Bush supporters' aftermath thread II

Foxfyre blames the media? It has been fashionable in some circles on the right to blame the media for its supposed leftward lean, but that is far from the truth. Who owns the New York Times and the Washington Post?

Jewish capitalists and entrepreneurs--that's who. Who owns Time Magazine and the major TV channels? It's not the common people. They are owned by the super rich who are hardly going to set up a process which will hurt the conservative cause. From time to time, just to make it look good, they will make a few efforts in the direction of the left but it is a scam. One has only to look at the massive contributions made to the political fundraisers by these same people who own and control the media.

Foxfyre blames the media? It has been fashionable in some circles on the right to blame the media for its supposed leftward lean, but that is far from the truth. Who owns the New York Times and the Washington Post?

Jewish capitalists and entrepreneurs--that's who. Who owns Time Magazine and the major TV channels? It's not the common people. They are owned by the super rich who are hardly going to set up a process which will hurt the conservative cause. From time to time, just to make it look good, they will make a few efforts in the direction of the left but it is a scam. One has only to look at the massive contributions made to the political fundraisers by these same people who own and control the media.

Ticomaya wrote:

Stradee wrote:

Save For November

Pin this on your frig so you don't forget to take it to the polls with you in November. Here's who voted for Bush's Enabling Act in the Senate. These votes provided terrorists their biggest win in the war so far. They have succeeded in getting us to abandon the founding principle -- "Justice for All," upon which America was founded. Shame, shame, shame!

The NOT Justice for All - Senate 65

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
<snip>

Stradee, the choir you're trying to preach to is WAAAAAY over there ...

stradee

This really doesn't appear to be about terrorism at all. Had 9/11 not happened, this administration would have desired a similar level of authoritarian control, but would have been pressed to find some PR mechanism (some trumpeted external/internal threat) to facilitate that characteristic of their personalities.

Marion, I suggest you sleep with Ted Turner. I hear he likes twelve year old girls.

Foxfyre wrote:

Nobody advocates torture or trampling on people's civil rights.

Nobody advocates it. Still, it's happening all the time. Weird, isn't it?

Interrogators say torture is counterproductive
By RACHEL DRY
The Washington Post


President Bush's advocacy of "alternative interrogation practices" in the fight against terrorism has moved beyond legality and morality to practicality.

"The information that the Central Intelligence Agency has obtained by questioning men like Khalid Sheik Mohammed has provided valuable information and has helped disrupt terrorist plots, including strikes within the United States," Bush said in a Sept. 15 news conference. "By giving us information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives. In other words, it is vital."

In a recent statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, a group of former Army interrogators disagreed. "Prisoner/detainee abuse and torture are to be avoided at all costs, in part because they can degrade the intelligence collection effort by interfering with a skilled interrogator's efforts to establish rapport with the subject," they wrote.

We spoke with three of the signers about their experience as interrogators and why they signed.

Chief Warrant Officer Marney Mason (retired)

I've been doing the interrogation thing since the early 1970s. I was a Cold War interrogator in Europe in the 1970s and '80s, and I've trained interrogators at Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, N.C. -- teaching them how to conduct interrogations and how to resist them. In some training sessions, I've even administered mild forms of torture. And I think anyone who believes torture is a useful means of extracting information has been watching too many Sly Stallone movies.

A good interrogation is like a seduction. You sit down. You ask the person questions. You try to develop a very intense personal relationship with another human being so they'll part with information they'd rather not part with. You wheedle, cajole, trick, lie. The point is to collect usable, actionable information. Sure, if you start pulling a guy's fingernails out, he'll start talking -- it may not be the truth, but he's going to tell you exactly what you want to hear.

In a training environment (a mock prisoner-of-war camp), my students would be subjected to hostile forms of interrogations: loud noises, fake burials, 15- to 20-volt electric shocks. And I got people to confess to things that they absolutely did not do. The information you receive is worthless.

Peter Bauer, Army interrogator, 1986-1997

I conducted interrogation operations and training, and served as an interrogator near the front lines during Operation Desert Storm. When prisoners of high intelligence value were captured, they were brought to me immediately. I often just glared at them and in a stern voice asked their name, their rank, their unit affiliation, and then questions related to the intelligence collection mission. Direct questioning is usually effective.

