This is an excellent video…

Pepe Escobar: American torture
Posted on April 22, 2009 by dandelionsalad
Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews (video with Armitage, on Bybee, on Pelosi, and all else..UN Human Rights Council—which we will most certainly not be a member of again, now…Peggy Noonan) And, of course, Dubby…Its pretty barfy…Former Navy Gen. says that Abu Ghraib is still used as a recruiting tool. Also, the current “black prisons”.

More at http://therealnews.com/t/in…

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/pepe-escobar-american-torture/

“There can be no “exceptionalism” when the rule of law is broken “

I agree and this will NOT “go away”. Never.

So, who is KSM?

South Asia - Oct 30, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html

A chilling inheritance of terror
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda’s military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.

Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...they identified the Shaikh Mohammed’s body as their husband and father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi.

complete story - http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html
©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved

more than a hundred times?!?!?

that’s sadism, not vengence

should have just shot the bast-rd

The pentagon has applied to make weatherboarding an Olympic sport, in order to prove it is not really torture but really just a Sunday drive in the park, another form of entertainment like the great sport of Curling, not hurling.

‘Maybe it’s time for America to stop taking a back seat’ LB what the hell are you talking about? Do you really imagine the world got in the current mess it’s in because America took a back seat? America has a front row seat as it always does and it has orchestrated chaos and madness all over the world with its bullshit war on terror. Of course you’ll never accept it, but the whole 9/11 story is a myth put together to fool the world into conducting a war against Muslims to protect Israel, not America. Vladmir Putin did the same thing in Russia when he and the KGB blew up apartment buildings all over Moscow and blamed it on the Chechnyans so he could invade them and carry out the kind of dirty war Reagan orchestrated in El Salvador and the CIA orchestrated all over Latin America.

And what really astounds me is that the kind of neo con economic thinking that was used in Chile, Argentina and Brazil - the so called free market (which will make serfs of us all)- which was introducted into those countries via coups paid for by the United States, resulted in economic ruin for the citizens of those countries as their economy and infrastructure were plundered by foreign companies and multinational corporations while the taxpayers went hungry. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the American system. Is this what you call taking a back seat?

The Chileans had to vote under threat of death in a referendum that took away social security, the health care system, education for all but the well-off, trade unions : but the Junta were just doing the dirty work. This was America’s doing. And just so no one could mistake the hand behind it, they launched this coup on the 11th September 1973. September 11, the Pentagon’s birthday, the day they dug the first hole to start building it. As a soldier you should know these things. The only thing you said I agree with is that ‘People have misjudged this war from the start’. They certainly did, not now though. The neo cons chose two countries to blame for the 9/11 attacks that were third world countries: Afghanistan because it had been destroyed during the war between the US-funded and armed Muhujeddin and the Soviet Union and Iraq because it had been devastated by the US sanctions imposed because Iraqis lacked the spine to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In other words they chose two countries that couldn’t possibly have carried out such sophisticated and expensive attacks even if they’d wanted to. The 9/11 Commission said that it was ‘unimportant’ who funded the attacks but they had to say that. If they’d investigated where the money came from they would have ended up investigating how $2.3 trillion went missing from the Pentagon when Dov Zakheim (a neo con and a joint US Israeli citizen) was in charge of Pentagon finances. Turn off the TV and turn on your brain. Wake up and smell the coffee. By the way, the Pentagon is a millitary building and the Capitol (also supposedly targeted) is a political office. They were chosen for purely symbolic reasons and it was Thomas Friedman, of all people, who pointed out that the so-called hijackers ‘made no demands’. Why didn’t they? They also flew over four nuclear reactors as they pranced around America’s skies, unchallenged by the best funded and armed air force in the world. In Bush’s September 2002 National Security Strategy document, it was put in unambiguous terms. The United States, the document said, ‘…will use its unparalleled military strength…to extend the benefits of free markets and free trade to every corner of the world’. Can you still see America feebly waving from that back seat?

