumed these new roles. Within days of the 9/11 attacks, for example, President George W. Bush had signed a secret memorandum giving the CIA new authority to “undertake operations designed to capture and detain persons who pose a continuing, serious threat of violence or death to U.S. persons and interests.”

But the memo made no reference to interrogations, providing no explicit authority for what would become an elaborately drawn list of measures — including sleep deprivation, slams against cell walls and simulated drowning — to get detainees to talk. The Bush memo was a murky point of origin for a program that is portrayed throughout the Senate report as chaotically mismanaged.

One of the most lengthy sections describes the interrogation of the CIA’s first prisoner, Abu Zubaida, who was detained in Pakistan in March 2002. Abu Zubaida, badly injured when he was captured, was largely cooperative when jointly questioned by the CIA and FBI but was then subjected to confusing and increasingly violent interrogation as the agency assumed control.

After being transferred to a site in Thailand, Abu Zubaida was placed in isolation for 47 days, a period during which the presumably important source on al-Qaeda faced no questions. Then, at 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2002, the CIA launched a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming him against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-size box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited, and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”

The treatment continued for 17 days. At one point, the waterboarding left Abu Zubaida “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” CIA memos described employees who were distraught and concerned about the legality of what they had witnessed. One said that “two, perhaps three” were “likely to elect transfer.”

The Senate report suggests top CIA officials at headquarters had little sympathy. When a cable from Thailand warned that the Abu Zubaida interrogation was “approach[ing] the legal limit,” Jose Rodriguez, then chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, cautioned subordinates to refrain from such “speculative language as to the legality” of the interrogation. “Such language is not helpful.”

Through a spokesman, Rodriguez told The Washington Post that he never instructed employees not to send cables about the legality of interrogations.

Abu Zubaida, also known as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was waterboarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours. In October 2002, Bush was informed in his daily intelligence briefing that Abu Zubaida was still withholding “significant threat information,” despite views from the black site that he had been truthful from the outset and was “compliant and cooperative,” the report said.

The document provides a similarly detailed account of the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who fed his interrogators a stream of falsehoods and intelligence fragments. Waterboarding was supposed to simulate suffocation with a damp cloth and a trickle of liquid. But with Mohammed, CIA operatives used their hands to form a standing pool of water over his mouth. KSM, as he is known in agency documents, was ingesting “a LOT of water,” a CIA medical officer wrote, saying that the application had been so altered that “we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”

The CIA has maintained that only three prisoners were subjected to waterboarding, but the report alludes to evidence that it may have been used on others, including photographs of a well-worn waterboard at a black site where its use was never officially recorded. The committee said the agency could not explain the presence of the board and water-dousing equipment at the site, which is not named in the report but is believed to be the “Salt Pit” in Afghanistan.

There are also references to other procedures, including the use of tubes to administer “rectal rehydration” and feeding. CIA documents describe a case in which a prisoner’s lunch tray “consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused.” At least five CIA detainees were subjected to “rectal rehydration” or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity.

At times, senior CIA operatives voiced deep misgivings. In early 2003, a CIA officer in the interrogation program described it as a “train [wreck] waiting to happen” and that “I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens.” The officer, identified by former colleagues as Charlie Wise, subsequently retired and died in 2003. He had been picked for the job despite being reprimanded for his role in other troubled interrogation efforts in the 1980s in Beirut, former officials said.

The agency’s records of the program were so riddled with errors, according to the report, that the CIA often offered conflicting counts of how many prisoners it had.

In 2007, then-CIA Director Hayden testified in a closed-door session with the Senate panel that “in the history of the program, we’ve had 97 detainees.” In reality, the number was 119, according to the report, including 39 who had been subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

Two years later, when Hayden was preparing to deliver an early intelligence briefing for senior aides to newly elected President Obama, a subordinate noted that the actual count was significantly higher. Hayden “instructed me to keep the detainee number at 98,” the employee wrote to himself in an e-mail, “pick whatever date i needed to make that happen but the number is 98.”

Hayden comes under particularly pointed scrutiny in the report, which includes a 38-page table comparing his statements to often conflicting agency documents. The section is listed as an “example of inaccurate CIA testimony.”

In an e-mail to The Post, Hayden said the discrepancy in the prisoner numbers reflected the fact that detainees captured before the start of the interrogation program were counted separately from those held at the black sites. “This is a question of booking, not a question of deception,” Hayden said. He also said he directed the analyst who had called the discrepancy to his attention to confirm the revised accounting and then inform the incoming CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, that there was a new number and that the figure should be corrected with Congress.

Hayden said he would have explained this to the committee if given the chance. “Maybe if the committee had talked to real people and accessed their notes we wouldn’t have to have this conversation,” he said, describing the matter as an “example of [committee] methodology. Take a stray ‘fact’ and claim its meaning to fit the desired narrative (mass deception).”

The report cites other cases in which CIA officials are alleged to have obscured facts about the program. In 2003, when David Addington, a lawyer who worked for Vice President Richard B. Cheney, asked whether the CIA had videotaped interrogations of Abu Zubaida, CIA General Counsel Scott Muller informed agency colleagues that he had “told him that tapes were not being made.” Muller apparently did not mention that the CIA had recorded dozens of interrogation sessions or that some in the agency were eager to have them destroyed.

The tapes were destroyed in 2005 at the behest of Rodriguez, a move that triggered a Justice Department investigation. The committee also revealed that a 21-hour section of recordings — which depicted the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida — had gone missing years earlier when then-CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s office sought to review them as part of an inquiry into the interrogation program.

Helgerson would go on to find substantial problems with the program. But, in contrast to the Senate panel’s findings, his report concluded that the agency’s “interrogation of terrorists has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world.”

Intelligence claims

A prominent section of the Senate report is devoted to high-profile claims that the interrogation program produced “unique” and otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped thwart plots or led to the capture of senior al-Qaeda operatives.

Senate investigators said none of the claims held up under scrutiny, with some unraveling because information was erroneously attributed to detainees subjected to harsh interrogations, others because the CIA already had information from other sources. In some cases, according to the panel, there was no viable terrorist plot to disrupt.

A document prepared for Cheney before a March 8, 2005, National Security Council meeting noted in a section titled “Interrogation Results” that “operatives Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohammed planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the Washington DC area.”

But according to an April 2003 CIA e-mail, Padilla and Mohammed had apparently taken seriously a “ludicrous and humorous” article about building a dirty bomb in a kitchen by swinging buckets of uranium to enrich it.

KSM dismissed the idea, as did a government assessment of the proposed plot: “CIA and Lawrence Livermore National Lab have assessed that the article is filled with countless technical inaccuracies which would likely result in the death of anyone attempting to follow the instructions, and definitely would not result in a nuclear explosion,” noted another CIA e-mail in April 2003. The agency nonetheless continued to directly cite the “dirty bomb” plot while defending the interrogation program until at least 2007, the report notes.

The report also deconstructs the timeline leading to the identification of Padilla and his alleged accomplice. It notes that in April 2002, Pakistani authorities who detained Padilla suspected he was an al-Qaeda member. A few days later, Abu Zubaida described two individuals who were pursuing what was described as a “cockamamie” dirty-bomb plot. The connection was made by the CIA immediately, months before the use of harsh interrogation on Abu Zubaida.

Some within the CIA were derisive of the continuing exploitation of the dirty-bomb plot by the agency. “We’ll never be able to successfully expunge Padilla and the ‘dirty bomb’ plot from the lore of disruption, but once again I’d like to go on the record that Padilla admitted that the only reason he came up with so-called ‘dirty bomb’ was that he wanted to get out of Afghanistan and figured that if he came up with something spectacular, they’d finance him,” wrote the head of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear group at the CIA Counterterrorism Center. “Even KSM says Padilla had a screw loose.”

In the CIA’s rebuttal, which was delivered in 2013 to the Senate but released publicly on Tuesday for the first time, the agency acknowledged that it took “too long to stop making references to his infeasible ‘Dirty Bomb’ plot” but said Padilla was a legitimate threat and “a good example of the importance of intelligence derived from the detainee program.”

In another high-profile case, the CIA credited the interrogation program with the capture of Hambali, a senior member of the Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah and the suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing, which killed more than 200 people. In a briefing for the president’s chief of staff, for instance, the CIA wrote, “During [KSM’s] interrogation we acquired information that led to the capture of Hambali.” But the Senate found that information from KSM played no role in Hambali’s capture and that, in fact, information leading to his detention came from signals intelligence, a CIA source, and investigations by the Thai authorities.

Similarly, the CIA said the interrogation program led to the discovery of the “Second Wave” attacks, a plan by KSM to employ non-Arabs to use airplanes to hit targets on the West Coast. Associated with this in CIA reporting was the identification of al-Ghuraba, a cell of Jemaah Islamiah.

In a November 2007 briefing for Bush on “Plots Discovered as a Result of EITs,” or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the CIA said it “learned” about the Second Wave and al-Ghuraba “after applying the waterboard along with interrogation techniques.” But the Senate report says the plot was disrupted by a series of arrests and interrogations that had nothing to do with the CIA program.

Even the hunt for bin Laden was accompanied by exaggerations of the role of brutal interrogation techniques, according to the report. In particular, the committee found that the interrogations played no meaningful role in the identification of a courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who would lead the agency to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The CIA’s document reiterates its claim that coercive measures helped, saying the tactics led two detainees in agency custody, Ammar al-Baluchi and Hassan Ghul, to provide important clues to the courier. Baluchi was the first to identify Kuwaiti as bin Laden’s messenger, and did so only “after undergoing enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Ghul, who was captured in Iraq, went even further, confirming under coercive pressure that Kuwaiti had delivered a letter from bin Laden to another al-Qaeda operative and had vanished along with the al-Qaeda chief in 2002.

But the committee cited CIA records showing that Ghul’s revelations came before he was subjected to harsh measures. In an interview with the CIA inspector general’s office, a CIA officer familiar with Ghul’s case said that he “sang like a tweetie bird. He opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset.”

Steven Rich and Swati Sharma contributed to this report.

Greg Miller covers the intelligence beat for The Washington Post.

Adam Goldman reports on terrorism and national security for The Washington Post.