With the [Iraqi] Republican Guard officers, I had to use some of the approaches from the field manual. I used "love of comrades" a couple of times: I would tell somebody, "You know that if you can help us end this war sooner, fewer of your own people will die." When I saw them, they were still reeling from the shock of battle and capture. You should never underestimate the power of one's own imagination to create danger.

If you ask, "Do you know what can happen to you under the Geneva Conventions if you don't tell me your name?" the answer is "nothing." But that question put to somebody who's not familiar with the Conventions just opens up doors in their mind. Most terrorists should be no more difficult to interrogate than other fanatics we've dealt with -- including Viet Cong, Soviet spies and Iraqi Republican Guard officers.

I know the techniques in the field manual work, and I know torture isn't as effective. I was stationed in Europe almost all of my career, and I did resistance-to-interrogation training for NATO forces. We simulated the sort of abuse they could expect should they fall into the hands of the Warsaw Pact. This treatment is quite similar to the sort of techniques described as the CIA's "alternative interrogation procedures."

We invariably obtained more reliable information using our own techniques than we did using the abusive procedures. I cannot name one instance in which abuse was successful after standard interrogation techniques failed.

Travis W. Hall, former Army interrogator and captain in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps

Over my 14 years of military experience, both as an interrogator and as a JAG, I observed a degradation in the respect of service members for the laws of war since 9/11. When I attended interrogation school in 1992, all the attendees had 40 hours of classroom time on the Geneva Conventions followed by a written exam on all the rights and obligations of the military personnel under the Conventions.

What I saw firsthand as an interrogator and, later, as a JAG in Iraq in 2003 working on detainee issues, has left me with a strong belief that torture is counterproductive. What has proven effective in interrogation, time and again, regardless of what culture the detainee is from, is building a positive relationship with an individual.

Americans really want their soldiers to not only come home, but come home with honor.

I have yet to talk to any soldier, marine, or airman returning from over there who participated in or witnessed anything they were not proud to be part of. Unfounded innuendo and suggestion does not afford them the respect that they deserve, and they highly resent it.

I have yet to talk to any soldier, marine, or airman returning from over there who participated in or witnessed anything they were not proud to be part of.

Why the old soldiers are attacking Bush
By Charles Kaiser
Special to the Los Angeles Times


For one 83-year-old veteran of World War II, it was the searing memory of a Japanese prisoner who helped turn the tide on Iwo Jima. For a 40-year veteran of Army intelligence, it was a trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg. For all 43 retired generals and admirals, it was a combination of moral outrage and deep disgust over President Bush's proposed legislation on interrogating terrorist suspects that propelled them into unfamiliar territory.
"None of us feels comfortable speaking out publicly," said retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000 and presided over the JAG corps' 1,600 members. "That's not the nature of what military officers do ... (But we) care very, very much about the country and the military -- and that's why (we) are speaking out."

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_4400019

The Revolt Against Rumsfeld
The officer corps is getting restless.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006, at 6:07 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2139777/

Foxfyre wrote:

I have yet to talk to any soldier, marine, or airman returning from over there who participated in or witnessed anything they were not proud to be part of.

One really ought to ask; "Are you brain dead?" ... but I'll resist the temptation.

Quote:

Why the old soldiers are attacking Bush
By Charles Kaiser
Special to the Los Angeles Times


For one 83-year-old veteran of World War II, it was the searing memory of a Japanese prisoner who helped turn the tide on Iwo Jima. For a 40-year veteran of Army intelligence, it was a trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg. For all 43 retired generals and admirals, it was a combination of moral outrage and deep disgust over President Bush's proposed legislation on interrogating terrorist suspects that propelled them into unfamiliar territory.
"None of us feels comfortable speaking out publicly," said retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000 and presided over the JAG corps' 1,600 members. "That's not the nature of what military officers do ... (But we) care very, very much about the country and the military -- and that's why (we) are speaking out."

