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Did Cheney torture to fabricate evidence?
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On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 12:28 am Post subject: Did Cheney torture to fabricate evidence?

Via Andrew Sullivan...

Quote:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true. Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time.

However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein � despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side," said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. "That was something they were tasked to look at."

link

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 8:55 am Post subject:

Was there any good reason to expect that there were Iraq Al Qaada ties? Why that is almost as absurd as the notion that there are ties between Iran and Al Qaeda.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 9:05 am Post subject:

Quote:

There was very good reason to believe there were Iraq Al Qaeda ties. In fact there may have very well been.

Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that that is true, torturing to get evidence for use in a propaganda blitz is a clear departure from the "ticking time-bomb" rationale that Cheney and Company have previously used to justify their techniques.

It would be the equivalent of a city police-force torturing a suspect, not in order to prevent some possible future crime, but rather to get evidence of criminal activity to present in their next request for a budget increase.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 9:09 am Post subject:

Joo: Sorry, but you seem to have edited your post while I was composing my reply. For anyone else reading, the quote in my post is what Joo originally wrote.

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 9:20 am Post subject:

The evidence is mounting that this is true. Disturbing. I wish Obama would get on with it and appoint an independent counsel to investigate.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 4:39 pm Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

The evidence is mounting that this is true. Disturbing.

I wish Obama would get on with it and appoint an independent counsel to investigate.

Not likely.

Obama is out of touch from America's position on . . .

(a) gay rights

(b) the bailout

(c) health care (single payer!)

(d) accountability for torture

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 5:29 pm Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

I wish Obama would get on with it and appoint an independent counsel to investigate.

Any truly just investigation would end in condemning far more than a few now out of office politicians, and it wouldn't be limited to the Republican Party either.

It won't happen.

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 8:29 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Obama is out of touch from America's position on . . .

(a) gay rights

(b) the bailout

(c) health care (single payer!)

(d) accountability for torture

What you call 'out of touch' could also be called leadership...to the center. In a deeply divided country he is digging in his heels when the left calls for something and throwing bones to the right, all the while trying to avoid most of the culture war issues. We elect presidents to use their wisdom; this one said all along that he wanted to be bipartisan. He's doing it.

Quote:

Any truly just investigation would end in condemning far more than a few now out of office politicians, and it wouldn't be limited to the Republican Party either.

It won't happen.

I don't think he's going to have a choice. The pressure for some kind of investigation is building, it seems to me. An independent investigation is probably the best way forward so the administration can get on with the reforms they want to work on.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 9:57 pm Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

Quote:

Obama is out of touch from America's position on . . .

(a) gay rights

(b) the bailout

(c) health care (single payer!)

(d) accountability for torture

What you call 'out of touch' could also be called leadership...to the center.

Tacking to the center may be the opposite of leadership, if tacking to the center is done to widen support. Moreover, I think in a time of crisis you don't want centrism, you want reform. Obviously, I don't think what Obama is presenting is centrism, since I'm accusing him of being out of touch. But he's doing a crappy job at reform, instead bolstering the old zombie institutions (the banks, the auto industry, etc).

He's weak.

ManintheMiddle

Joined: 20 Oct 2008

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 10:05 pm Post subject:

Ya Ta Boy pined and opined:

Quote:

The evidence is mounting that this is true. Disturbing.

I wish Obama would get on with it and appoint an independent counsel to investigate.

The only disturbing evidence that is mounting is directed at the dear ol' gal who's Speaker of the House.

Obama's not going to appoint an independent counsel because it would implicate his own party in the eyes of the Far Left (who care only about their imagined grievances).

Sorry, OTOH. While the article is interesting I don't think it has legs.

The Left needs to give up the ghost of Cheney and move on to other targets, like Obama basically deciding to continue what Bush did with Gitmo interrogations (not that I'm in the least opposed to that move).

Never in my memory has an American leader been so vilified as Cheney in disproportion to his supposed wrongs, and that includes Nixon.

It's easy to armchair quarterback in reflection what at the time was a period of intense unease requiring quick decisions of the sort Obama seems incapable of making before checking with his handlers.

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 10:53 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Tacking to the center may be the opposite of leadership, if tacking to the center is done to widen support.

Usually your political judgement is much better than this.

Quote:

...Moreover, I think in a time of crisis you don't want centrism, you want reform.

Are we in a crisis anymore? Several people have said there's no danger of going into freefall now. The crisis is past. It looks to me like we're just in a crappy situation.

The BoyinaQuandry noted:

Quote:

Quote:

The only disturbing evidence that is mounting is directed at the dear ol' gal who's Speaker of the House.

Obama's not going to appoint an independent counsel because it would implicate his own party in the eyes of the Far Left (who care only about their imagined grievances).

Frank Rich doesn't see things as myopically as you do. Obama Can�t Turn the Page on Bush "TO paraphrase Al Pacino in �Godfather III,� just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can�t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration�s high ambitions."

More from Rich:
1. "That�s why the president�s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos � whatever his motivation � is a fool�s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway"

2. "This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld�s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security."

3. "The GQ article isn�t the only revelation of previously unknown Bush Defense Department misbehavior to emerge this month. Just two weeks ago, the Obama Pentagon revealed that a major cover-up of corruption had taken place at the Bush Pentagon on Jan. 14 of this year � just six days before Bush left office."