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CIA Torture Report's Most Shocking Passages

December 10, 2014, 9:41 am

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The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on torture Tuesday
Techniques included mock executions, sleep deprivations and dietary manipulation

Washington (CNN) -- Here's a look at some of the techniques the CIA used to interrogate detainees that were included in a Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday.

1. The CIA conducted at least two mock executions -- among other techniques that went unreported in the agency's cables. Others included "nudity, dietary manipulation, exposure to cold temperatures, cold showers," and rough takedowns.

Report details detainee death, neglect

Hagel: We're 'prepared' for report release

In another passage, the mock executions are included in a section that also mentions techniques like "placing pressure on a detainee's artery ... blowing cigarette or cigar smoke into a detainee's face, using cold water to interrogate detainees, and subjecting a detainee to a 'hard takedown.'"

2. Those "rough" or "hard" takedowns involved CIA officers rushing into a detainee's cell, stripping him naked and running him up and down a long hall while slapping and punching him. "As they ran him along the corridor, a couple of times he fell and they dragged him through the dirt," the report says.

3. The CIA often used sleep deprivation, which "involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads."

4. The CIA decided that interrogating Abu Zubaydah would take precedence over his medical care. He almost died as a result of waterboarding. In at least one waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah "became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." He remained unresponsive until medical intervention, when he regained consciousness and expelled "copious amounts of liquid."

5. The first prisoner at the COBALT detention facility, Redha al-Najar, was kept in "isolation in total darkness." The CIA gave him increasingly worse food, kept him in uncomfortably cold temperatures, kept him shackled and hooded and played music 24 hours a day. He wore a diaper and had no access to toilets. And he was described as being left hanging -- with one or both wrists handcuffed to an overhead bar so he couldn't lower his arms -- for 22 hours a day for two straight days in an attempt to "'break' his resistance."

6. The CIA threatened the families of detainees. It used that prisoner's "fear for the well-being of his family to our benefit," according to the report, by "using 'vague threats' to create a 'mind virus.'" In another section, the report says "CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families -- to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee and a threat to 'cut [a detainee's] mother's throat.'"

7. One detainee faced particularly rough treatment in late 2005. Per the report: "According to CIA records, Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi was subjected to nudity, dietary manipulation, insult slaps, abdominal slaps, attention grasps, facial holds, walling, stress positions and water dousing with 44 degree Fahrenheit water for 18 minutes. He was shackled in the standing position for 54 hours as part of sleep deprivation, and experienced swelling in his lower legs requiring blood thinner and spiral ace bandages.

"He was moved to a sitting position, and his sleep deprivation was extended to 78 hours. After the swelling subsided, he was provided with more blood thinner and was returned to the standing position. The sleep deprivation was extended to 102 hours. After four hours of sleep, Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi was subjected to an additional 52 hours of sleep deprivation, after which CIA Headquarters informed interrogators that eight hours was the minimum rest period between sleep deprivation sessions exceeding 48 hours. In addition to the swelling, Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi also experienced an edema on his head due to walling, abrasions on his neck and blisters on his ankles from shackles."

8. "At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity," the report said. More specifically, "Majid Khan's 'lunch tray' of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was 'pureed' and rectally infused."

9. The CIA officers involved in the detention and interrogation program weren't the most savory bunch. The group "included individuals who, among other issues, had engaged in inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault," the report said.

10. Some of those who were interrogated didn't have the best thought-out plans. After reading a satirical web story called "How to Make an H-bomb," U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and his associate, Binyam Mohammed, conceived the "Dirty Bomb Plot."

The report says: "The article instructed would-be bomb makers to enrich uranium by placing it "in a bucket, attaching it to a six-foot rope, and swinging it around your head as fast as possible for 45 minutes. Padilla and Mohammed approached Abu Zubaydah in early 2002, and later [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed], with their idea to build and use this device in the United States.

"Neither Abu Zubaydah nor KSM believed the plan was viable, but KSM provided funding for, and tasked Padilla to conduct, anoperation using natural gas to create explosions in tall buildings in the United States, later known as the 'Tall Buildings Plot.'"

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CIA Torture Report: 'Torture Is A Crime And Those Responsible Must Be Tried'

December 10, 2014, 9:43 am

≫ Next: CIA Torture Report: The View From England

≪ Previous: CIA Torture Report's Most Shocking Passages

Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.

Conservatives "Must" See This

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)

CIA report: 'Torture is a crime and those responsible must be brought to justice'

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights advocates say prosecutions must follow Senate’s CIA torture report

• Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray

• Damning conclusion: report brands programme ineffective and brutal

The UN, human rights activists and legal experts have renewed calls for the Obama administration to prosecute US officials responsible for the CIA torture programme revealed in extensive detail following the release of a damning report by the Senate intelligence committee.

The report, released on Tuesday, found the CIA misled the White House, the Justice Department, Congress and the public over a torture programme that was both ineffective and more brutal than the agency disclosed.

“Today’s release once again makes crystal clear that the US government used torture. Torture is a crime and those responsible for crimes must be brought to justice,” Amnesty International USA’s executive director, Steven W Hawkins, said in a statement.

“Under the UN convention against torture, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever can be invoked to justify torture, and all those responsible for authorising or carrying out torture or other ill-treatment must be fully investigated.”

In Geneva, the United Nations’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, said CIA officers and other US government officials should be prosecuted.

“The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US government provides no excuse whatsoever,” Emmerson said in a statement.

A US flag at Guantanamo Bay. — Amnesty International said the findings showed ‘exactly how free the US government felt to commit torture with impunity’. Photograph: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Former Bush officials had been critical of the report’s findings before they were made public. Former vice-president Dick Cheney told the New York Times on Monday that any attempt to portray the programme as a rogue operation was a “bunch of hooey” and defended its use as “absolutely, totally justified”.

But Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, told the Guardian that Cheney’s comments were undermined by the contents of the report.

“By bringing out that the CIA lied to Congress, to the executive branch, to the Justice Department, to the inspector general, to the courts and others, the report undermines any chance for Republicans like former vice-president Cheney to defend the CIA,” O’Connell said.

“The United States is obligated under both the Geneva convention and the convention against torture … to investigate and prosecute the commission of torture.”

Republican senator John McCain, tortured in Vietnam as a prisoner of war, was out of step with some fellow Republicans in welcoming the report and endorsing its findings.

“We gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer,” he said in a Senate speech. “Too much.”

Obama at the White House. — President Obama has cooled on commitments made during the 2008 election to pursue criminal investigations.Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

President Obama has cooled on commitments made during the 2008 election campaign to pursue criminal investigations if it were proved that “there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront”.

A 2009 DoJ investigation into the use of torture, which was commissioned by the former attorney general Michael Mukasey and headed by assistant US attorney John Durham, concluded in August 2012 that no charges should be brought.

Chris Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, described the Senate report as an “exhaustive cataloguing not just of horrific details of the interrogation and torture programme, but also of the mismanagement and a chaotic CIA”.

Anders added that the statute of limitations had not lapsed for some incidents included in the report, particularly those that resulted in deaths.

The report documents the case of suspected militant Gul Rahman, who died from hypothermia after a CIA officer was approved to use “enhanced measures” during his interrogation and left him naked from the waist down and shackled to a wall in a cold cell.

Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch, also called on governments in other signatory states to the UN convention against torture to prosecute officials should they enter their territory.

“Other countries have all the information they need should they wish to exercise universal jurisdiction and prosecute these officials should they appear in their borders,” Prasow said.

The director of Amnesty USA’s security and human rights programme, Naureen Shah, told the Guardian that among the most shocking disclosures in the report were revelations that the US paid more than $180m (£115m) to two contractor psychologists to help establish the programme.

“This is the kind of thing that goes beyond horrific,” Shah said. “It shows exactly how free the US government felt to commit torture with impunity. It’s brazen in its detail and also in its abdication of legal responsibility – the idea that you would outsource to contractors the design of a programme that at base was about torture and ill treatment.”

The report reveals that use of torture in secret prisons run by the CIA across the world was even more extreme than previously exposed, and included “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding”, sleep deprivation lasting almost a week and threats to the families of the detainees.

The names of other countries – including Britain – who cooperated with the US programme by assisting the rendition of suspects were redacted from the published report.

Asked about British involvement, David Cameron said the question that a parliamentary inquiry was “dealing with all those issues” and that he had issued guidance to British agents on “how they have to handle these issues in future”

“Torture is wrong, torture is always wrong. Those of us who want to see a safer and more secure world, who want to see extremism defeated, we won’t succeed if we lose our moral authority, if we lose the things that make or systems work and countries successful,” the prime minister said.

The Senate committee published nearly 500 pages of its investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme during the Bush administration’s “war on terror”. The full report is over 10 times longer, but the declassified section is dense with detail and declassified communications between the officials involved.

Associated Press contributed to this report

↧

CIA Torture Report: The View From England

December 10, 2014, 9:49 am

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"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

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CIA torture report reveals tactics WORSE than agency let on: Al Qaeda suspects were kept awake in 'stress positions' for 180 hours, waterboarded until vomiting and unconscious and one died of hypothermia chained naked to a floor

The suspects were subjected to waterboarding, stress positions in shackles and sleep deprivation for 180 hours
One suspect died of hypothermia while naked chained to a floor
Of the 119 known detainees that were in CIA custody during the life of the program, at least 26 were wrongfully held
At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal feeding' as a method of behavioral control
Detainee Majid Khan had his head below his torso and his lunch of hummus, pasta, sauce and raisins 'pureed' and rectally infused
Detainees in the 'dungeon' were constantly shackled in isolation, complete darkness with constant loud music and only a bucket for human waste
The 'enhanced interrogation techniques' did not thwart terrorist plots or reveal the identities of key al Qaeda members
Obama said in response to report: 'I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again'
The brutal interrogations took place at either CIA-run secret prisons known as 'black sites' or the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military base in Cuba
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who led committee who prepared CIA report, said: 'Examining mistakes and remedying them is the mark of a great and just society'

America the Beautiful

"The Good Guys" making the world a safer place.

