1. “Senator Bob Graham: The CIA Made Up Two Briefing Sessions
Bob Graham just appeared on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. In addition to repeating earlier reports that he was never briefed on waterboarding, Graham revealed that the first time he asked the CIA when he was briefed on torture, it claimed it had briefed him on two dates when no briefing took place.
I didn’t get Graham’s exact quotes (and the quotes below are rough approximations), but when asked to respond to Philip Zelikow’s assertion that members of Congress from both parties had been briefed on this program, Graham said that when he asked the CIA when he had been briefed on the program, the CIA gave him the dates of four briefings, two in April 2002 and two in September 2002, when they claimed they had briefed him about the program. But after Graham consulted his own records, he pointed out that on two of those dates, he had not attended any briefing. After Graham pointed this out to the CIA, they conceded their own dates were incorrect.
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The really damning thing, though, is the first point: CIA claimed Graham had been briefed on two days when no briefing occurred, which is not dissimilar from their claims that Jello Jay was briefed on February 4, 2003 when he didn’t attend the briefing in question.
The CIA is just making shit up about these briefings, even to the point of claiming there were briefings when none occurred. Can we set aside, now, the notion that the CIA’s own version of what it told Congress when has any credibility in the least?“
2. The problem with mainstream media:
“Corporate news, AKA mainstream media, seems to offer little besides reinforcing the artificial antagonisms of the transnational corporate divide-and-conquer strategy, parroting official government propaganda and being the stooge for the mindless consumption of unnecessary junk.
Never has it been more important to search out trustworthy independent news sources. Local media such as community radio and public access TV along with the Internet thankfully provides such resources.
Whenever a handful of citizens band together to get out an important message at their own expense, that alone becomes newsworthy. Truth Action Ottawa stepped up and takes their message directly to the public.
Of course mainstream media obeys their corporate masters and does their best in marginalizing, disparaging and discounting independent local media. After all, authentic news threatens not only the advertising revenues of mainstream media but also the distortions and disinformation intended to keep people pacified obedient fodder for the status quo.
Seeking societal roles outside of those proscribed by dogmatic institutions signifies both individual freedom and the reclamation of the wealth we share in common. Cooperation, collaboration and communication creates the foundation of the common.“
http://www.911blogger.com/node/20089
3. “There are many bizarre aspects to Obama’s decision to try to suppress evidence of America’s detainee abuse, beginning with the newfound willingness of so many people to say: ”We want our leaders to suppress information that reflects poorly on what our government does.” One would think that it would be impossible to train a citizenry to be grateful to political officials for concealing evidence of government wrongdoing, or to accept the idea that evidence that reflects poorly on the conduct of political leaders should, for that reason alone, be covered-up: “Obama and his military commanders decide when it’s best that we’re kept in the dark, and I’m thankful when they keep from me things that reflect poorly on my government because I trust them to decide what I should and should not know.” It’s the fantasy of every political leader to have a citizenry willing to think that way (“I know it’s totally unrealistic, but wouldn’t it be great if we could actually convince people that it’s for their own good when we cover-up evidence of government crimes?”).
But what is ultimately even more amazing is the claim that suppressing these photographs is necessary to prevent an inflammation of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world generally and Afghanistan specifically.
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We’re currently occupying two Muslim countries. We’re killing civilians regularly (as usual) — with airplanes and unmanned sky robots. We’re imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims with no trial, for years. Our government continues to insist that it has the power to abduct people — virtually all Muslim — ship them to Bagram, put them in cages, and keep them there indefinitely with no charges of any kind. We’re denying our torture victims any ability to obtain justice for what was done to them by insisting that the way we tortured them is a “state secret” and that we need to “look to the future.” We provide Israel with the arms and money used to do things like devastate Gaza. Independent of whether any or all of these policies are justifiable, the extent to which those actions “inflame anti-American sentiment” is impossible to overstate.
And now, the very same people who are doing all of that are claiming that they must suppress evidence of our government’s abuse of detainees because to allow the evidence to be seen would “inflame anti-American sentiment.” It’s not hard to believe that releasing the photos would do so to some extent — people generally consider it a bad thing to torture and brutally abuse helpless detainees — but compared to everything else we’re doing, the notion that releasing or concealing these photos would make an appreciable difference in terms of how we’re perceived in the Muslim world is laughable on its face.
Moreover, isn’t it rather obvious that Obama’s decision to hide this evidence — certain to be a prominent news story in the Muslim world, and justifiably so — will itself inflame anti-American sentiment? It’s not exactly a compelling advertisement for the virtues of transparency, honesty and open government. What do you think the impact is when we announce to the world: ”What we did is so heinous that we’re going to suppress the evidence?” Some Americans might be grateful to Obama for hiding evidence of what we did to detainees, but that is unlikely to be the reaction of people around the world.
If we’re actually worried about inflaming anti-American sentiment and endangering our troops, we might want to re-consider whether we should keep doing the things that actually spawn “anti-American sentiment” and put American soldiers in danger. We might, for instance, want to stop invading, bombing and occupying Muslim countries and imprisoning their citizens with no charges by the thousands. But exploiting concerns over “anti-American sentiment” to vest our own government leaders with the power to cover-up evidence of wrongdoing is as incoherent as it is dangerous. Who actually thinks that the solution to anti-American sentiment is to hide evidence of our wrongdoing rather than ceasing the conduct that causes that sentiment in the first place?“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
4. “Who Rules America?
A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.
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Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population..
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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22611.htm
5. “Did Newly Announced Top Afghan General Run Cheney’s Assassination Wing?
It was reported on Tuesday that Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal will be taking over command of US forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate approval.
McChrystal is presently director of the Joint Chiefs staff, but from September 2003 to August 2008, he headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees such elite units as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy SEALs.
Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently described the JSOC as an “executive assassination wing” controlled for many years by the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Speaking to a University of Minnesota audience in March, Hersh called JSOC “a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. … They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it. … It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.”
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Fred Kaplan at Slate and Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish have already noted Task Force 121′s involvement in harsh interrogations and General McChrystal’s apparent protection of the abuses. Hopefully, these questions about McChrystal will not be overlooked during his confirmation hearings.”