4. "The administration can�t �just keep walking� because it is losing control of the story. The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the clich� that only the A.C.L.U. and the president�s �left-wing base� want accountability, but that�s not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month�s Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees � that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into �confirming� a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war � is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become."

Rich doesn't say that a commission is certain--"If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried"--but he indicates pretty powerfully that this whole mess is not going to go away without an investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 11:31 pm Post subject:

I don't know why they needed to make up a link when there already was one. I know it is not PC to say it. He would also do well to admit there was also a connection between Iran and Al Qaeda. If anyone doubts this they ought to let me know.

catman

Joined: 18 Jul 2004

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 12:06 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

I don't know why they needed to make up a link when there already was one. I know it is not PC to say it.

He would also do well to admit there was also a connection between Iran and Al Qaeda.

If anyone doubts this they ought to let me know.

Um yeah

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 2:30 pm Post subject:

catman wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Um yeah

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

Quote:

The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Arabic: الجهاد الإسلامي المصري ‎) (EIJ), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad ( الجهاد الإسلامي and Liberation Army for Holy Sites[1] ) originally referred to as "al-Jihad," and then "the Jihad Group", or "the Jihad Organization",[2] is an Egyptian Islamist group active since the late 1970s with origins in the Muslim Brotherhood. It is under worldwide embargo by the United Nations as an affiliate of al-Qaeda.[3] It is also banned by several individual governments including that of the Russian Federation.[4] Since 1991 it has been led by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Quote:

External Aid
The extent of its aid from outside of Egypt is not known. The Egyptian Government claims that both Iran and Osama bin Laden support the Islamic Jihad. It also may obtain some funding through various Islamic nongovernmental organizations, cover businesses, and criminal acts.[citation needed]

Iraq March 1993 agreed to renew relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt.[36]

No this is the history.

Iran and Al Qaeda is not just something that changed.

It seems to have been going on for a while.

9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran

Quote:

Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report will cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed through Iran

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html

Quote:

Is there a link between Mugniyah and al-Qaeda?
Mugniyah met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s, according to the court testimony of Ali Abdelsoud Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen and former U.S. army sergeant who later became a senior aide to bin Laden. After his arrest in 1998 in connection with the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed testified that he arranged several meetings between bin Laden and Mugniyah in Sudan. Bin Laden reportedly admired Mugniyah's tactics, particularly his use of truck bombs, which precipitated the United States' withdrawal from Lebanon. According to Mohammed, bin Laden and Mugniyah agreed Hezbollah would provide training, military expertise, and explosives in exchange for money and man power. It is not known, however, whether this agreement was carried out. The relationship between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda is not entirely friendly, as explained in this Backgrounder.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/11317/#8

Quote:

By Noah Pollak

It is long past time that one important piece of fantastical rubbish be finally sent on its way: this is the idea that Islamists maintain some kind of fastidious ethnic and theological separatism when it comes to who they're willing to work with on killing people. The co-option of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (Sunni Arab) by Iran (Shia Persian) is one piece of reality that intrudes on this comforting notion; so is the Iran-Syria alliance, along with the reality of Iranian support for both Shia and Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

A final nail in the coffin comes today from Eli Lake, the New York Sun's talented national security reporter (and good friend). Eli's scoop is about the National Intelligence Estimate, an unclassified summary of which will be released today, but whose classified final working draft concludes that:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.
Iranian hospitality toward Al Qaeda is not a new story -- but what is new is the apparent fact that one of two Qaeda leadership councils meets in Iran, and with the complicity of the regime. As Eli notes:

An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy."
Stories like these reinforce another very basic idea: terrorism has a return address.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001492.html

Quote:

On al-Qaeda, the picture is more murky. Iran and Osama bin Laden's movement are hardly natural allies � Tehran almost went to war with al-Qaeda's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in 1998, following Taliban massacres of Afghan Shiites. The extremist theology that inspires both the Taliban and al-Qaeda sees Shiites as infidels, although bin Laden is on record advocating unity for purposes of anti-American jihad. The reformist elected leadership in Tehran has sought to repair its relationships with the West and rehabilitate Iran diplomatically, but the hard-liners may have hedged their bets. It remains unlikely that the government of President Mohammed Khatami has made common cause with al-Qaeda operatives, although it has long been alleged that hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard have unofficially provided some with shelter in Iran. Al-Qaeda may also have set up shop in the predominantly Sunni border region of eastern Iran, where central government authority is more limited and the authorities have lost thousands of men in battles with smugglers.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,455276,00.html

Quote:

U.S. Suggests a Qaeda Cell in Iran Directed Saudi Bombings
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2003
The United States has intercepted communications strongly suggesting that a small cell of leaders of Al Qaeda in Iran directed last week's terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, and the United States is sending a strong protest to the Tehran government, according to senior Bush administration officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/21/international/middleeast/21IRAN.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/saif_al-adel.htm

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 3:11 pm Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

Quote:

Tacking to the center may be the opposite of leadership, if tacking to the center is done to widen support.

Usually your political judgement is much better than this.

I can't help it you read my posts one sentence at a time, taking them apart from one another and only taking each sentence individually.

If he's tacking to the center to widen support, but it makes him out of touch, it means he hasn't succeeded at actually widening his support but has made an error in calculation on what would make him more popular.

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