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Author Topic: Bush defends secret prisons
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 07 September 2006 04:17 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bush defends secret prisons

No surprize here. I listened to Monkey Boy on the news last night for as long as I could possibly take it without smashing my TV. God I hate this man, hate him, hate him. Here are a few choice clips from the mind of a psychopath:

quote:
Bush is expected to face opposition over his determination that classified information not be revealed to the accused as the government lays out its case and over his refusal to bar information that may have been obtained under coercion.

But by pledging justice for 14 men whom he said were dangerous and wanted to kill Americans, he is daring legislators to deny a day in court for families who lost loved ones in the terror attacks almost five years ago.

"The families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice,'' Bush said.

"They should have to wait no longer.''


Oh, now he suddenly gives a rats ass about the people who died!

quote:
Bush went into unprecedented detail on what the U.S. intelligence community was able to glean from interrogation of these and other detainees.

"These are dangerous men, with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans of new attacks,'' Bush said.

"The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know."

The president claimed that intelligence received from the "high-value'' suspects foiled another attack on the U.S. homeland.

When The Washington Post first revealed the so-called CIA black sites, the Bush administration reacted with anger and threatened to prosecute journalists who revealed classified information.


quote:
He insisted the detainees have been treated humanely but declined to offer specifics on where they had been held. Europe's main human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, found that 20 countries, including Poland and Romania, helped to facilitate the CIA-run prisons.

"Information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior Al Qaeda member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since this program began," Bush said.

"This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill."


What a disgusting waste of flesh.


From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
bigcitygal
Volunteer Moderator
Babbler # 8938

posted 07 September 2006 05:13 AM      Profile for bigcitygal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stargazer, I don't know how you can stand listening to him, but we have to know what he's yammering on about. And who's buying it.

And, just for reference for future generations of USians: When the president has to "insist" that detainees have been treated humanely, you're way past the danger zone.

I hate him hate him hate him.

quote:

The new interrogation rules for the military come more than two years after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. They specifically rule out such degrading treatment as forcing detainees to be naked, to perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner, and to wear hoods over their head or duct tape over their eyes.

They also outlaw mock executions, the use of electrical shock, burning or the practice known as "water boarding'' in which suspects are made to believe they are drowning.

(snip)

"No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices,'' said Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence.


Aw! What a bunch of meanies! Of course, everything they've specifically outlined (and they sure are darned specific aren't they?) has already been done, duh. Probably continues. There's no reason it would have stopped, they've just gotten better at hiding evidence from journalists.

And that Lt. Gen. sure sounds like a wimpy bleeding heart liberal.

P.S. SG Your link doesn't work but I read it at thestar.com anyways. Blick.


From: It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent - Q | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 07 September 2006 05:50 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I am glad I am not the only one with such a passionate hateon for that freak and his band of merry murderers.

Fixed URL


From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7791

posted 07 September 2006 06:00 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bush, Chney, Rice, et al, need a taste of their own medicine.
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
bigcitygal
Volunteer Moderator
Babbler # 8938

posted 07 September 2006 10:02 AM      Profile for bigcitygal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stargazer, no, sister, you aren't alone. I just live in denial about Bush most of the time, so I don't contribute regularly to the "Bush is wack-job asshat fuckwad" themed-threads. The secret prisons and all the Gitmo crap hits me hard for some reason, especially at this time of year, when the bullshit patriotic blabla gets trotted out ad nauseum.

And Boom Boom, though I don't completely support your sentiment, if the whole lot of them were to be hit by a bus or something I wouldn't be sad. Especially if you throw Bush I into the mix.


From: It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent - Q | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 07 September 2006 10:37 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
When the president has to "insist" that detainees have been treated humanely, you're way past the danger zone.

In particular, if someone arrests you, or me, or Karl Rove, and places us in a secret prison for several years, so that neither relatives nor friends can know whether he is dead or alive, and where we, as detainees, cannot contest the reasons for our detention, that's already way inhumane.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
otter
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12062

posted 07 September 2006 12:45 PM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The secret prisons and all the Gitmo crap hits me hard for some reason, especially at this time of year, when the bullshit patriotic blabla gets trotted out ad nauseum.

There are many who are repulsed by this issue. How the hell Bush has buffaloed the U.N. into condoning the torture of these prisoners is beyond understanding.

Whether this is a technically a "war" or not is irrelevant. But a country like the u.s. of assholes where the ends always justifies the means, we should be prepared for many more human rights abuses to be uncovered in the coming years.


From: agent provocateur inc. | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
JazzerDude
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12178

posted 07 September 2006 02:10 PM      Profile for JazzerDude     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yet we Canadians are being folded into the paranoid daily by a constant onslaught of terror related news. Today's poll on globeandmail.com -

quote:
Do you think the CIA's secret prisons were necessary tools in the fight against terrorism?