The Lernaean Hydra

Wikipedia

Cut off one head, two take its place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

By LOUISE BOYLE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 9 December 2014

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Majid Khan, pictured in 1999, was 'rectally fed' a pureed lunch of pasta, sauce and hummus as a method of behavior control, according to the report on CIA torture released on Tuesday

The CIA tortured al-Qaeda suspects with rectal feeding, waterboarding and threats to harm their children and sexually abuse their mothers, according to a long-delayed and highly controversial Senate report published on Tuesday.

One suspect died of hypothermia while naked chained to a floor while at least five detainees were rectally-fed their meals as a method of behavioral control at 'black sites' or the Guantanamo military base in Cuba.

One interrogator told another detainee that he would never go to court, 'because we can never let the world know what I have done to you'.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat chair of the intelligence committee which prepared the report, said on Capitol Hill today that the torture was 'a stain on our values and on our history'.

Obama added: 'I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again.'

The 500-page document released on Tuesday included conclusions of a still-secret, 6,700-page report, the results of a five-year, $40 million investigation, which showed that the CIA lied to cover up torture.

The Senate report concluded that 'the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' didn't produce results where it really mattered - most importantly, the killing of Osama bin Laden and the thwarting of terrorist attacks.

After reviewing 6 million agency documents, investigators could find no example of unique and life-saving intelligence gleaned from the coercive techniques that in some cases left detainees hallucinating and suicidal.

The U.S. military was on high alert around the world on Tuesday after ugly details of American torture techniques were released.

Here, we break down the report and the entire findings are available here:

Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, who the U.S. believe to be the principal architect of 9/11, was waterboarded to the point of drowning, according to internal CIA reports

Khalid Shaykh Mohammad (pictured left), who the U.S. believe to be the principal architect of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times and to the point of drowning, according to internal CIA reports. Abu Zubaydah (right) was left 'completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth' after waterboarding

RECTAL FEEDING AND HYDRATION
Detainees were subjected to 'rectal feeding' and 'rectal rehydration' - an enema administered with the intent of providing nutrition when normal feeding is not possible, common in 19th-century medicine.

One detainee Majid Khan was placed in a forward-facing position with his head lower than his torso and his lunch, consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce and raisins was 'pureed' and rectally infused while in .

Khan, who joined al Qaeda after graduating from high school in Baltimore, Maryland, admitted to plotting to blow up gasoline tanks in the U.S.

The terrorist struck a plea bargain and is serving 19 years in return for his full cooperation with authorities after pleading guilty to five war crimes, including murder, attempted murder and spying.

However sentencing was delayed for four years, and if Khan fails to cooperate, he could receive up to 25 years, The Washington Post reported.

He is reportedly still at Guantanamo after being held at a secret location in Afghanistan for several years.

A section of the 500-page, Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed the horrifying details of a prisoner being rectally fed

WATERBOARDING

The CIA claimed at one interrogation site never to have waterboarded a suspect - only for the Senate Intelligence Committee to uncover a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water.

In 2013, the CIA could not explain the presence of a well-worn waterboard at another site.

Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, whom the U.S. believes was the architect of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times to the point where it became 'a series of near drownings', according to CIA internal documents.

Terrorist Abu Zubaydah was left 'completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth' after waterboarding.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND STRESS POSITIONS FOR DETAINEES WITH BROKEN FEET AND LEGS
The torture technique was used alongside other brutal methods of interrogation.

Detainees were often kept awake for 180 hours at a time often in stress positions, naked and with hands shackled.

One detainee had been chained to the wall in a standing position for 17 days. According to the CIA interrogator, some of the prisoners looked like 'dogs that had been kenneled'.

Another had his hands shackled to an overhead bar for 22 hours each days for more than two consecutive days, in order to 'break resistance'.

At one facility, known as the 'Cobalt' facility or the 'dungeon', the CIA made certain detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions.

One detainee with a prosthetic leg was shackled in the standing position for a bout of sleep deprivation until medical personnel assessed that he could not maintain the position.

Redha al-Najar, a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard and one of the first prisoners, was hooded and subjected to round-the-clock music or interrogations to prevent him from sleeping - though there was no indication he was resisting interrogators.

A month later, CIA questioners found al-Najjar a 'broken man' and on the verge of a 'complete breakdown'.

But the treatment got worse, with officials lowering his food ration, keeping him shackled in the cold and giving him a diaper instead of toilet access, the report said.

Graphic charting global attitudes to torture and details from former prisoners on stress positions, according to an Amnesty International survey published in May

TEMPERATURE TORTURE

One suspect died of hypothermia while naked and chained to a floor while others received 'ice baths'.

Gul Rahman a member of Hezb-e Islami - an Afghan terrorist organisation, was shackled to the wall of his cell, that required him to rest on the bare, concrete floor while wearing only a sweatshirt. A CIA officer had ordered his clothing be removed when he was judged to be uncooperative during an earlier interrogation.

The next day, officers found Rahman's dead body. An autopsy found that he likely died from hypothermia.

Rahman was captured in October 2002 and held at a secret location, known as the 'Salt Pit' in northern Kabul, Afghanistan, while temperatures were close to freezing.He died within a month.

Justice Department investigations into that and another death of a CIA detainee resulted in no charges.

White House advisor side steps question on torture

Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees captured in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks were transferred to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba

A 'feeding chair' on the U.S. military bae at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for the forced feeding for detainees on hunger strike

SEXUAL ABUSE THREATS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL GAMES

Detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while being slapped, punched and receiving 'wallings' - being throwing against walls. They were routinely forced to walk around naked.

The families of suspects were threatened - with some being told that their mothers would be sexually abused and their children harmed.

One suspect was blindfolded and had a cordless drill turned on near his head but he was not injured.

One operative engaged in 'Russian Roulette' with a detainee.

Others were locked in small boxes or kept in dark cells alone for weeks at a time with loud noise or music being played constantly.

The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed to custody alive – suggesting to one detainee that he would only leave in a coffin-shaped box.

One interrogator told another detainee that he would never go to court, 'because we can never let the world know what I have done to you'.

HOW THE CIA LIED ABOUT 26 WRONGFULLY HELD VICTIMS - BROUGHT IN ON BAD INFORMATION EXTRACTED FROM OTHER TORTURED SUSPECTS

Of the 119 known detainees that were in CIA custody during the life of the program, at least 26 were wrongfully held.

The agency said it detained 'fewer than 100 individuals', but a review of agency records indicated that it held 119. It also under-reported the number of detainees who were subjected to torture.

These included an 'intellectually challenged' who was used as leverage to get a family member to provide information and two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former CIA sources.

Two individuals' connection to al-Qaeda was based solely on information fabricated by a CIA detainee being brutally tortured.

CIA USED 'UNQUALIFED, DISHONEST AND IMMATURE' OFFICERS TO RUN DETENTION SITES

Due to 'poor record-keeping', a full account of how many specific CIA detainees were held and how they were specifically treated while in custody may never be known.

The CIA's management of the detainee program was 'inadequate and deeply flawed', according to findings.

A junior officer was placed in charge of one facility - where few formal records were kept on detainees and interrogations took place unsupervised.

Operatives were not adequately trained or vetted and the CIA also used officers with histories of violence or the abuse of others.

CIA PAID $80M TO PSYCHOLOGISTS WITH NO EXPERIENCE IN INTERROGATION OR AL QAEDA

The CIA contracted two outside psychologists for the interrogations - but neither had any experience in interrogation, counter-terrorism in particularly relating to al Qaeda or even language skills.

Two psychologists, who helped develop the CIA's enhanced interrogation procedures, founded a company in 2005 to help run the program.

Between 2005 and 2009, the company pulled about $81 million from the government.

The psychologists were previously involved in the Air Force's 'Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school' and neither had 'specialized knowledge of al-Qa'ida, a background in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise,' according to the Senate committee's report.

And before founding the company, one of the psychologists recommended the use of coercive interrogation in the case of Gul Rahman, days before Rahman was found dead of suspected hypothermia in 2002.

Investigators deliver damning indictment of CIA practices

NONE OF THE INFORMATION EXTRACTED FROM DETAINEES PROVED USEFUL IN THE TRACKING DOWN OF BIN LADEN

After reviewing 6 million agency documents, investigators found no case of unique and life-saving intelligence gleaned from the interrogation techniques used on the detainees. On the biggest anti-terrorism success of all, the 2011 killing of bin Laden, the investigators dismiss the idea that such techniques proved decisive.

HOW PRESIDENT BUSH AND THE WHITE HOUSE WERE KEPT IN THE DARK

'The C.I.A. repeatedly provided incomplete and inaccurate information' to the White House, the report concludes.

For four years, from 2002-2006, the CIA used interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and beatings to torture prisoners, but the president was not briefed on these methods until 2006, by which point three dozen detainees had fallen victim to them.

Emails, reports, memos and other documents studied by the Senate committee paint a picture of a White House that condoned the brutal questioning of suspects but was kept in the dark about many aspects of the program, including whether it really worked.

CIA records state that prior to the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah in 2002, the CIA did not brief Secretary of State Colin Powell or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on the techniques.

WHAT THE REPORT DOESN'T SAY

Commenting on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture, Clare Algar, Executive Director at international human rights NGO Reprieve said

'This is a good start, but it is far from the whole picture. The names of many victims of rendition and torture are absent – not least that of Khadija al Saadi, who was just 12 years old when she was 'rendered' along with her entire family to Gaddafi's Libya, in a joint CIA – MI6 operation. We are still a long way from acknowledging the horrors of the CIA's torture programme, and achieving real accountability.'

'I WILL CONTINUE TO USE MY AUTHORITY AS PRESIDENT TO MAKE SURE WE NEVER RESORT TO THOSE METHODS AGAIN': PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FULL STATEMENT ON CIA TORTURE REPORT

'Throughout our history, the United States of America has done more than any other nation to stand up for freedom, democracy, and the inherent dignity and human rights of people around the world. As Americans, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to our fellow citizens who serve to keep us safe, among them the dedicated men and women of our intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the horrific attacks of 9/11, these public servants have worked tirelessly to devastate core al Qaeda, deliver justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupt terrorist operations and thwart terrorist attacks. Solemn rows of stars on the Memorial Wall at the CIA honor those who have given their lives to protect ours. Our intelligence professionals are patriots, and we are safer because of their heroic service and sacrifices.

