Tag: 9/11

Bill Moyers: “Everyone Should See ‘Torturing Democracy'”

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week – immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives – former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a “wedge issue,” as noted on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

[snip]

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does.

[snip]

As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, “Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation’s adherence to the rule of law…. Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it.

Read the whole thing here…

Torturing Democracy originally aired on PBS January 21st, 2009

You can watch “Torturing Democracy” here in three segments, or watch the full  one hour program below.

Torturer admits torture costs American lives

Well, isn’t this just a great news day for this to come out.  Between the SCOTUS nomination and the Prop 8 brou-ha-ha, nobody is gonna hear about this:

A man who is actually one of the men who conducts the “interrogations” in question admits that it cost “hundreds, if not thousands” of American lives.

Dick Cheney and every Republican and Noise Machine Pundit out there is a LIAR (gee, what a surprise):

http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…


“Torture does not save lives,” Alexander said in his interview. “And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool…These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse….literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives.”

Obama wants to give nukes to the crooks in the UAE

Tonight I want to point out a story of which very few people are aware.   Surprisingly enough, this is inspired by a piece that is actually on CNN (a network which represents, usually, the very worst of the Corporate/Republican Noise Machine, albiet in a far more insidious and subtle way than Fox).  

The story is here:

Torture video threatens U.S.-UAE nuclear deal


WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama on Thursday sent a civil nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates to the Senate for ratification, but its passage remains uncertain, thanks to a recently disclosed video.

Senior U.S. officials said lawmakers critical of the deal could use the video, which shows a member of the UAE government’s royal family torturing a man, to argue the United States should not have such nuclear cooperation with a country where the rule of law is not respected and human rights violations are tolerated.

This is putting it oh-so-mildly, and it barely touches the tip of the UAE iceberg.    

Not keeping us safe from terrorists!

The Republicans and Harry “honorary Republican for the week” Reid have been arguing that it’s terrible, awful for terrorists to be allowed into the country in order to go straight to maximum security prison. Ignoring for a second that terrorists are allowed free rein over the country as long as they’re Christian and white and therefore can’t be racially profiled, I have other problems with this.

First of all: 9/11. Terrorists didn’t just come here. They came here and hijacked planes from American airports. After this happened, Republicans panicked about immigration. Most of the 9/11 hijackers got here legally.

Then: the anthrax attacks. Not only were terrorists here but they were never even discovered. They’re probably still somewhere around. awesome.

Third: remember the freaking FLIGHT SCHOOLS?

There were al Qaeda flight schools in the United States for years, and the FBI and others had been investigating them for years. And the Republicans, who I guess care a lot about American safety, openly mocked President Bill Clinton for saying Osama bin Laden was a threat and tried to say it was a case of “Wag the Dog.” So while the president was trying to fend off terrorists from attacking us, Republicans were denying that such a threat existed.

And now we’re letting them control the message and Harry Reid is saying that we will never, ever allow terrorists on American soil. Because the Republicans are so tough and manly and THEY never did.

Last week, the F.B.I. acknowledged the existence of a memorandum written last summer in which an agent in its Phoenix office urged his superiors to investigate Middle Eastern men who had enrolled at American flight schools and who might be connected to Mr. bin Laden.

This article is really interesting for a lot of reasons. The FBI knew of this, which isn’t surprising. The government, who’s saying now that they kept us safe all this time, wasn’t prepared to keep us safe.

The Phoenix memorandum, along with the disclosure this week that President Bush was warned in August of the possibility that Al Qaeda might be planning hijackings, have been seized on by lawmakers as evidence that the government missed signals of the coming attacks.

The disclosure they’re referring to of course is the PDB titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US” and talked about using planes. I feel so safe! And if you think that, hey, well, at least they started torturing after 9/11 which kept us safe, you should read this:

Mr. Murad, who was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and convicted in New York[…]Murad’s confession formed a basis for an analysis prepared for United States intelligence agencies in 1999. The analysis warned that bin Laden terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.

So they found out about the threat of bin Laden not from torture but from actual investigative work and interrogations.

The article goes on to note that his confession is on video.