But, now, the “question” , ala Diane Fienstein, is ‘yes, but did it work”?...no, the l82nd time mustve not worked…

???

LB

“I’m here to tell you the world doesn’t care what we do or how we do it. I have lived in several countries in Europe and Asia. Trust me when I say they have no more respect for us then do to our enemies.”

It is sad that, as a soldier, you do not see the connection. And, as a soldier, you must know that there are worse things than being dead.

These things were not done on a battlefield, where someone was going to kill you if you didnt kill them. This was used on prisoners, many turned in by neighbors, who were subdued, cuffed, chained, hooded.

If you found themn on the battlefield later, maybe it was actauly the first time. I heard one soldier/guard. say that if, he wasnt a terrorist before, he would be one after GITMO…

Hulk—you dont have to be religious to know that this was wrong. YOu can say it over and over but some just dont want to hear..maybe because its not true…

The US doesnt torture…

RE: ...one of the most recently releases is in charge of Al Qaeda in Yemen. How convenient!

Wed, 2008-10-08

Remember the attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen last month that took the lives of eighteen people? A group calling themselves “Islamic Jihad” claimed responsibility for the blast. It has a nice, scary ring to it hasn’t it? “Islamic Jihad” also happens to be the name of a group that operates out of Gaza.

“We, the Organisation of Islamic Jihad, belonging to the Al-Qaeda network, repeat our demand of (Yemeni President) Ali Abdullah Saleh to free our detained brothers within 48 hours,” said a statement signed by self-proclaimed leader Abu Ghaith al-Yamani.

Former agent for French military intelligence Pierre-Henry Bunel has this to say about ‘al Qaeda’:

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism…”

Well now the Yemeni authorities have arrested a group of these al Qaeda-backed militants with, surprise surprise, links to Israeli intelligence.

From BBC News:

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.

The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

http://us.altermedia.info/yet-another-israeli-false-flag-terror-attack-yemen-bombing

Americans or not, makes no difference. It’s a CIA/MI6/MOSSAD nexus, in service to a Global Finance Oligarchy (no nation, state, ideology or religion - only the oligarchy) - terror on demand - black-op of choice.

I inadvertantly forgot to add the link to the Global Research article I cited below, for any who are interested, the link:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13223

If you believe that torture did indeed “WORK”, and it took 183 sessions, do the math.  If they did 183 consecutive waterboardings at about 30 minutes each, that’s about 90 hours going around the clock - nearly 4 days.  (You DO have to let the guy catch his breath long enough to actually divulge “intelligence”.) 
    Does 4 days advance notice fit the scenario of meeting “an imminent danger”?? Realistically, even 4 hours notice would be too long to be “imminent”.  I don’t know about you; but I think I would have changed tactics along about… say… session 50 or so.  The picture of Khalid suggests maybe dangling a hot tassty hunk of fallafal under his chubby little chin might have worked better. 
  And the argument offered that this information release lets the terrorist “prepare” his pretty hokey.  How does ANYbody prepare for 183 sem-drownings?  Maybe eating hot dogs at Nathan’s with Kobayashi ??

“If we water boarded the bush-cheney cabal 1 million times it would never make up for the sins they caused however it would be a lot of fun to watch.”  Kind of funny how the ones who disdain torture and whatever else happened to these terrorists have no problem seeing the people who committed these acts tortured.  Hmm.

Jeremy Scahill has a good article at Huffpo:

“In the Sunday New York Times, the paper’s editors call for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, author of one of the now infamous torture memos released last week. Bybee is now a federal judge. In its editorial, “The Torturers’ Manifesto,” the Times argued:

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/impeach-bybee-the-growing_b_188954.html

The Christian Science Monitior adds:

“The new information came out over the weekend thanks to the investigative work of bloggers like Marcy Wheeler, who found it in the footnotes of Bush administration interrogation memos released last week and posted it to her blog emptywheel.

She adds: “So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you’d need 18 applications in a day.  Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you’ve waterboarded 90 times–still just half of what they did to [Khalid Sheikh Mohamed].”

