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Maine: Cia

May 18, 2009 - 07:04 am
NEWS FEED: Turn Maine Blue

Open Thread

By Gerald Weinand

Good morning.

This might be optimistic, but the Hill has this analysis that the Pelosi CIA flap may lead to a truth commission on torture:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's fight with the CIA has put her in one of the toughest spots she's been in since she became speaker.

But it may also have advanced her goal of creating a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation techniques and whether they amounted to illegal torture.

If nothing else, Pelosi's hard-to-prove assertion that the CIA lied to her in a briefing has renewed interest among Republicans and Democrats in what the Bush administration was doing with detainees six years ago and what it told Congress and other officials.

Read More at Turn Maine Blue >
There have been 1112 comments posted in response to this story.

May 15, 2009 - 06:29 am
NEWS FEED: Turn Maine Blue

Open Thread

By Gerald Weinand

Good morning.

Remember how often you would smack your forehead and ask, "When are the Democrats going to find their spines?" Well, it wouldn't have mattered if they did. From the Hill, Pelosi now says she knew about waterboarding:

During a tense press conference, Pelosi sought to deflect criticism to the CIA, which she said lied to her about the practice.

Pelosi said she learned of the waterboarding after her national security aide, Mike Sheehy, sat in on a February 2003 briefing with her successor on the committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). Sheehy has since left Pelosi's office.

Pelosi defended herself for not speaking out at the time about information disclosed in a classified briefing.

Read More at Turn Maine Blue >
There have been 197 comments posted in response to this story.

May 15, 2009 - 12:02 am
NEWS FEED: Slublog

Transparency Update

The promise:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
The reality:
The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.

Read More at Slublog >
There have been 81 comments posted in response to this story.

March 2, 2009 - 09:48 pm
NEWS FEED: Turn Maine Blue

Obama: Bagram torture prison to remain open for business

By Gerald Weinand

h/t Harry Shearer

Via the Independent the lede says it all:

Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo".

In a single-sentence answer filed with a Washington court, the administration dashed hopes that it would immediately rip up Bush-era policies that have kept more than 600 prisoners in legal limbo and in rudimentary conditions at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

---

Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep.

Read More at Turn Maine Blue >
There have been 25 comments posted in response to this story.