In the years after 9/11, with legitimate fears of further attacks and with the responsibility to prevent more catastrophic loss of life, the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country. As I have said before, our nation did many things right in those difficult years. At the same time, some of the actions that were taken were contrary to our values. That is why I unequivocally banned torture when I took office, because one of our most effective tools in fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe is staying true to our ideals at home and abroad.

Today's report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence details one element of our nation's response to 9/11 - the CIA's detention and interrogation program, which I formally ended on one of my first days in office. The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.

Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again.

As Commander in Chief, I have no greater responsibility than the safety and security of the American people. We will therefore continue to be relentless in our fight against al Qaeda, its affiliates and other violent extremists. We will rely on all elements of our national power, including the power and example of our founding ideals. That is why I have consistently supported the declassification of today's report. No nation is perfect. But one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better. Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in the past. Today is also a reminder that upholding the values we profess doesn't make us weaker, it makes us stronger and that the United States of America will remain the greatest force for freedom and human dignity that the world has ever known.'

COMPETING CLAIMS OF TORTURE EFFECTIVENESS

The CIA said U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was implicated in the so-called Dirty Bomb/Tall Buildings plotting. Terror leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammad tasked Padilla in 2002 with conducting an operation using natural gas to explode tall buildings in the United States, later known as the 'Tall Buildings Plot'.

Over the next few years, the CIA cited the capture of Padilla before he could pull off such a plot as a prime example of how 'key intelligence collected from (High Value Detainee) interrogations after applying interrogation techniques' had 'enabled CIA to disrupt terrorist plots' and 'capture additional terrorists'. It also said the information was otherwise unavailable and saved lives.

The Senate report says the CIA first received reporting on the threat posed by Padilla from a foreign government.

Eight days later, al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah gave the FBI information on the plot without names, four months before the CIA began using its harsh interrogation techniques on Zubaydah, and after the intelligence community had concluded that Padilla's plots were infeasible.

President George W. Bush with Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House to discuss the 9/11 attacks on September 12, 2001 in Washington. The former VP has staunchly defended the interrogation program

McCain calls CIA practices ineffective in war against terrorism

Eight terror plots which were NOT stopped by torture: Senate report rubbishes CIA claims

The CIA torture of al-Qaeda detainees provided eight 'primary' examples in which the agency claimed it obtained good intelligence from'enhanced interrogation techniques'.

However, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded, in its report published on Tuesday, that the information was available elsewhere and without resorting to brutal interrogations.

JOSE PADILLA: The CIA said using 'enhanced methods' on this U.S. citizen, who was implicated in the so-called Dirty Bomb/Tall Buildings plotting, saved lives. Senate report revealed they already had information on his plot when he was captured.

THE KARACHI PLOTS: CIA claimed in 2007 that a plan to conduct attacks against the U.S. consulate and other U.S. interests in Pakistan was disrupted after waterboarding suspects.

Senate report said the Karachi Plot was disrupted with the confiscation of explosives and the arrests of two terrorists with Pakistani authorities in 2003.

IYMAN FARIS: The CIA said the brutal interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led them to identify an Ohio truck driver, Iyman Faris, who later pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.

The Senate report said Faris, a Pakistani who moved to the U.S. in 1994, had already been on the FBI's radar screen even before the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed recognized photos of Faris and Majid Khan and said he had asked Faris to find equipment to loosen the nuts and bolts of suspension bridges in the United States. Faris told him he wasn't able to find the tools.

SAJID BADAT: The CIA said waterboarding helped it confirm that Sajid Badat, a British citizen, was the terrorist assigned to carry out the shoe-bombing attack against a commercial flight from Paris to Miami with Richard Reid in December 2001.

The Senate report said Badat was identified by British domestic investigative efforts, reports from foreign intelligence services and the U.S. military and efforts by international law enforcement. Badat told al Qaeda leaders he backed out of the plot.

The FBI said it became aware that Reid had a partner who backed out as early as January 2002, phone-calling cards used by Reid were linked to Badat and a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay in September 2003 identified Badat as a 'shoe bomber.' Badat was arrested in November and confirmed his role in the shoe bomb operation; he was sentenced to 13 years in prison but has been released in exchange for cooperating with authorities.

MOHAMMED, HAMBALI, and THE KARACHI 'CELL' (THE AL-GHURABA GROUP): The CIA said interrogations of two brothers led to the discovery in 2003 of a joint effort by al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah to fly hijacked planes into the tallest buildings on America's West Coast.

The Senate report said one of the brothers, in the custody of a foreign government, didn't identify a cell of operatives sent to Karachi for an operation. Instead, he identified a group of Malaysian and Indonesian students in Karachi who knew he was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah. CIA officers on site cited other intelligence indicating Mohammed planned to use Malaysians in a 'next wave of attacks' and linked the brother's answer to that information. When the second brother was given enhanced interrogation, he said Mohammed asked for as many pilots as possible. Months later, he told a debriefer he made it up to 'reduce pressure on himself' by giving an account consistent with what questioners wanted to hear.

UK URBAN TARGETS PLOT: The CIA said 'enhanced interrogations' helped capture Dhiren Barot, also known as Issa al-Hindi, in 2004 and thwart a series of terrorist attacks in Britain. In a document prepared for the president, it highlighted the particular effectiveness of waterboarding in leading to the disruption of the cell.

The Senate report said identification of Issa came from a British investigation.

HEATHROW AIRPORT PLOT: The CIA said after it captured Mohammed in 2003, it learned that Mohammed wanted to target the U.K. by hijacking multiple airplanes leaving from Heathrow, then turn them around and crash them into the airport. This would have killed thousands of people, the CIA said.The CIA said that it was Mohammed's arrest that 'most disrupted' the Heathrow plot.;

The Senate report said the Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf plot had not been fully hatched beyond initial planning stages when Mohammed and others were detained. The CIA was aware of the plot before any information was gleaned from the detainees.

HAMBALI: The CIA said enhanced interrogation techniques used on Mohammed led to the 'first' information about a money transfer that led to the capture of Hambali, also known as Riduan bin Isomuddin. Hambali was a member of a terror group in Southeast Asia called Jemaah Islamiyah, which had ties to al-Qaeda. Hambali was implicated in the October 2002 Bali bombings.

The Senate report said Hambali's capture in Thailand was a result of an intercepted email, a CIA source and Thai investigators.

Since coming to office in 2009, President Obama has sought to distance the U.S. from past deeds and outlawed harsh interrogation techniques which he has denounced as 'torture.'

'We tortured some folks,' Obama said in August, talking about the contents of the report.

The CIA's defenders insist the methods saved American lives by helping to uncover al-Qaeda's network, while critics say they ran contrary to U.S. values and hardened anti-American attitudes.

Former Bush vice president Dick Cheney staunchly defended the interrogation program, telling the New York Times it was 'absolutely, totally justified'.

He denied the CIA withheld any information, and emphasized the program had been vetted by the Justice Department.

'As far as I'm concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized,' he said of the CIA interrogators.

'When we had that program in place, we kept the country safe from any more mass casualty attacks, which was our objective,' he said.

Even though the redacted paper will absolved Bush and his White House of knowledge to the extent of which the CIA allowed terrorism suspects to be tortured in Europe and Asia in the wake of 9/11, Bush has openly opposed the release of the document.

'We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf,' he told CNN's Candy Crowley during an interview that aired on Sunday.

'These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base,' he continued, calling the CIA operatives and directors about to be chastised 'really good people'.

The investigation began in 2009 and took three years to complete. The full report is 6,200 pages and has 35,000 footnotes. After negotiations and security concerns, this was reduced to 500 pages with redactions.

The committee's chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, sparred for months with the administration over proposed redactions.

Feinstein said on Monday she wanted Americans reading the report to see that 'when we make mistakes we admit them... and we move on'.

In April, the Senate committee voted overwhelmingly to release a reportedly severely critical 500-page executive summary and 20 conclusions of the secret document.

White House welcomes release of Senate CIA torture report

According to the report, the two psychologists contracted by the CIA to design the enhanced interrogation techniques were paid more than $80 million, even though they were never themselves interrogators, according to ABC News.

'On the CIA's behalf, the contract psychologists developed theories of interrogation based on 'learned helplessness,' and developed the list of enhanced interrogation techniques that was approved for use against [al Qaeda operative] Abu Zubaydah and subsequent CIA detainees,' the report says.

By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program.

In 2009, ABC News identified the psychologists as former military officers Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

Today Mitchell told the media outlet: 'I think it's despicable that they cherry-picked all of that stuff.

'There were a lot of men and women in the CIA who put their lives on the line, and some of them died after 9/11 protecting the United States.

'And to suggest that they lied to the President, that they lied to the Senate, that they falsified intel reports so they could make a program look better than it was, is despicable.'

↧

Uncle Sam: I Want You To Die In A Foreign Desert

December 10, 2014, 10:07 am

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≪ Previous: CIA Torture Report: The View From England

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CIA Torture Report: The Three British Plots That The CIA Falsely Cited To Justify Torture
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html
"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/torture-report-articles-great-wonkblog.html

CIA Torture Report: 'Torture Is A Crime And Those Responsible Must Be Tried'
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/cia-torture-report-torture-is-crime-and.html
Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.
Conservatives "Must" See This
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

↧

Is Boisterous Math Teaching In The Early Years The Key To All Other Doors?

December 10, 2014, 11:23 am

≫ Next: 2/3rds Of Americans Want Legislated “Safe Haven” Status From Fed Pot Enforcement

≪ Previous: Uncle Sam: I Want You To Die In A Foreign Desert

There's a real lack of math learning in pre-K. In one study, in fact, just 58 seconds out of a full preschool day was spent on math activities.

Little children are big news this week, as the White House holds a summit on early childhood education on Wednesday. The president wants every 4-year-old to go to preschool, but the new Congress is unlikely to foot that bill.

Since last year, more than 30 states have expanded access to preschool. But there's still a lack of evidence about exactly what kinds of interventions are most effective in those crucial early years.

In New York City, an ambitious, $25 million study is collecting evidence on the best way to raise outcomes for kids in poverty. Their hunch is that it may begin with math.

"Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work."

Da Vinci Wikiquote Page: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

Time That Counts

"One! Two! Three! Four! Five!"

Gayle Conigliaro's preschool students are jumping as they count, to get the feeling of the numbers into their bodies — a concept called "embodied cognition."

P.S. 43 is located in Far Rockaway, Queens, just steps from the ocean. The area is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. But now it's been chosen as one of 69 high-poverty sites around New York City for a research study to test whether stronger math teaching can make all the difference for young kids. The study is funded by the Robin Hood Foundation, which is dedicated to ending poverty in New York. Pamela Morris, with research group MDRC, is the lead investigator.

"MDRC and the Robin Hood Foundation developed a partnership really with a broad goal," she says, "which is, they want to change the trajectories of low-income children, and to do so by focusing on preschool."

There's plenty of evidence on the long-term importance of preschool. But why math? Morris says a 2013 study by Greg Duncan, at the University of California, Irvine's School of Education, showed that math knowledge at the beginning of elementary school was the single most powerful predictor determining whether a student would graduate from high school and attend college. "We think math might be sort of a lever to improve outcomes for kids longer term," Morris says.

But there's a real lack of math learning in pre-K. In one study, in fact, just 58 seconds out of a five-hour preschool day was spent on math activities. Part of the problem, says University of Denver professor Doug Clements, is that "most teachers, of course, have been through our United States mathematics education, so they tend to think of math as just skills. They tend to think of it as a quiet activity."

Clements is the creator of Building Blocks, the math curriculum being tested in this new study. Building Blocks is designed to be just the opposite: engaging, exciting and loud. "We want kids running around the classroom and bumping into mathematics at every turn."

At P.S. 43, math games, toys and activities are woven through the entire day. At transition time, the teacher asks the students to line up and touches their heads with the "counting wand." At circle time, fittingly, the children talk about shapes. Just a few months into the school year, they observe correctly that a geometric shape must be a "closed figure" and that a square is "a special rectangle."

"How do you know it's a circle?" asks the teacher. "Because it goes round and round," says one girl with a bear barrette in her hair.

When Ms. Conigliaro asks, "How do you know?" she's asking the kids to think about their own thinking. That's a skill called metacognition. Explaining your reasoning out loud also develops verbal ability.

At choice time, besides the play dough and pattern blocks, there are computer games matched to Building Blocks that keep track of each student's progress. And two children play a game called Number Match ("Is three more than two? How do you know?") as a teacher watches. The teacher is keeping notes of each child's level of understanding. The idea of developmental paths, or "trajectories of understanding," is a core concept in Building Blocks.

"There are reliable levels of thinking through which kids pass on their way to achieving a certain understanding in mathematics," Clements says. For example, children go from simply chanting "onetwothreefourfive," to separating out each number word, to associating a number word with a given amount, to knowing that when you stop counting, the last number tells you "how many."

Also in the classroom is a coach from Bank Street College of Education, who comes every other week to help the teacher put Building Blocks into practice. This is important to the study design. The coaches ensure that the curriculum is being implemented. Pamela Morris says, "Often we ask teachers what curriculum they're delivering, and we find it's a book on their bookshelf collecting dust."

The study will follow up with these students and a control group all the way through the third grade. They'll be directly assessing their math and reading abilities and looking at their grades and test scores later on. Morris is curious whether working on math will enhance the children's ability to self-regulate, inhibit impulses, pay attention appropriately and hold important concepts in working memory. This is a group of skills known as executive functioning. For example, if the teacher says "clap and count to five," will you be able to stop clapping before you get to six?

But Conigliaro, a 24-year veteran teacher, is already convinced of the value of this curriculum.

"I just feel like the 'aha' moment. This is what teaching should be. Where's the literacy program?" she says. "We would just like it to be a research-based program so we can give our kids the best." She says the kids' progress amazes her every day.

↧

2/3rds Of Americans Want Legislated “Safe Haven” Status From Fed Pot Enforcement

December 10, 2014, 12:06 pm

≫ Next: Will Torture Defenders Have The "Guts" To Say It Should Be Restarted?

≪ Previous: Is Boisterous Math Teaching In The Early Years The Key To All Other Doors?

Alan: Do two thirds of Americans approve more widespread pot use? Or, have Americans despaired of the astronomical costs -- financial and social -- associated with America's puritanical standards of punishment? Notably, the United States keeps a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any nation in history, largely a result of absurdly rigid marijuana laws. Consider the following account of a 35 year old "doing life" for marijuana possession. Since it costs the state $30,000 annually to "warehouse" a human being, the bill for this fellow's life-long imprisonment will total $1, 350,000.00. In America there is always enough money for punishment and never enough money to do what must be done to keep more people out of prisons. Make no mistake. Gringos are nuts. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/05/fourth_marijuana_conviction_ge.html

Americans overwhelmingly want the federal government to keep its hands off of state-level marijuana regulations.

That's one of the conclusions of a survey on marijuana legalization recently commissioned by Third Way, a centrist think tank. Similar to other recent polling, the survey found Americans split on the question of full legalization, with 50 percent supporting versus 47 percent opposed. But the poll found that six in ten respondents said that states, and not the federal government, should decide whether to legalize marijuana. And 67 percent of Americans said Congress should go further and specifically carve out an exemption to federal marijuana laws for states that legalize, so long as they have a strong regulatory system in place.

"Waivers are a nice way for the federal government to acknowledge that they can't do everything they want, but that ensure that the goals of the law are not lost," according to John Hudak of the Brookings Institution. Education, the environment and health care policy are all fertile ground for waivers: "We have sort of waivers with these Affordable Care Act programs in red states, where they’re coming up with their own modified version of it. Where the state designs a system that fits its own needs, but is still generally consistent with federal law and regulations," Hudak says.

How this would work for marijuana is detailed in an exhaustive forthcoming study in the UCLA Law Review. In short, Congress could allow states to opt out of the Controlled Substances Act provisions relating to marijuana, provided they comply with regulatory guidelines issued by the Department of Justice.

This is already the de-facto federal policy toward Washington, Colorado, and other states that have recently legalized marijuana. But it can't become a formal policy without an act of Congress. Third Way heartily endorsesthis approach, as it represents a (wait for it) third way between the current federal policy of outright prohibition, and the full legalization route favored by marijuana reform activists.

Among other benefits, such an approach would allow banks to do business with marijuana businesses without fear of federal prosecution -- as things currently stand, many marijuana businesses operate on a cash-only basis. And paradoxically, formalizing the federal government's stance on state-level sales could actually strengthen the Department of Justice's hand when it comes to enforcement. "If you formalize this policy," Brookings' Hudak says, "it empowers the federal government to take a hands-on approach." It's easier for authorities to identify and penalize bad actors if they have crystal-clear guidelines regarding regulation.

This approach would fly directly in the face of the major international treaties dealing with how countries enforce their drug laws. But the State Department is already playing it fast and loose with how it interprets those treaties, and Hudak thinks that Congressional Republicans would be all to happy to flout international law when it comes to a relatively popular domestic issue.

On the other hand, current reports indicate that anti-pot hardliners in the House have succeeded in thwarting DC's plans to adopt a fully legal marijuana market following the Colorado model, by sneaking riders into a must-pass spending bill. Legalization proponents and DC residents areoutraged, but more to the point this is a stupid move politically. The Third Way survey shows that two thirds of Americans want Congress to facilitate local marijuana measures, not obstruct them. Legislators defy this imperative at their own peril.

Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.

↧

Will Torture Defenders Have The "Guts" To Say It Should Be Restarted?

December 10, 2014, 6:31 pm

≫ Next: Torture Is Not THE Issue. Believing A Muslim Informant's Lies Was Utterly Catastrophic

≪ Previous: 2/3rds Of Americans Want Legislated “Safe Haven” Status From Fed Pot Enforcement

Alan: Torture defenders must now advocate felony or not have the courage of their convictions.

Two Key Questions For Torture Defenders

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/12/10/two-key-questions-for-the-cia-torture-programs-defenders/

Will Torture Defenders Have The "Guts" To Say It Should Be Restarted?

With the exception of John McCain, you’d have a hard time finding any Republican or conservative who didn’t object to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report that was released yesterday. Some have said simply that it shouldn’t have been made public, lest it lead to attacks against American personnel spread around the world (which hasn’t happened, you might have noticed). Some have focused on questions like whether the CIA misled other government agencies, which the CIA denies. But with a few exceptions here and there, most have not only taken the CIA’s side on these kinds of questions, but have also defended the torture itself.

This is the most important thing to understand about the Republican and conservative response to this report’s release, and it raises a vital question for the future of U.S. policy. It’s a question pundits should answer, but much more importantly, it’s a question policymakers — particularly those who would like to be president — must address.

The question is this: If you think, as most conservatives are arguing, that the CIA’s torture program was legal, morally defensible, and effective, do you also think it should be reinstated?

The program was abandoned in the final years of the Bush administration. But if it was so terrific, are conservatives saying we should bring it back? And if not, why not?

I won’t bother refuting for the umpteenth time their insistence that the torture techniques the CIA used were not in fact “torture,” other than to say that when conservatives can supply a definition of torture which would notinclude centuries-old methods like waterboarding and stress positions, I’ll be happy to listen. As of yet they haven’t done so, and the most they ever attempt is to simply repeat that what we did isn’t torture, because it isn’t. That dispute isn’t actually relevant to this question: whether you call it by the obscene euphemism “enhanced interrogation,” or you call it torture, or you call it happy rainbow hugging, if you think it was a great success then why wouldn’t you want to bring it back?

Some of the torture apologists might say, “Well, in the immediate days after September 11, things were much more urgent.” But al-Qaida still exists, and conservatives are always eager to say that the next threat that emerges is more horrific than the last; for instance, Lindsey Graham saidthat we had to stop ISIS “before we all get killed back here at home” (for the record, Graham has said the torture techniques the CIA used were “counterproductive”). If conservatives would now argue that the dangers posed by terrorism are actually quite manageable and do not constitute an existential threat, and therefore we can tone down our response to those dangers, that would be evidence of a remarkable return to reason. But that is most definitely not what they argue. They argue that the threat is as grave as ever. If that’s true, then shouldn’t we start torturing prisoners again?

