Obama releasing torture memos

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009...emos-released/

Unfreakinbelievable.

[Red Flag 1]

Once again, BHO steps up, does something lacking depth and insight. He then turns away just in time for the bus to miss him. In the end BHO makes Carter look better and better every day.

As Richard says, " we have met the enemy............."

RF 1

Originally Posted by Red Flag 1

Once again, BHO steps up, does something lacking depth and insight. He then turns away just in time for the bus to miss him. In the end BHO makes Carter look better and better every day.

As Richard says, " we have met the enemy............."

RF 1

I just don't think there is enough booze on the planet to keep me catatonic enough to survive until 2012 when the end of the world comes.. good lord!!
It gets more looney by the day. I am good at dark humor, but geez.. give me a break.. my BS meter is pegging and my humor meter is overloaded.. what's a girl to do but drink...more.. hel If I did drink I would already be drunk.. this is just sooooo over the top.. hasn't the man got any sane advisers????

I don't remember Carter.. I was hiding in the Colorado High Country that 4 yrs.. I was too scared to come down the mountain.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by armymom1228

.....It gets more looney by the day. I am good at dark humor, but geez.. give me a break.. my BS meter is pegging and my humor meter is overloaded.. what's a girl to do but drink...more.. ....

Armymom;

Put down the keyboard, step away from the glowing box, put on your Nikes and take something, anything, for a four mile walk. Do that each night about this time. You'll make it through the next 3 1/2 years in much better condition.

Pete

Originally Posted by Pete

Armymom;

Put down the keyboard, step away from the glowing box, put on your Nikes and take something, anything, for a four mile walk. Do that each night about this time. You'll make it through the next 3 1/2 years in much better condition.

Pete

Sir? should I wear the tinfoil hat? You want me to take a cat for a 4 mile walk??????????? okay whatever you say Sir, but she will protest and I _will_ need stitches when all is said and done..

[Storm]

Originally Posted by Pete

Armymom;

Put down the keyboard, step away from the glowing box, put on your Nikes and take something, anything, for a four mile walk. Do that each night about this time. You'll make it through the next 3 1/2 years in much better condition.

Pete

I'd also advise you to never, ever, under any circumstances read the commentary under these articles. You'll start walking and never stop...

How these people manage to scramble over each other, each stating something even more absurd is beyond me...

Must be the Kool-Aid on steroids...

[Richard]

You want me to take a cat for a 4 mile walk?

I say leave the damn cat at home and recommend taking The Beer Belly— a fake beer belly that looks amazingly realistic under a T-shirt. Made from neoprene, the insulated polyurethane bladder holds a healthy quantity of your favorite beverage, accessible through a tube that - similiar to a Camelback - runs under your shirt and clips to your collar to quench your thirst when you need it most. Regular Beer Belly: $34.95. Deluxe Beer Belly: 49.95. Costs do not include shipping.

Not a beer aficionado - try the Wine Rack.

http://www.thebeerbelly.com/The_Beer...ine_Up_s/1.htm

Those four miles will never seem so daunting again...and it beats the hell out of the evening news.

Richard's $.02

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by Richard

I say leave the damn cat at home and recommend taking The Beer Belly— a fake beer belly that looks amazingly realistic under a T-shirt. Made from neoprene, the insulated polyurethane bladder holds a healthy quantity of your favorite beverage, accessible through a tube that - similiar to a Camelback - runs under your shirt and clips to your collar to quench your thirst when you need it most. Regular Beer Belly: $34.95. Deluxe Beer Belly: 49.95. Costs do not include shipping.

Not a beer aficionado - try the Wine Rack.

http://www.thebeerbelly.com/The_Beer...ine_Up_s/1.htm

Those four miles will never seem so daunting again...and it beats the hell out of the evening news.

Richard's $.02

Richard

Where do you get these things. Great item for those drinkers with a running problem.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by armymom1228

... You want me to take a cat for a 4 mile walk??????????? ....

Get one of those 3 wheel weebie doobies - The stroller with bike wheels.

A medium size open cage with a nice cushion. Cats love that. As your furry friend turns it's head to look at you "faster slave" passes through it's head.

[BigJimCalhoun]

Doesn't releasing the torture memos then provide intelligence for others providing them with details as to what extent we will go during interrogation? This seems like a really bad decision.

