5 Pct Prisoners Released Returned to Fight against U.S.

(AP) - The Pentagon says about 5 percent of terror suspects released from the U.S. navy prison at Guantanamo Bay so far have returned to the fight against the U.S. and its allies. Data released Tuesday suggests that an additional 9 percent of freed Guantanamo detainees are suspected to have rejoined what the Pentagon defines as terrorist activity.

In all, 74 of approximately 540 detainees that have been released have either returned or are believed to have returned to the fight.

Hm’mmm.  I see no mention that these 74 prisoners were released during the presidency of George W. Bush and the vice presidency of Dick Cheney — do you?

Petraeus Sides With Obama on Guantanamo

In an appearance on Radio Free Europe on Sunday, General David Petraeus said the following:

“I think, on balance, that those moves help [us],” said the chief of U.S. Central Command. “In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.

“With respect to Guantanamo,” Petraeus added, “I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice — I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary — again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.”

While I appreciate his support for Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo and his pointing out that Obama’s team is dealing with those prisoners in a “responsible way”, I have to make a statement about what Petraeus says about using torture.

As the man points out, he was Division Commander in Iraq in the early days and before that, in 2004, he became the first commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq. This newly-created command had responsibility for training, equipping, and mentoring Iraq’s growing Army, Police, and other security forces as well as developing Iraq’s security institutions and building associated infrastructure, such as training bases, police stations, and border forts.

The famous abu ghraib abuses were reported in 2004.

Was he one of those in command that passed down the new so-called ‘laws’ made by the Bush/Cheney administration, allowing for waterboarding and enhanced interrogations?  Did he authorize those at abu ghraib to abuse those prisoners?  The command had to come from somewhere beside the White House.  It went down the chain of command as all the rules do.

**********************************************************

Colin Powell (another man I don’t trust because of the way he sat by while Bush/Cheney pushed for war in Iraq without letting Americans know the whole truth; but others do trust him so..), made some very good points this weekend by saying:

“Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama’s policy, he is disagreeing with President Bush’s policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantanamo.”

He also said:

“Mr. Cheney the other day said, well, we’re doing it to satisfy European intellectuals or something like that. No,” said Powell. “We’re doing it to reassure Europeans, Muslims, Arabs, all the people around the world that we are a nation of law. It isn’t so much Guantanamo. It’s the people at Guantanamo. How do we deal with them? We can’t keep them locked up forever. This business about making the country less safe by bringing these people to our prison system, we have got two million people in jail in America, the highest incarceration rate in the world. And they all had lawyers. They all had access to the writ of habeas corpus and they’re all in jail. I don’t know… if you’ve ever seen some of these prison reality shows on television where they show you what a super lock-up is. I’m not terribly worried about one of these guys going to a super lock-up.”

Krugman Back Tracking Before He Looks Completely Wrong!

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – The world economy has avoided “utter catastrophe” and industrialized countries could register growth this year, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Monday.

“I will not be surprised to see world trade stabilize, world industrial production stabilize and start to grow two months from now,” Krugman told a seminar.

“I would not be surprised to see flat to positive GDP growth in the United States, and maybe even in Europe, in the second half of the year.”

Looks like even the so called experts can be wrong from time to time.

Paul  Krugman seems to be ’seeing’ the light from his doom’s day scenario and has decided to change his tune before he’s made out to look as though he was completely off the mark with respects to our economy and how President Barack Obama’s administration was handling the situation.

He even seems to be praising Obama’s idea of capping greenhouse gases as a way to kick in part of a recovery:

“Legislation that will establish a capping grade system for greenhouse gases’ emissions is moving forward,” he said, referring to the U.S. Congress.

“When the Europeans probably follow suit, and the Japanese, and negotiations begin with developing countries to work them into the system, that will provide enormous incentive for businesses to start investing and prepare for the new regime on emissions… But that’s a hope, that’s not a certainty.“

I hope this time next year we’ll be hearing Krugman admit that he was completely wrong and that the Obama team actually ‘did’ know what they were doing.