Most of the people contemplating runs for president have not yet spoken about the report and their future intentions on the use of torture. I was not able to find any comments since yesterday from Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley, Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, or Scott Walker. But it’s been less than a full day — they may have something to say soon. Ted Cruz issued a statement criticizing the report’s release with a combination of typical Cruzian anti-Obama bombast and a few phrases suggesting he may be opposed to the program itself (he referred to tactics “which have since rightly been outlawed”).

One whose opinion is clear is Marco Rubio, who sits on the Intelligence Committee. He criticized the release of the report and signed on to the Republican minority’s dissent. Here is that document’s conclusion:

The CIA called the detention program a “crucial pillar of US counterterrorism efforts, aiding intelligence and law enforcement operations to capture additional terrorists, helping to thwart terrorist plots, and advancing our analysis of the al-Qa’ida target.” We agree. We have no doubt that the CIA’s detention program saved lives and played a vital role in weakening al-Qa’ida while the Program was in operation. When asked about the value of detainee information and whether he missed the intelligence from it, one senior CIA operator told members, “I miss it every day.” We understand why.

To repeat, Marco Rubio signed on to this conclusion, which could hardly be more emphatic in its support of the torture program. It would be positively bizarre for anyone to express that kind of enthusiasm for the program yet not believe it should be restarted. At the very least, Rubio ought to be asked if that is what he believes, and if not, why not.

Rand Paul is the one potential Republican candidate who came outstrongly against torture in his comments about the report:

“It’s important that people take a stand and representatives take a stand on whether they believe torture should be allowed. I think we should not have torture,” Paul said. “Transparency is mostly good for government. The only thing I would question is whether or not the actual details, the gruesomeness of the details, will be beneficial or inflammatory.”

It isn’t just the candidates, of course; you can search the most aggressive defenses of the torture program (for instance, see here or here) in vain for the point where the defender says, “And that’s why we need to start doing this again.” If the program was so spectacularly successful and so morally unproblematic, why can’t they bring themselves to advocate for its return?

For a pundit or a former official, that question is a matter of intellectual consistency. For a potential future president, it’s a matter of our nation’s future. If a candidate defends the program but says he won’t renew it, we might criticize him for not having the courage of his convictions, but that’s a relatively minor sin. Nevertheless, we need to know.

509COMMENTS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/12/10/will-the-torture-programs-defenders-have-the-guts-to-say-it-should-be-restarted/

↧

Torture Is Not THE Issue. Believing A Muslim Informant's Lies Was Utterly Catastrophic

December 10, 2014, 7:31 pm

≫ Next: A Great Speech: McCain Makes Passionate Defense For Torture Report's Release

≪ Previous: Will Torture Defenders Have The "Guts" To Say It Should Be Restarted?

Alan: Uncle Sam's willingness to give credence to friends' lies is immeasurably more devastating than any tortured person's confession - whether true or false. The United States was fooled into the stupidest war since Emperor Augustus lost his legions in Gaul by a rinky-dink Iraqi "on the make." The following account of a mediocre man's suckering the United States into a colosally ill-advised and totally unjust war should be central to middle school and high school civics' curricula. That no more than one American in a thousand is aware of this trickery is the key measure of American intelligence, not the distraction (however important it may be) of Bush-Cheney's passion for torturing human beings.

"The Iraqi Liar Who Started The War: Is It Time To Torture All Informants?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-iraqi-liar-who-started-war-torture.html

"Israeli War Historian, Martin van Creveld's Startling Commentary On The Iraq War"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/israeli-war-historian-martin-van.html

Excerpt: "For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men. If convicted, they’ll have plenty of time to mull over their sins." Israeli war historian Martin van Creveld is the only non-U.S. author whose writings are obligatory reading by America's Officer Corps.

"Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War" by Martin van Creveld

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/costly-withdrawal-is-price-to-be-paid.html

***

"Israeli War Historian Martin van Creveld's Withering Criticism Of G.W. Bush - And More"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/israeli-war-historian-martin-van.html

George Washington Recommended Execution For American Soldiers Guilty Of Torture
http://www.infowars.com/why-conservatives-should-oppose-torture/

↧

A Great Speech: McCain Makes Passionate Defense For Torture Report's Release

December 10, 2014, 7:54 pm

≫ Next: Bush's Torture Team: Legal Counselor John Yoo Justifies Crushing Children's Testicles

≪ Previous: Torture Is Not THE Issue. Believing A Muslim Informant's Lies Was Utterly Catastrophic

Senator John McCain
Torture victim
After five and a half years at the "Hanoi Hilton," John McCain would never again raise his hands above his shoulders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

"Full Text Of John McCain's Anti-Torture Address
Delivered From The Senate Floor"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/full-text-of-john-mccains-anti-torture.html

McCain makes passionate defense for torture report's release

By Alexandra Jaffe, CNN

December 10, 2014

Video Excerpt of McCain's Speech

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/mccain-lauds-release-terror-report/index.html

(CNN) -- Republican Sen. John McCain broke with members of his party Tuesday, lauding the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture and decrying the use of torture as having "stained our national honor" and doing "much harm and little practical good."

McCain, a survivor of torture himself from his naval service during the Vietnam War, said from the Senate floor that the techniques outlined in the report "not only failed their purpose -- to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies -- but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."

Gonzales: Torture report may be 'biased'

McCain: Torture 'diminishes us morally'

'We don't advocate keeping secrets'

Many Republicans have argued against releasing the report, especially as the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria grows, and U.S. intelligence officials have warned that its release could cause backlash from nations and groups hostile towards the nation. American embassies in the Middle East have been put on heightened security alert for its release.

McCain said that while "the truth is a hard pill to swallow ... the American people are entitled to it." And he acknowledged that violence against the U.S. from the "Muslim world" is "possible ... perhaps likely" but argued that America's enemies "hardly need an excuse" to attack the nation, so the good done by the release of the report should trump any security concerns.

"This report strengthens self-government and, ultimately, I believe, America's security and stature in the world," he said.

During his comments, McCain referenced his own experience with torture and argued that it "produces more misleading information than actionable intelligence" and that "we can and we will" win the war on terrorism without such techniques.

But he argued that the U.S. shouldn't resort to such tactics not just because they're ineffective and potentially dangerous but because they undermine the nation's values and beliefs.

"I have often said, and will always maintain, that this question isn't about our enemies; it's about us. It's about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It's about how we represent ourselves to the world," he said.

McCain added, "When we fight to defend our securitiy we fight also for an idea ... that all men are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights."

"Our enemies act without conscience. We must not," he added.

↧

Bush's Torture Team: Legal Counselor John Yoo Justifies Crushing Children's Testicles

December 10, 2014, 8:20 pm

≫ Next: Tom Toles Cartoon: Uncle Sam's Death Wish

≪ Previous: A Great Speech: McCain Makes Passionate Defense For Torture Report's Release

George W. Bush's Legal Counselor, John Yoo (bottom row center) said the president was legally justified if he deemed it necessary to crush an innocent child's testicles.

Alan: It does no good to accuse people of being "evil."

However, if Bush-Cheney's terror team (pictured above) did not conspire to betray all of America's "better angels," then "crime" and "judgment" have no meaning.

Listen to John Yoo's defense of crushing children's testicles:

John Yoo On Torture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO2p0KHyzpw

John Yoo's Despicable Return: We Must Stop Giving War Criminals A Platform

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/16/john_yoos_despicable_return_we_must_stop_giving_war_criminals_a_platform/

John Yoo

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

Here's some polite conversation...

Whispering sweet nothings...

Alan: None of the above hints at the moral monstrosity of overseas "Black Sites" where the Bush administration sent prisoners for the sole purpose of being tortured.

"Black Sites" were NO-HOLDS-BARRED torture centers where the only restriction was to keep torture-subjects "this side of death."

When torture subjects die, the sociopaths hired to inflict pain on them can neither discover nor refine techniques of pain-intensification which ratchet agony to ever higher levels while just barely keeping victims alive.

To be clear, your tax dollars and mine pay for this.

Black Sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site

America the Beautiful

America, the Exceptional.

America, on whom God's favor rests.

"Why Conservatives Should Oppose Torture"

http://www.infowars.com/why-conservatives-should-oppose-torture/

"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)

Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.

Conservatives "Must" See This

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

The Psychiatric Diagnosis Of American Conservatives: Folie à Plusieurs
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-psychiatric-diagnosis-of-american.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-southerner-explains-tea-party.html

"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/watching-only-fox-news-makes-you-less.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

↧

Tom Toles Cartoon: Uncle Sam's Death Wish

December 11, 2014, 5:48 am

≫ Next: George Will's Tortured Logic: The Epitomization Of Speciousness

≪ Previous: Bush's Torture Team: Legal Counselor John Yoo Justifies Crushing Children's Testicles

"Self-Terrorization Is The National Pastime"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/tom-toles-cartoon-self-terrorization-is.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/self-terrorization-cornerstone-of.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/uncle-sams-advice-for-superpatriots.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/self-terrorization-national-pastime.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-pastime-self-terrorization.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/faulty-risk-assessment-and-epidemic.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/04/americas-national-pastime-is-self.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jenny-mccarthy-americas-poster-girl-for.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/self-terrorization-cornerstone-of.html

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-gop-campaign-message-be-afraid.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacy
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"Just How Far Out Is The Republican Fringe?" Norm Ornstein (And Is It The Fringe?)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/just-how-far-out-is-republican-fringe.html

"It's Even Worse Than It Looks"
Conservaive Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/conservative-think-tanker-says.html

"When Extremism Goes Mainstream"
Conservative Norm Ornstein
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/just-how-far-out-is-republican-fringe.html

"The Real Death Panels," Conservative Norm Ornstein
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-real-death-panels-conservative.html

"Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-for-revolution-study-in.html

The Psychiatric Diagnosis Of American Conservatives: Folie à Plusieurs
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-psychiatric-diagnosis-of-american.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-southerner-explains-tea-party.html

"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/watching-only-fox-news-makes-you-less.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

↧

George Will's Tortured Logic: The Epitomization Of Speciousness

December 11, 2014, 6:24 am

≫ Next: Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide

≪ Previous: Tom Toles Cartoon: Uncle Sam's Death Wish

George Will Documents Reagan's Collusion With Saddam's Use Of Chemical Weapons
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/george-will-documents-ronald-reagans.html

George Will: "The Torture Of Solitary Confinement"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/george-will-talks-good-sense-on-torture.html

Eric Garner, Criminalized To Death

George Will

By history’s frequently brutal dialectic, the good that we call progress often comes spasmodically, in lurches propelled by tragedies caused by callousness, folly or ignorance. With a New York grand jury’s as yet inexplicable and probably inexcusable refusal to find criminal culpability in Eric Garner’s death on a Staten Island sidewalk, the nation might have experienced sufficient affronts to its sense of decency. It might at long last be ready to stare into the abyss of its criminal justice system.