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0420/p99s01-duts.html

Another article @ Global Research written by David Swanson, explains:

“However, according to Bybee any torturer would be in the clear legally if they did not “expressly intend to inflict severe pain or suffering.”  And this could be done by “honestly believing” that there would not be severe pain or suffering, which you would have to if you believed this memo which asserted as much.  An honest belief, Bybee assured the CIA, need not be reasonable.  In fact “good faith may be established by, among other things, the reliance on the advice of experts.”  In case anyone missed the point, Bybee went on to simply state that people following his torture manual would not have the intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering. 

But here’s where it gets sticky.  First, the techniques authorized by this custom-made designer law, and others not authorized, were used BEFORE the law was written as well as after.  So the reliance on experts wouldn’t cover everybody, and therefore the group of people that Obama just promised amnesty does not include everybody.”

This article explains much of the legal arguments that are being put forth by these criminal abusers.

TruePatriot writes, “IT WORKED.” He’s right it worked - throughout the Middle East it’s widely understood - anyone (regardless of his politics) can be sold into the fate of KSM; and soon we’ll all know. The Global Finance Oligarchy needs (indeed demands) expansion of the Global War Of Terror…war without end, enemies everywhere, reign of fear here-to-fore unknown.

The current regime will not prosecute the authors of the Torture Gulag, but will detail what it endorses. Think about what you too may face, should you be detained and charged even as a “terrorist sympathizer.” All your email is archived and can be manipulated at will. Even your voice mail can be manipulated.

Am I paranoid? Not for me. I’m an artist. Nobody in this (the most philistine nation of all time) cares about artists, only celebrities. Were I one, like most, I’d never speak my mind. I’d leave that to the artists. And so I do: http://www.thefall01.info/

It is sad to think the united states of America has been so corrupted by the ruthless lawless republicans that they can get away with torturing anyone they want (as long as it is not a fellow republican) and because the corporate controlled media is owned by the republicans no can do anything about it.  These vile republican pigs have destroyed everything America ever stood for.  It is sad. 

If we water boarded the bush-cheney cabal 1 million times it would never make up for the sins they caused however it would be a lot of fun to watch.

To understand the extreme lengths to which torture was taken, it is important to understand that the total war mindset that drives it: nothing is forbidden, and the country can’t afford self-restraint. Few in power have ever challenged this.
  Firebombing of German and Japanese cities during WWII followed the same pattern. Attacking purely civilian targets was cruel and useless for ending the war, which the allies knew already, yet they saw some glimmer of hope that the casualties would be so awful that the enemy would be shocked into submission by the losses. Though they were atrocities, as was the use of nuclear weapons on civilian targets, no one was punished. At the time, officials saw these actions as necessary to end the war and, perhaps more urgently, to get revenge.
  Our past is riddled with officially-sanctioned atrocities, many of which go unpunished. When we demand accountability today, we are demanding an end to the parade of corruption and suffering that has continued for so long, as well as preventing its continuation into the future.

“....Obama approved the disclosure of the documents, along with a strongly worded statement that agency professionals “who acted reasonably and relied upon legal advice from the Department of Justice” will be held blameless.”

That is a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Just doing your job or following orders is no excuse and no defense.

Obama knew about the torture and allowed it continue under his watch when he became Commander-in-Chief. He is just as guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity as Bush and Cheney, and therefore cannot investigate or prosecute anyone for the crimes of which he is now also guilty.

The friendly face of fascism is just as evil as the smirking or snarling face of fascism. Torture is torture, war crimes are war crimes, and it doesn’t matter if the head of state presiding over them is black or white, Democrat or Republican, intelligent or stupid, apologetic or unapologetic. The result for the innocent victims, agony and death, is the same.