The Future Soldier:

Aided by “smart drugs,” enhanced with prosthetics, and protected by a lightweight suit of armor, this soldier of the future possesses near super-human capabilities and weapons that would make even Iron Man jealous. He’s suited up in an “exoskeleton” – essentially a Storm Trooper-esque external shell – that allows him to carry heavy loads. Electronics integrated in his outfit allow for simultaneous language translation, automatic identification of potential foes, and video-game-like targeting. If the soldier is tired, overworked, or injured, neural and physiological sensors automatically send an alert to headquarters.

This is pretty cool.  Too bad they can’t have this capability right now.  I’ve always felt it was the ‘dreamer’ that predicted our future.  Star wars was an example.  The creators of that show caused many experts to begin thinking of what ‘could be’.

Former Senior Interrogator – Shows Cheney’s Lies

Matthew Alexander

As a senior interrogator in Iraq (and a former criminal investigator), there was a lesson I learned that served me well: there’s more to be learned from what someone doesn’t say than from what they do say. Let me dissect former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech on National Security using this model and my interrogation skills….

Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq….

Torture and abuse became Al Qaida’s number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives….

Secondly, the former vice president, in saying that waterboarding is not torture, never mentions the fact that it was the United States and its Allies, during the Tokyo Trials, that helped convict a Japanese soldier for war crimes for waterboarding one of Jimmie Doolittle’s Raiders….

Thirdly, the former vice president never mentioned the Senate testimony of Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator who successfully interrogated Abu Zubaydah and learned the identity of Jose Padilla, the dirty bomber, and the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) was the mastermind behind 9/11. We’ll never know what more we could have discovered from Abu Zubaydah had not CIA contractors taken over the interrogations and used waterboarding and other harsh techniques….

Finally, the point that is most absent is that our greatest success in this conflict was achieved without torture or abuse. My interrogation team found Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq and murderer of tens of thousands. We did this using relationship-building approaches and non-coercive law enforcement techniques….

What will it take for Americans to wake up.  Who best would know WHAT is torture and WHICH techniques really do work, but an actual interrogator.

Mancow: Conservative Radio Host Decides, “Absolutely Torture”

Erich “Mancow” Muller, a Chicago-based conservative radio host, recently decided to silence critics of waterboarding once and for all. He would undergo the procedure himself, and then he would be able to confidently convince others that it is not, in fact, torture.

Or so he thought. Instead, Muller came out convinced.

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow said. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back… It was instantaneous… and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face… I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ “

Now it’s Sean Hannity’s turn to prove it’s — not torture!

Hannity a Fox News anchor, promised to subject himself  to waterboarding to benefit a charity for the families of U.S. soldiers back on April 22nd.  This was over a month ago.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s Countdown, even offered to donate $1000 per second Hannity undergoes waterboarding torture.

Hannity has yet to do it.

Goes to show you exactly how much he really cares about our soldiers and their families –zilch!

What’s really odd is — the mainstream media isn’t reporting this story about Mancow undergoing TORTURE!

Waterboarding is Torture: Not Enhanced Interrogation

John McCain’s views on Vice President Cheney’s torture speech yesterday:

In an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and in an interview on Fox News Senator John McCain tells his views about Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday and about his views on waterboarding.

Daisy Video vs Abu Ghraib Video

The GOP are using scare tactics once again to stop President Obama from bringing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to our U.S. prisons (prisons that currently hold over 300 other terrorists that the GOP have ignored for the decades).

The GOP has brought back the famous Daisy commercial once used to scare Americans  by LBJ to defeat Barry Goldwater.

The advertisement begins with a little girl (Birgitte Olsen) standing in a meadow with chirping birds, picking the petals of what appears to be a daisy (according to Olsen it was a Black-eyed Susan[1]) while counting each petal slowly. (Because she does not know her numbers perfectly, she repeats some and says others in the wrong order, all of which adds to her childlike appeal.) When she reaches “nine”, an ominous-sounding male voice is then heard counting down a missile launch, and as the girl’s eyes turn toward something she sees in the sky, the camera zooms in until her pupil fills the screen, blacking it out. When the countdown reaches zero, the blackness is replaced by the flash and mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

The Democratic Party should immediately create a video of their own depicting the famous Abu Ghraib prison abuse.  They should show some of the worse photos of abuse and then show segments of all the reports that say these actions by President Bush, Vice President Cheney’s Administration and the GOP put today’s little girls and boys — and the rest of us — at even greater risk than we were in –before 9/11.