It will stare back, balefully. Furthermore, the radiating ripples from the nation’s overdue reconsideration of present practices may reach beyond matters of crime and punishment, to basic truths about governance.

Overcriminalization has become a national plague. And when more and more behaviors are criminalized, there are more and more occasions for police, who embody the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and who fully participate in humanity’s flaws, to make mistakes.Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties attorney, titled his 2009 book “Three Felonies a Day” to indicate how easily we can fall afoul of the United States’ metastasizing body of criminal laws. Professor Douglas Husak of Rutgers University says that approximately 70 percent of American adults have, usually unwittingly, committed a crime for which they could be imprisoned. In his 2008 book, “Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law,” Husak says that more than half of the 3,000 federal crimes — itself a dismaying number — are found not in the Federal Criminal Code but in numerous other statutes. And, by one estimate, at least 300,000 federal regulations can be enforced by agencies wielding criminal punishments. Citing Husak, professor Stephen L. Carter of the Yale Law School, like a hammer driving a nail head flush to a board, forcefully underscores the moral of this story: Garner died at the dangerous intersection of something wise, known as “broken windows” policing, and something worse than foolish: decades of overcriminalization. The policing applies the wisdom that where signs of disorder, such as broken windows, proliferate and persist, a general diminution of restraint and good comportment takes hold. So, because minor infractions are, cumulatively, not minor, police should not be lackadaisical about offenses such as jumping over subway turnstiles.

Society needs laws; therefore it needs law enforcement. But “overcriminalization matters” because “making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it.” The job of the police “is to carry out the legislative will.” But today’s political system takes “bizarre delight in creating new crimes” for enforcement. And “every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence.”

Alan: Although Mr. Will has chosen liberal New York State as his "paradigm" for over-criminalization, he conveniently overlooks the core question: "Which party is more likely to criminalize human behavior? The Democratic Party? Or The Republican Party?" Such ideological deviousness is unbecoming.

Carter continues: “It’s unlikely that the New York Legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants.”

Garner lived in part by illegally selling single cigarettes untaxed by New York jurisdictions. He lived in a progressive state and city that, being ravenous for revenue and determined to save smokers from themselves, have raised to $5.85 the combined taxes on a pack of cigarettes. To the surprise of no sentient being, this has created a black market in cigarettesthat are bought in states that tax them much less. Garner died in a state that has a Cigarette Strike Force.

He lived and died in a country with about 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. In 2012, one of every 108 adults was behind bars, many in federal prisons containing about 40 percent more inmates than they were designed to hold.

Most of today’s 2.2 million prisoners will be coming back to their neighborhoods, and few of them will have been improved by the experience of incarceration. This will be true even if they did not experience the often deranging use of prolonged solitary confinement, which violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” and is, to put things plainly, torture.

Alan: Mr. Will would have done society -- and his own Party -- greater good if he had taken this reportorial opportunity to connect the dots between his bedrock conviction that "solitary confinement is torture" and the monstrosity perpetrated by (un)common criminals Bush and Cheney.

The CIA's First Detainee Spent 266 Days In A Box The Size Of A Coffin
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-cias-first-detainee-spent-266-days.html

George Will: "The Torture Of Solitary Confinement"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/george-will-talks-good-sense-on-torture.html

Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/conservative-psychopathology-clinicians.html

The scandal of mass incarceration is partly produced by the frivolity of the political class, which uses the multiplication of criminal offenses as a form of moral exhibitionism. This, like Eric Garner’s death, is a pebble in the mountain of evidence that American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive

Read more on this issue:

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The case for reforming the criminal justice system

↧

Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide

December 11, 2014, 6:59 am

≫ Next: Red Meat Government: Costly Attempts To Save Money Lose Money

≪ Previous: George Will's Tortured Logic: The Epitomization Of Speciousness

Twisted

The Psychiatric Diagnosis Of American Conservatives: Folie à Plusieurs
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-psychiatric-diagnosis-of-american.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-southerner-explains-tea-party.html

"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/watching-only-fox-news-makes-you-less.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

"Self-Terrorization Is The National Pastime"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/tom-toles-cartoon-self-terrorization-is.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/self-terrorization-cornerstone-of.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/uncle-sams-advice-for-superpatriots.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/self-terrorization-national-pastime.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-pastime-self-terrorization.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/faulty-risk-assessment-and-epidemic.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/04/americas-national-pastime-is-self.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jenny-mccarthy-americas-poster-girl-for.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/self-terrorization-cornerstone-of.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-gop-campaign-message-be-afraid.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacy
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"Just How Far Out Is The Republican Fringe?" Norm Ornstein (And Is It The Fringe?)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/just-how-far-out-is-republican-fringe.html

"It's Even Worse Than It Looks"
Conservaive Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/conservative-think-tanker-says.html

"When Extremism Goes Mainstream"
Conservative Norm Ornstein
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/just-how-far-out-is-republican-fringe.html

"The Real Death Panels," Conservative Norm Ornstein
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-real-death-panels-conservative.html

"Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-for-revolution-study-in.html

"Why Conservatives Should Oppose Torture"

http://www.infowars.com/why-conservatives-should-oppose-torture/

"Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-the-three-british-plots-that-the-cia-falsely-cited-to-justify-torture-9914178.html

"Important Takeaways From The CIA's Interrogation Report"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/important-takeaways-from-cia.html

"Torture Report Articles (Great Wonkblog Compendium)

Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq.

Conservatives "Must" See This

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/cheneys-lucid-1996-rationale-for-not.html

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs-toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html

↧

Red Meat Government: Costly Attempts To Save Money Lose Money

December 11, 2014, 7:17 am

≫ Next: Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015. The "Cromnibus" Adumbrates The New Congress

≪ Previous: Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide

Throw 'em a gob of red meat.

Tasty enough to rationalize suicide.

Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris: On Taxes

25 December, 1783

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law. All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

***

Budget deal throws away free money by protecting tax cheats

If they end up voting for it, lawmakers in both parties will have put into law a proposal to fund most of the government through September that reduces the budget for the Internal Revenue Service by $346 million, or about 3 percent. This is deeply counterproductive.

When the IRS doesn't have enough money to conduct audits of tax returns, it's easier for cheaters to get away without paying their fair share. Extra money spent on enforcement is well worth it from the perspective of the country's bottom line. By one estimate, every dollar cut from the IRS budget increases the deficit by roughly $7. It's free money. Congress is throwing it away, choosing instead to increase the budget deficit and national debt at the expense of people who are playing by the rules.

The bill also attempts to address the controversy over the way the agency has handled the tax status of liberal and conservative political groups by forbidding the IRS from targeting any group for scrutiny based on ideology. If that provision passes, it is not clear how exactly the agency is supposed to enforce the law granting tax-exempt status to certain political organizations but not to others -- which is the ambiguity that got the agency in hot water in the first place.

But however you feel about the tax status for political groups, that controversy has nothing to do with the IRS budget, which Congress has been steadily reducing since way back in 2010.

↧

Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015. The "Cromnibus" Adumbrates The New Congress

December 11, 2014, 7:26 am

≫ Next: "Girl In A Country Song." The Boys Ain't Happy

≪ Previous: Red Meat Government: Costly Attempts To Save Money Lose Money

Capitalism 2.0

Forget what happened last time the hot shots played loose with derivatives?

"Inside Job"

Refresher Course

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/inside-job-director-describes-us-as.html

***

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-bigger.html

"Taibbi: The $9 Billion Whistle Blower At JPMorgan-Chase. Financial Thuggery At The Top"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/taibbi-9-billion-whistle-blower-at.html

Liberals are revolting over a revision of Dodd-Frank. The financial reform law forbid banks from trading derivatives with funds protected by federal deposit insurance. The Cromnibus would eliminate that ban for what supporters say are the safer, less complex derivatives, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other liberals don't buy that argument. Lori Montgomery and Sean Sullivan in The Washington Post.

Primary source: The bill. We skimmed it so you don't have to. Ed O'Keefe in The Washington Post.

Another provision allows employers to reduce pensions for current retirees. The change applies to pensions in industries such as trucking and construction where a group of firms share a single pension fund for their employees, which cover about 10 million workers. The AARP is upset, but many union leaders feel that something has to be done or else these funds will go under. Michael Fletcher in The Washington Post.

Less money will be dedicated to Pell grants. Instead, the money will be used to ensure that the contractors who service student loans for the Department of Education can be paid on time -- but the Pell program could be confronting a shortfall of its own in a few years. This provision was advanced by Democrats. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel in The Washington Post.

And school lunches will be allowed to include fewer whole grains and more salt. The changes to the school-lunch program were seen as a rebuke to First Lady Michelle Obama, who has advocated for healthier meals in schools. Republicans have called the standards an overreach, and many kids say they won't eat the lunches their schools now serve. Mary Clare Jalonick for the Associated Press.

On the subject of nutrition, the potato lobby scored a victory. White potatoes, which are notoriously unhealthy for such an innocuous vegetable, have not been included in the nutritional program for Women, Infants and Children. Now they will be (at least for a while -- it appears that the administration will be given the authority to overrule this decision after a review). Fredreka Schouten in USA Today.

The bill looks likely to pass, despite defections in both parties. Democrats are upset about several of the riders just mentioned, while Republicans are upset that the bill does nothing to undermine Obamacare or the president's reprieve from deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants. Mike Lillis and Rebecca Shabad in The Hill.