The only reason for torture is to extract false confessions from innocent victims. 9/11 was an inside job and our government, the only people capable of orchestrating, carrying out, and covering up 9/11, did it to justify wars of aggression. The guilty are torturing the innocent, trying to make it look as if Al Quedah, a CIA database, which couldn’t have planted the explosives for three World Trade Center controlled demolitions, and couldn’t have called off our air defenses, is guilty of what our own government did.

183 times? Let’s see, this covers two sets of virgins, so if you add, 78 virgins plus virgins 78 equals 156 virgins. Take 156 virgins from 183 virgins you get 27 virgins, which is more than anyone should have, unless the virgins are great cooks, but who’s counting?

People ask: “What’s the benefit of doing away with torture?”  The “bad guys” are going to use whatever they please on the good guys - there is no honor among the terrorists.  But there SHOULD be honor among the “good guys”. 
    A country that constantly proclaims itself a “Judeo-Christian nation” has a self-imposed OBLIGATION to play by the rules even others do not.  You can’t have it both ways.  Show me where Christ got revenge or tortured or killed or went to war. 
    As for effectiveness, tell me what critical data Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fessed up to during waterboarding session number 183 -  maybe by then he confessed to having grown gills.  I believe that by at least session 25 he (or anybody else) would have started making up stuff just to have something concrete to divulge.  The interrogators themselves were probably delusional by that point. 
    Supporters of torture always bring up the situation that an attack may be imminent and the person being tortured may give up the critical item just in time to save lives.  But can you imagine how much time it would take to have 183 waterboarding sessions?  Even Congress would start telling SOMEthing after the first 100.  The argument is obtuse.
    “Living well is the best revenge”.  The US is the good guys - and should act consistently that way.

Christ, it always comes down to the bogeymen.  Don’t question anything, because whatever we did we did it for you…to keep you safe from the monsters in your closet.

Torture doesn’t work, so we must be doing it for some other reason…like torturing.

And since we got most of these techniques from the Soviets (out of the manual written to train US intelligence/servicemen in case of being captured by the Soviets), i’d like to hear a long, detailed explanation of how and why we’re better than them.

And i’d like the President to give that lecture…

From Media Matters:

“On the April 19 edition of CNN’s State of the Union, CNN contributor Bill Bennett claimed that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair opposed President Obama’s recent release of four previously classified Justice Department memos that had authorized the use of harsh interrogation techniques. But Bennett’s statement contradicts other reporting on Blair’s position on the release of the memos, which neither Bennett nor host John King noted. Bennett later suggested that that the harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA on Al Qaeda captive Abu Zubaydah has “kept American cities and American people from being hurt,” which has also been contradicted by other reports.

Later during the discussion, Bennett asserted: “You’re damn right this stuff works—that challenge has been put out there. This is information that we got from Abu Zubaydah, from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that kept American cities and American people from being hurt.” However, The Washington Post reported that, according to “former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations,” “not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions”:

A MUST READ, @ Media Matters:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904190008?f=h_latest

It appears that Bennett is, oh…. LESS THAN RELIABLE, let’s just say, thankfully he’s not your insurance guy.  Well, maybe that not such a “good” thing to say, how about… thankfully, he’s not in charge of “swaying popular notions of TORTURE”.... oh, I guess that won’t work either.  Hmmm…... I’m perplexed, IS there anything “we” could be thankful Bennett is IN CHARGE OF…OR NOT IN CHARGE OF….?

C’mon people…. think pollyanna-ish….ah…ah..um…um….  I give up, your call.

Who’s kidding whom? The CIA directs (with MI6 and MOSSAD) the Global War Of Terror, there’s nothing to be learned from patsies like KSM - the purpose is to terrorize us all - KSM’s confession is a martyrdom-before-the-alter gesture - the Islamic Fundamentalist Movement that spawned him is secretly nurtured by the CIA/MI6/MOSSAD nexus in order to produces as many KSM clones as possible - patsies galore, running hither and yon - waiting in the wings for any off-the-shelf false-flag black op - terror on call - patsies to take the fall - prison and torture for all - just keep to yourself and don’t make no trouble…capice?