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_4400019

Quote:

The Revolt Against Rumsfeld
The officer corps is getting restless.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006, at 6:07 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2139777/

A great nephew just back from Iraq was not happy about going and was one who was pretty down on the war. After six months active duty he is back and volunteering to go back. He said it was nothing like what we see in the papers and he is now convinced the US media is mostly distorting it.

Foxfyre wrote:

A great nephew just back from Iraq was not happy about going and was one who was pretty down on the war. After six months active duty he is back and volunteering to go back. He said it was nothing like what we see in the papers and he is now convinced the US media is mostly distorting it.

If you don't mind telling : what US media does your great nephew get the bulk of his information from?

... but I presume he reads the same newspapers and watches the same television available to everybody else here since he lives and works here.

October 02, 2006
Clinton's Flawed Legacy
By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- A week after Bill Clinton lashed out at anchor Chris Wallace's questioning on "Fox News Sunday," prominent Democrats were still debating among themselves whether the former president's performance was good or bad for their party. However, they all disregarded a harsh but widely overlooked rebuke of Clinton the next morning.

On Sunday, Clinton assailed Wallace for "your nice little conservative hit job on me" in questioning his determination as president to get Osama bin Laden. On CBS's "Early Show" Monday, the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit during the Clinton administration, Michael Scheuer, said the al Qaeda leader "is alive today" because Clinton and his top lieutenants refused to kill him. "It's just an incredible kind of situation," said Scheuer, "for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them."

Scheuer's blunt remonstrance goes to the heart of what probably impelled Clinton's finger-pointing on national television. Rather than attempting to shape the midterm campaign, as Republicans believe, he was interested in protecting his legacy. No former president in the last half-century has seemed so sensitive to critical assessments of his tenure.

That was demonstrated in the recent New Yorker article about Clinton by the magazine's editor, David Remnick. He reported a 20-minute Clinton tirade, at a dinner with virtual strangers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, about the Whitewater investigation that led to his impeachment. Earlier, Remnick described Clinton as "infuriated by the way the [Bush] administration's rhetoric painted anyone who criticized any aspect of its policy in Iraq as weak on national security."

Clinton grows doubly infuriated by implication of such weakness by him during his presidency. Although the intensity of his outburst against Wallace was unplanned, Clinton was ready to upbraid anybody who questioned his performance. Unexpected by the former president was a rebuttal, not by a Republican partisan, but a CIA professional never confused with being a Bush acolyte.

Scheuer resigned from the CIA in 2004 after 22 years' service to publish, at first anonymously, "Imperial Hubris" -- a withering assault on performances by both Clinton and Bush. As a critic of Israel and Saudi Arabia alike, Scheuer fits no conventional ideological mold.

In his role of CBS News terrorism analyst, Scheuer was asked Monday to comment on Clinton's Sunday performance and provided more than his questioner apparently bargained for. To claim that the CIA could not verify that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, said Scheuer, "the former president seems able to deny facts with impunity."

Scheuer continued: "He defames the CIA . . . and the men and women who risked their lives to give their administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden." Asked whether Bush was no less responsible for letting bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, Scheuer replied: "The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton administration had eight to 10 chances that they refused to try. At least at Tora Bora, our forces were on the ground."

What Clinton as president did or did not do about bin Laden is less relevant to Democratic politicians than its impact on the midterm elections. While most applauded the former president for energizing Democratic voters, one of the party's shrewdest strategists told me it was a mistake to remove political focus from the biggest Republican liability: the war in Iraq.

Republican insiders, meanwhile, saw a Democratic plot, mapped by Clinton's longtime political advisers, James Carville and Paul Begala, to blunt the GOP comeback. On NBC's "Today" program, they agreed that their chief had just stiffened the backbone of Democrats. "Good Dr. Clinton gave us a spinal transplant on Sunday," Begala exulted.

Actually, Scheuer delivered a message that is uncongenial to Democrats and Republicans alike: "Both President Bush and President Clinton have been very misleading to the American people, telling them we're at war because of our freedoms and our liberties and because of gender equality and because of elections. None of that is true. We're at war because of what we do in the Islamic world." Those words go unheard by politicians seeking advantage in the midterm elections.