[Box]

ha...
so at least the vets on Napolitanos extremists list know whats in store for them now....

Originally Posted by BigJimCalhoun

Doesn't releasing the torture memos then provide intelligence for others providing them with details as to what extent we will go during interrogation? This seems like a really bad decision.

No not really. There is a cornucopia of torture through the ages to pick from.. one from column A and two from B please.

Seriously, I am just a taxpayer...what do I know... but yes, it seems in the same realm as electing this person who is authorizing the release of these documents was.. monumently stupid.

[Richard]

Latest from Pravda on the Hudson - the final two sentences are of interest.

Forced nudity [chuckle] - fear of insects [chuckle] - keeping them awake [chuckle] - placing them in a dark, cramped box [loud guffaw] - sounds like they put them through a SERE program.

Richard's $.02

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.
Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, NYT, 16 Apr 2009

The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The techniques were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and the documents released Thursday afternoon were the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the program.

Some senior Obama administration officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., have labeled one of the 14 approved techniques, waterboarding, illegal torture. The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos.

The release of the documents came after a bitter debate that divided the Obama administration, with the C.I.A. opposing the Justice Department’s proposal to air the details of the agency’s long-secret program. Fueling the urgency of the discussion was Thursday’s court deadline in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the government for the release of the Justice Department memos.

Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.

The documents were released with minimal redactions, indicating that President Obama sided against current and former C.I.A. officials who for weeks had pressed the White House to withhold details about specific interrogation techniques. Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, had argued that revealing such information set a dangerous precedent for future disclosures of intelligence sources and methods.

A more pressing concern for the C.I.A. is that the revelations may give new momentum to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and possible torture prosecutions.

Within minutes of the release of the memos, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the memos illustrated the need for his proposed independent commission of inquiry, which would offer immunity in return for candid testimony.

Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty.

The four legal opinions, released in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U., were written in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the highest authority in interpreting the law in the executive branch.

The first of the memos, from August 2002, was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel, and gave the C.I.A. its first detailed legal approval for waterboarding and other harsh treatment. Three others, signed by Steven G. Bradbury, sought to reassure the agency in May 2005 that its methods were still legal, even when multiple methods were used in combination, and despite the prohibition in international law against “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment.

All legal opinions on interrogation were revoked by Mr. Obama on his second day in office, when he also outlawed harsh interrogations and ordered the C.I.A.’s secret prisons closed.

In the memos, the Justice Department authors emphasized precautions the C.I.A. proposed to take, including monitoring by medical personnel, and the urgency of getting information to stop terrorist attacks. They recounted the C.I.A.’s assertions of the effectiveness of the techniques but noted that interrogators could not always tell a prisoner who was withholding information from one who had no more information to offer.

The memos include what in effect are lengthy excerpts from the agency’s interrogation manual, laying out with precision how each method was to be used. Waterboarding, for example, involved strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of “10 to 15 degrees” and pouring water over a cloth covering his nose and mouth “from a height of approximately 6 to 18 inches” for no more than 40 seconds at a time.

But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.’s inspector general.

Most of the methods have been previously described in news accounts and in a 2006 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviewed 14 detainees. But one previously unknown tactic the C.I.A. proposed — but never used — against Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist operative, involved exploiting what was thought to be his fear of insects.

“As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar,” one memo says.

Mr. Bybee, Mr. Bradbury and John Yoo, who was the leading author of the 2002 interrogation memos, are the subjects of an investigation by the Justice Department’s ethics office about their legal analysis on interrogation. Officials have described the draft ethics report, by the Office of Professional Responsibility, as highly critical, but its completion has been delayed to allow the subjects a chance to respond.

The A.C.L.U. said the memos clearly describe criminal conduct and underscore the need to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate who authorized and carried out torture.

But Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us...er=rss&emc=rss

[afchic]

The people that are championing this release will be the same ones screaming bloody murder a few years from now when a future POTUS decides to start airing Obama's dirty laundry for the world to see, for political reasons only.

Transparency my ass. IF he was so interested in being transparent, we would be seeing the release of memos from the Clinton administration as well. Somehow I don't see that one coming.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by afchic

Transparency my ass. IF he was so interested in being transparent, we would be seeing the release of memos from the Clinton administration as well. Somehow I don't see that one coming.

I think the only one with access to those now would be Sandy Berger, and he ain't releasing them.

TR