These flight schools were in the US as well as other countries, here’s one that trained terrorists in Florida:

Officials at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach confirmed Thursday that the FBI has sought information on Waleed Al Sheri, 25, who graduated in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical science — the four-year school’s commercial pilot training degree.

The FBI is also investigating Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Al Sheri, 23. Law enforcement sources said they were looking at a possible family link between Marwan and Waleed Al Sheri.

So think about that next time Republicans talk about never allowing terrorists here.

In another case, they outright admit that they suck:

(CBS)  Law enforcement officials say the government kept hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta’s roommate from entering the United States on at least four occasions but didn’t track his money transfers that led directly to the eventual hijackers.

[…]

But they added the CIA had no information before Sept. 11 linking him to terrorism.

Nonetheless, experts said Bin al-Shibh’s actions highlight the challenges in stopping future terror attacks.

His repeated failed efforts to enter the country did not trigger an investigation. And there was no effort to track his finances.

When Bin al-Shibh failed to enter, Moussaoui was sent in his place and made it into the country with $35,000 in cash and a plan to train to fly jetliners, officials say.

They found all of this out, by the way, using legal means. It was just after the fact. They used FISA warrants and monitored foreign conversations. They tracked money and wire transfers. They even found videos made by these people discussing these events.

It gets worse:

A State Department official said Wednesday there is still no mechanism, even in the aftermath of Sept. 11, to flag a foreigner who is turned down repeatedly for visas for suspicions like those that surrounded Bin al-Shibh.

Also this guy was planning on heading to a Minnesota flight school. That’s where his replacement, Moussaoui, was picked up.

This is also quite terrifying, these are the people named by intelligence officials in 2002 who were giving information to stop terrorist attacks:

Officials identified the three others as Abu Zubair, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, and a man known by his nom de guerre, Riyadh the Facilitator. Abu Zubaydah has been extensively interrogated since his capture and has provided important information, American officials say. Interrogation of others in custody have provided new insights into Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, they add.

Well with what those people are saying, I’m SURE we can prevent attacks. Or something. And nothing they’re saying is a lie and nothing our administration is saying is a lie.

Remember Cheney’s “pretty well confirmed” statement that has been mentioned over the years and was most recently reiterated during Rachel Maddow’s takedown of Cheney?

Dick Cheney: ‘Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that — it’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don’t know at this point, but that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.’

(Meet the Press, 2001)

Well, um:

They add that they have not received any corroborating evidence to support an initial report from Czech intelligence that Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. Many intelligence and law enforcement officials now say they do not believe the meeting took place.

Oh. So, didn’t happen. And remember, though most of the information that was given to the 9/11 Commission was extracted through torture – that was done specifically to GET a link – they found no link:

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration’s main justifications for the war in Iraq.

[…]

But the report of the commission’s staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday’s hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding.

Despite trying really hard to manufacture a link it did not even fool the 9/11 Commission, the CIA or FBI. And this was under the guise of keeping us safe. SAFE. Really.

And they blatantly lied:

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein “had long-established ties with al Qaeda.” Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq.

Feel safer yet?

Back to the New York Times:

American officials believe the disruption has helped prevent about half a dozen — and possibly many more — Qaeda plots in the last year. Officials say that when Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda’s operations chief, was captured in Pakistan in March he had several plots in the works, including at least one that was imminent.

IMMINENT! Wow. We almost all died from an imminent plot. Except that it didn’t happen.

Speaking of imminent, their ineptness is apparent here:

The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told AP.

Right okay.

Here’s more:

Law enforcement officials said in retrospect the FBI believes it should have accelerated the suggested check of U.S. flight schools after Moussaoui’s arrest but does not believe it would have led to the hijackers.

Maybe so.

This is how bad the problem was, even though it was being ignored:

At least one hijacker on each of the four planes was trained at a U.S. flight school, Tucker said. The Times said authorities believe 27 suspected terrorists received pilot training.

Seems like a small number, I guess, but these are people who never want ANY TERRORISTS on US soil. Because that’s bad. If they’re jailed anyway. If they’re free to do whatever, we’ll just be idiots.