This kind of legislation could become typical in the new Congress. There are other major deadlines approaching next year, and lawmakers will be able to insist on all kinds of riders as a part of each compromise. "If liberal Democrats vote for this package it shows that conservatives can use must-pass legislation to repeal the regulatory state," one G.O.P. aide said. Peter Schroeder in The Hill.

The campaign-finance provision would "fundamentally alter" how candidates get their money. A tenfold increase in the amount that wealthy donors can give to the political parties would shift the focus of fundraising from individual candidates and outside groups to the central party apparatus. No one seems to be entirely sure who drafted the language. Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger in The Washington Post.

BERNSTEIN: Returning money to the parties is actually a useful reform. Giving the parties more control would increase transparency and accountability, since outside groups often don't have to disclose their donors.Bloomberg.

↧

"Girl In A Country Song." The Boys Ain't Happy

December 11, 2014, 7:30 am

≫ Next: A Healthcare View That Reveals The Problem. Exceptions Do Not Trump Rules

≪ Previous: Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015. The "Cromnibus" Adumbrates The New Congress

‘Girl in a Country Song’ hits No. 1 by mocking bro country. The bros aren’t laughing.

“Girl in a Country Song,” the breakout first single from duo Maddie & Tae, just hit No. 1 on the Mediabase and Billboard country airplay charts this week. It’s cause for a lot of folks to cheer: For Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye, enjoying a triumphant debut before either turns 20. For Big Machine president Scott Borchetta, who signed the unknown pair this year to his new imprint Dot Records. And for anyone sick of “bro country,” the massively dominant sub-genre that celebrates endless streams of ice cold beer, those rambling dirt roads to the old swimming hole and hot girls with long, tan legs dangling off of the back of truck tailgates.

“Girl in a Country Song” brilliantly mocks this bro country, in the voice of a woman who is tired of being half-clothed and always riding shotgun — seems that country girls never get to drive. “Well I wish I had some shoes on my two bare feet,” the song opens. “And it’s getting kinda cold in these painted on, cut-off jeans/I hate the way this bikini top chafes/Do I really have to wear it all day?”

The chorus sums up her complaint: “Being the girl in a country song/How in the world did it go so wrong?. . .We used to get a little respect/Now we’re lucky if we even get/To climb in your truck, keep our mouth shut and ride along/And be the girl in a country song.”

As we said before: Gauntlet thrown down. When it first hit this summer, the song was widely praised as ushering a new era. Now, its No. 1 status makes history: Maddie & Tae are the first female duo in eight years to top the charts with a debut single. Dye admitted that initially, they were nervous about playing the song for Borchetta, since it called out so many top artists — some that he represents. So they were relieved when the label head not only loved it, but thought it was hilarious. He signed them to a record deal almost immediately.

But despite the critical acclaim, one group is definitely not laughing about the success of “Girl in a Country Song”: The alpha bros themselves.

It makes sense that the male artists referenced in “Girl in a Country Song” (Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Tyler Farr, Thomas Rhett, Cole Swindell, Florida Georgia Line, etc.) might not be thrilled to be the subject of mockery. But Maddie & Tae made it clear that it was all in good fun — in fact, the bro-country songs they specifically quote (“Boys Round Here,” “My Kinda Party,” “Redneck Crazy”) are from artists they enjoy. “We respect all the guys we’re poking fun at, we’re just giving the woman a voice in these songs,” Dye said.

But the guys in question have been pretty humorless. When the song dropped, the bros were tellingly silent amid the waves of hype, if not downright annoyed. Asked about the song by the Chicago Tribune, Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley claimed he didn’t know what the interviewer was talking about. When asked further, he got snippy. “All I’m gonna say about that is, I don’t know one girl who doesn’t want to be a girl in a country song,” Kelley said. “That’s all I’m gonna say to you. That’s it.”

“We love them and their music, but you see, he’s a dude,” Dye responded when asked about his comments. “He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a woman, or to be the girl in these songs.”

The reaction was in marked contrast to praise from bro-country artists for Nashville artist Maggie Rose, whose “Girl in Your Truck Song,” released around the same time, rhapsodized about getting the chance to claim that passenger seat. She got positive tweets from Aldean, Bryan and Swindell. Maybe the bros really do believe that all women would love to ride shotgun for eternity.

The only guy who publicly praised “Girl in a Country Song” was Florida Georgia Line collaborator Chase Rice, though he also managed to completely miss the point: “I love this new @MaddieandTae song,” he tweeted. “Somethin sexy bout a little [expletive] talkin. Keep it up girls.”

(When the song went No. 1, Brad Paisleyand Dierks Bentley gamely tweeted congratulations — though they’re not the target bros that the song goes after.)

Then again, this was the year that country bros began to chafe against the bro-country label — which loosely covers not just the world of beer-truck-girl lyricists but also the artists infusing pop and hip-hop sounds into their music:

– Luke Bryan told ABC News the term was “aggravating and derogatory”: “Yeah, do I sing about a truck and a beer on one song, but then do I sing about a completely different subject matter. I mean, listen to the whole album and don’t judge me on one song.”

– Tyler Farr: “A lot of my friends sing the new stuff, what they call bro-country. I mean, whatever. I have no clue what it is and whoever invented that term, I’d like to smack him upside the head.”

– Thomas Rhett: “I just have never actually used the term ‘bro country.’ I don’t get it, and I don’t like the term ‘hick hop’ either. The things that we sing about are the things that everybody in this crowd are doing every single night. So I don’t understand why it’s considered bro country.”

– Blake Shelton, mocking the label on Twitter: “When will people understand that country music constantly changes.. Always has and always will. It’s song about real people. . .”

– Sam Hunt: “I don’t know if the phrase originally was meant to be derogatory but it’s turned into that. It’s sort of a snobby thing to say.”

– Cole Swindell: “You kind of have to laugh it off but I don’t think anyone loves it.”

So, yeah, surprisingly bitter. Interesting, especially considering that those type of songs have taken over the radio, country charts and made them lots of money. Just a cursory look at the country charts and it’s clear that bro-country is still reigning over everyone else.But this could have an upside: Maybe if the bros are really offended by people assuming they only have one, narrow view to offer, maybe they’ll realize that was one motivation behind “Girl in a Country Song” in the first place.

Who’s that bro? A complete guide to the dudes of country music

Emily Yahr covers pop culture and entertainment for the Washington Post.

↧

A Healthcare View That Reveals The Problem. Exceptions Do Not Trump Rules

December 11, 2014, 7:40 am

≫ Next: Is The United States Still "A Nation Of Law?" Bad Cops And Bad Politicos Walk

≪ Previous: "Girl In A Country Song." The Boys Ain't Happy

Alan: Whether the United States ends up with an improved version of Obamacare" -- or some other type of truly Universal Healthcare -- any future system will be based on "the greatest good for the greatest number" and that universal system will be in light of any-Social-Contract-worthy-of-the-name better than pay-to-play individualism. Will it be perfect. No. Nothing ever is. The name of the game is "Progress, Not Perfection."

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

More Merton Quotes

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html

***

Don't homogenize health care. Insurers, hospitals and policymakers are trying to force doctors to adopt best practices in treating patients to save money and lives. The problem is that we don't always know what is best, or what might be best for a particular patient. Sandeep Jauhar in The New York Times

↧

Is The United States Still "A Nation Of Law?" Bad Cops And Bad Politicos Walk

December 11, 2014, 7:49 am

≫ Next: CIA Director Michael Hayden Insists On Due Process.... For Himself!

≪ Previous: A Healthcare View That Reveals The Problem. Exceptions Do Not Trump Rules

Does the United States remain "a nation of laws"? Whether it's torture, police homicides or massive bank fraud, some crimes that cry out for justice receive none depending on who the perpetrator happens to be.

MSNBC

***

CIA Torture Report: Best Pax Posts

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/cia-torture-report-best-pax-posts.html

↧

CIA report: 'Torture is a crime and those responsible must be brought to justice'

CIA torture report reveals tactics WORSE than agency let on: Al Qaeda suspects were kept awake in 'stress positions' for 180 hours, waterboarded until vomiting and unconscious and one died of hypothermia chained naked to a floor

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"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Righthttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/bad-black-people-why-bill-oreilly-is.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendiumhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

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"Israeli War Historian Martin van Creveld's Withering Criticism Of G.W. Bush - And More"

Senator John McCainTorture victimAfter five and a half years at the "Hanoi Hilton," John McCain would never again raise his hands above his shoulders.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

"Full Text Of John McCain's Anti-Torture Address Delivered From The Senate Floor"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/full-text-of-john-mccains-anti-torture.html

McCain makes passionate defense for torture report's release

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantichttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Diehttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacyhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mannhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantichttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Diehttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

The CIA's First Detainee Spent 266 Days In A Box The Size Of A Coffinhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-cias-first-detainee-spent-266-days.html

George Will: "The Torture Of Solitary Confinement"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/george-will-talks-good-sense-on-torture.htmlCheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reportshttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantichttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacyhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mannhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendiumhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html***

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendiumhttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-bigger.html

"Taibbi: The $9 Billion Whistle Blower At JPMorgan-Chase. Financial Thuggery At The Top"

‘Girl in a Country Song’ hits No. 1 by mocking bro country. The bros aren’t laughing.

"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/bad-black-people-why-bill-oreilly-is.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

Senator John McCain
Torture victim
After five and a half years at the "Hanoi Hilton," John McCain would never again raise his hands above his shoulders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

"Full Text Of John McCain's Anti-Torture Address
Delivered From The Senate Floor"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/full-text-of-john-mccains-anti-torture.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacy
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bill-maher-zombie-life-cycle-of.html

The CIA's First Detainee Spent 266 Days In A Box The Size Of A Coffin
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-cias-first-detainee-spent-266-days.html

George Will: "The Torture Of Solitary Confinement"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/george-will-talks-good-sense-on-torture.html

Cheney Calls For International Ban On Torture Reports
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/dick-cheney-textbook-definition-of.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Are Republicans Insane?"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/are-republicans-insane.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/bobby-jindal-criticizes-party-that.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacy
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/conservative-norm-ornstein-media-ignore.html

"Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/lets-just-say-it-republicans-are.html

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

***

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-bigger.html