Yes

14523 votes (51%) 14523 votes

No

14119 votes (49%) 14119 votes


That newspaper has been giving me the creeps lately whenever I read it @ work.


From: Ontario | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
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Babbler # 13076

posted 07 September 2006 02:58 PM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, folks, I can really identify with everything said here.

As someone who lived, worked, traveled and studied in the US for five years during the Reagan terror, I can tell you that country has never been even close to the BS claims it makes about itself in terms of democracy and prosperity.

Now, even what little freedom and government accountability that did exist there--which took decades of fighting by working class US citizens to win--is more and more rapidly being eroded.

As a freelance media/communications hack, I tend to blame the corporate media for playing the biggest role in helping make this possible.

US government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Pentagon, etc.) have always committed, or supported others in committing, destructive horrors everywhere. But I find that prior tot eh 1980s, this was done in absolute secret, mostly outside the country with non-US sources, often without the knowledge of the congress or even the President.

Now, it's being blatantly laid out and openly justified with nary a whimper in the media.

This, I think is not too much unlike Nazi Germany in the early 1930s, just after Hitler and the right-wing pro-big business coalition he led, snuck into office and began manufacturing terror campaigns and the supposed need to sacrifice liberties in order to combat them.

I fear history is repeating itself. Only this time it's worse. The Nazis had to put down immense public opposition to them (social democrats, trade unions, cooperatives, etc.). But the Bush Administration has no dedicated political opposition, and a very fragmented unorganized public one, that I fear can't stop what's happening.

I see South America is starting to rise up against the US-based corporate agenda, in the form of freely elected center-left governments.
And Europeans are making more and more noise about the US government/Corporate America juggernaught.

But if a real united opposition doesn't come together in the US, I don't think there's any way to seriously stop the direction it's going in, let alone put it on a free democratic socialist course. Sure I know there are some really good things happening among the US public (like US Labor Against the War, for example)

http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/

But I just don't see these as strong enough to derail the US government.

I don't want to add to Stargazer's fears. I wish there was something I could report to cheer things up a bit around this. But alas, nothing yet. Hopefully that will change in time.

quote:
Yet we Canadians are being folded into the paranoid daily by a constant onslaught of terror related news. Today's poll on globeandmail.com

Ya well, the Globe and Mail is lucky to have the Nazi Post around to make it look not too bad. Otherwise, it's pretty much a corporate apologist write-off. Notice how they phrased the question:

quote:
Do you think the CIA's secret prisons were necessary tools in the fight against terrorism?

What the F(*&*(& do they mean by "were?!" Those camps are still in operation, and, if memory serves, more may even be opened as the CIA deems needed.

This is of course in addition to the debate on what "terrorism" means and who's actually funding it.

(The US government is the biggest terrorist organization in the world, as far as I'm concerned, since it has overthrown more elected governments, instated more dictatorship, had more innocent people killed and invaded more countries than anyone else since the fall of the Third Reich).

Even all the bad guys today, like Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc; all got their start with funding, training and other support from the US government/Corporate America to do the horrors they do today.

But we don't get to read much about this in the major papers, do we.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Américain Égalitaire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7911

posted 08 September 2006 09:12 PM      Profile for Américain Égalitaire   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't do this too often by allow me to quote myself from my blog

quote:
Bush insisted that the CIA hasn't engaged in torture, but he said that the Geneva Conventions' prohibition against "humiliating and degrading treatment" might cause legal problems for CIA interrogators.

"The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it."

This assertion, simply, is bullshit. A lie. A big one. But as Goebbels said, tell the big lie enough and cornfed Americans will wrap themselves in the flag and believe it.
If I sound a tad angry and sarcastic, its because I am. Stupidity goes so far - this is willful ignorance in the face of accusations that should have made our Founding Fathers(tm) furious.

(Ok, ok, alien and sedition acts, yeah, I remember. Well maybe SOME of the Founding Fathers(tm) would be furious).

I mean you try to educate the average American that their country has turned into a stinking torture state (merci boucoup Bruce Cockburn) and they'll liable to lynch you just for telling them the truth.

Last night I made a major mistake and read my latest copy of Harpers Magazine in which Eliza Griswold writes firsthand about Torture American Style or how to rejuvenate the Taliban through counterproductivity. The article is called "American Gulag" and should be required reading for every American (the ones who can still read above the sixth grade level) and if it doesn't infuriate you, then you're complicit.


I get so infuriated I can't see straight. To paraphrase the guy from the movie "Airplane:" I picked a helluva week to quit antidepressants


From: Chardon, Ohio USA | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790

posted 08 September 2006 10:54 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Right. But is Bush actually trying to intimidate his opponents by admitting that he has a series of secret prinons where he has political opponents tortured or not?
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged

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