And then, this:

Ashcroft said numerous promising leads were being followed up. “The Department of Justice has undertaken perhaps the most massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in this country,” he said. Ashcroft said all possible federal personnel and resources have been committed to the investigation, including thousands of agents and support personnel.

Ooh! And I guess now we’ve seen the results of this investigation by the DoJ. Tortured false confessions, expansion of federal powers even when information was obtained through legal means, ineptness at almost every level, allowing some plots to go unsolved and some terrorists to go without trials – which could lead to more discovery of more information, torture and homicide and all that stuff, and whatever else we don’t know about yet.

All of that happened but none of it made anyone safer and it conclusively made it more difficult to keep America safe. And they’re worried about prisoners.

Jesse Ventura Body Slams Fox & Friends Over Torture

From RawReplay today:

Ventura takes waterboarding ‘school’ to Fox & Friends

A day after talking about waterboarding on ABC’s The View, Jesse Ventura took his case for prosecuting torture to Fox News.



“You are worried about [the terrorists’] welfare,” accused Fox’s Brian Kilmeade.

“No. I’m not worried about their welfare. I’m worried about what our country stands for,” Ventura responded.

This video is from Fox’s Fox & Friends, broadcast May 19, 2009.

My name is Inky99 and I am banned at Dailykos

I was banned at Dailykos a couple of days ago, for writing two-in-a-row recommended diarires, one which pointed out how much of the 9/11 Commission Report’s “information” was obtained through torture and which is therefore completely unreliable, and the other about an upcoming book written by a Commission Report insider in which he claims that the entire Report is “almost entirely untrue”.

The Bush Administration Skeleton Key – Fear.

There is always the need, when one is looking at something complex and sprawling, to have a skeleton key, a filter that brings the overall arch of the story into focus whenever you get lost in the myriad details. For the last 8 years we have not had enough information about the actions of the Bush administration to develop such a skeleton key, this, however, has now changed. It turns out there is a single unifying factor which runs from August 2001 to January 20th 2009; fear.  

THE history as it should be remembered

There are plenty of good diaries, essays and articles about the timeline of torture.  Let’s remember this history, THE history, as it should be remembered.

More after the fold…

Thermite Explosive Cutting Agent Found In 9/11 WTC Catastrophe Dust Samples

Crossposted from Antemedius

From RawStory, Saturday April 4, 2009:

A team of scientists claim to have unearthed startling data from dust and debris gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Note: Abstract here… full .pdf here – 9.88mb

In a study published by the Open Chemical Physics Journal – a peer-reviewed, scientific publication – Steven E. Jones and Niels Harrit [Affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen] level a stark allegation: that within the dust and rubble of the World Trade Center towers lays evidence of “a highly engineered explosive,” contrary to all federal studies of the collapses.

“We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center,” reads the paper’s abstract. “One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).”

They claim their analysis has uncovered “active thermitic material”: a combination of elemental aluminum and iron oxide in form of thermite known as “nanostructured super-thermite.”

Gen. David Petraeus and envoy Richard Holbrooke

Last night the News Hour carried a report and the discussion with Petraeus and Holbrooke.

This is the site page link where you’ll find the transcript as well as the links for audio and video.

This link will give you their Video Player to watch from here.

There is No win in this now debacle. One thing about warfare these last couple of decades, outside of the bloviated power hawks talking tough to each other as others are sent to do the actual fighting, is every invasion turns to Guerilla Insurgency. It’s lost as soon as the Bombs start dropping, the Missiles Destroy, the Military Invades, ‘Hearts and Minds’ turn to Hate as their countries are destroyed but more important as their Loved Ones and Friends and Fellow Citizens are Blown To Bits or Cut Down by the Bullets Sprayed, than add in the arrests of Innocents, the Blackhole Worldwide Prisons and most of all Torture, Innocents become Enemies Real Fast, Real Fast! They either fight back or support those who do! It becomes an extreme uphill battle to win back a majority of those ‘Hearts and Minds’!!

Just ask yourself “What would you do if you were them?”!

Just think how many here felt after 9/11 and how that was used to kill and destroy many times over since!