Where were the GOP when we held trials against those terrorists that are either currently serving out their prison sentences in the U.S. or those we’ve put to death, like…..Show photos of these terrorists (Timothy McVeigh, Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad and Salameh, etc..)?

Where were people currently complaining about the closing of Guantanamo Bay like Newt Gingrich, back when Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad and Salameh were being convicted and sent to our prisons back in 1993?  Did they warn Americans that these prisoners would be housed in their back yards?  NOPE – not a peep came from them!

UPDATE:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because “the name itself is a condemnation” of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy.

In an interview broadcast Friday on NBC’s “Today” show, Gates called the facility on the island of Cuba “probably one of the finest prisons in the world today.” But at the same time, he said it had become “a taint” on the reputation of America.

Gates has served both President George W. Bush and now Barack Obama at the Pentagon. In an interview taped Thursday aboard the retired World War II-era battleship USS Intrepid, the defense secretary said that once the decision was made to close Guantanamo, “the question is, where do you put them?” He said Obama would do nothing to endanger the public and said there has never been an escape from a “super-max” prison in this country.

Obama: Let Those that Allowed War Crimes Judge Our Values?

Don’t you just love hearing how our Congressional members will be examining the treatment of detainees?  The very same people that are currently arguing and making accusations against one another as to who knew what and when.  The fox stands guard over the hens.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is already pursuing an investigation into interrogation of detainees, having examined the treatment of two “high value” detainees. “We have adopted a scope of work; we have hired independent staff. They are intelligence professionals and we will be doing this look back, which will probably take 6, 8 months,” Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said.

Do you know what “scope of work” means?  It means, “this is how deep you can look, go further and you risk your new job!”

President Barack Obama announced again today his feelings about investigating the past 8 years:

That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

“Congress can review abuses of our values..”? Come on Mr. President, you can do better than this.  Exactly what kind of Constitutional professor were you at that college you taught at?   You know darn well these people won’t ‘do’ anything, they all want to keep their jobs.

“The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.“ Attorney General won’t do anything, not after you shot down any ability for him to go after those that committed the war crimes in the first place.

Now you are hiding the additional photos proving once again that the prisoner abuse was more wide spread than first thought.

“When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November.” As far as the issue of ‘war crimes’ go sir, other than saying you won’t ‘torture’ — this is the only CORRECT statement you made since taking office.

Sir, would you “look forward” if one of you girls or your wife were raped and tortured?  Would you tell them to forget the past and ‘move on’?  Some how I doubt it.

Your speech today was as usual very well prepared.  I realize you think that you were ‘taking on’ people like Dick Cheney; but sir, what you consistently do is — you give into him and others like him by refusing to “Look Back” and correct our errors while at the same time declaring that Torture is illegal and a war crime and that we are a nation of laws.  You are contradicting yourself sir.

That’s like a judge telling a dependent, “You are guilty of murder; but because I think we should look forward instead of looking back at your crime — I won’t punish you.”

Wake up Mr President before it’s too late.  You may be honorable in what you say about torturing and the rule of law; but the next president of United States, may not be.

President Obama’s National Security Speech Today

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

I have a few comments about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech today.  I won’t be displaying his speech on my website because the man doesn’t deserve a special platform to spew his hate and fear mongering (he mentioned 9/11 a total of 21 times in just one speech today) anymore.  He blew his credibility while being VP.  90% of what he predicted over the past 8 years came out to be false.  What he has done to credit being shown live on cable during his speech is beyond many of us.

Mr. Vice President, if your torture program worked so well and if it’s the only thing that saved lives during your administration and if they were all legally used — why then– did you stop using them in 2005?

If we use your logic that President Obama by refusing to use water boarding/torture against our enemy – he is therefore making us less safe and risking lives — couldn’t we use that same logic showing that your administration also risked American lives because you stopped using that torture in 2005?

As for bringing prisoners into the U.S. causing Americans danger, we already have over 300 terrorists in our prisons across America – not one has escaped.  As for letting any of them go, Obama hasn’t let anybody ‘go’ and it was ‘your’ administration that released 80 of these terrorists from Grantanamo allowing some to return to fight another day with the terrorists against the U.S. again.