Afghanistan stopped being about 9/11, in their eyes and the worlds eyes and minds as soon as the drums started beating towards Iraq. Security and money Stopped coming in to Stabilizes after the Taliban were removed and al Qaeda were forced to run, It Became The Quagmire That Exists Today and has expanded into Pakistan thus Inflaming the whole region even more!

Can stability be brought back, it’s possible, but the Hate will be Deeply Embedded, especially in the children growing up in the destruction and death, the ones that survive, and will linger for their decades of life!!

The only way a Guerilla Insurgency ends is on their time Not The Occupiers, but it than can be inflamed when policy is perceived  to be against those common folks, and they’ve got the fighting experience!!!!!!!

Just an added note, the Escalation, not ‘surge’, did not bring down the death and destruction in Iraq, the Iraqi people, sects, did. And that situation is a match just waiting to relight at anytime, the world can only dampen that match so it doesn’t until the Iraqi’s decide. We destroyed that Pandora’s Box, it’s up to us to try and help rebuild a new one but only if they want the help, and ours is shit in that country, others will fill the void!!  

9/11: of Use and Abuse

Cross posted from The Wild Wild Left as yesterday’s Open Thread. My husband opined it was “crass” of me to post this yesterday, but perfectly acceptable today. Hence, the delay.

I have a problem not unlike the one that got KO fired. 9/11 gets dragged out and almost celebrated by the fear-mongering right. It is a tragedy that gets relived over and over by a populace that had rarely know large-scale tragedies on its soil. I find the way they use it is abusive, true abuse in both the misuse fashion and the masochistic type.

2,974 dead. I remember my horror, my tears as it occurred.

4,076 Americans dead due to their being sent to invade Iraq for a crime Iraq did not commit.

1,255,026 Iraqis dead. Where is the horror for their deaths, the remembrance ceremonies for those who had their lives taken in retribution for something they had no part in?

It brings to mind what John Trudell said (not just in Thunderheart, but in real life when Leonard Peltier was framed.) “Sometimes they just HAVE to kill us. They have to make someone pay.”

Iraq is the biggest patsy ever created, created mostly for profit.

Seven Years

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

This morning in Columbia County, New York the sky was blue.  I took the faithful retriever dog for a walk in the fields.  The golden rod is in bloom, and there are wild asters.  American milkweed is in its cotton phase.  It was September 11.

When I walk I am aware of my breathing.  I am aware of my feelings.  I am aware of my thoughts.  Today I felt sad.  I didn’t know why.  I was aware of my breathing and my feelings and my thoughts.  I remembered where I was and what I did seven years ago.  It was September 11.

I remembered watching the film of the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again.  The people who escaped or survived the fire and the collapse of the building probably are still shocked.  And all of us who watched the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again.  We were shocked.  Maybe all of us who watched have post traumatic stress disorder.  Maybe we’re a nation of people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you’re filled with inescapable horror and can’t do anything about it.  After all, it was September 11.

I remembered sitting in the hot tub with all the lights off.  Abundant stars.  No airplanes.  Silence.  A tiny person on a tiny planet sitting in a hot tub listening to the crickets.  It was September 11.

I’m walking in high golden rod.  Thankfully, there are a few bees.  There are some monarch butterflies.  There are the usual birds who live in bushes.  But  as I walk I feel like one of the many children whose parents are getting divorced who assume that the reason the divorce happened has something to do with them, something, they don’t know what it is, but it had to have something to do with them, didn’t it?  But, I think, the attack did have something to do with me didn’t it?  Some people say it did.  Some people say it’s the chickens of the empire coming home to roost.  And I had something to do with the chickens, didn’t I?  We’re all interconnected, the poultry and me.  This connection is so remote, so far away, so ungraspable, so unfathomable.  I couldn’t figure it out. It didn’t make sense to me.  Sometimes things just don’t make sense. After all, it was September 11.

The dog decided to go for a swim.  I am aware of my breathing.  I am aware of my feelings.  I am aware of my thoughts. The dog and I decided to walk home.  I gave her a treat.  The sky was perfectly blue.  It was just like that day seven years ago. Except there were airplanes in the sky today.  But my country continues to suffer from its post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you’re filled with inescapable horror and can’t do anything about it.

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