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Pennsylvania: Saddam

July 3, 2009 - 05:54 am
NEWS FEED: 2 Political Junkies

Iranian Torture

By dayvoe@gmail.com (Dayvoe)

Via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, we learn of this tweet:
Tehrani source close to those detained says some have been beaten heavily and waterboarded with hot water
To which CB at the Dish writes:
Andrew recently stated, "The Tehran regime does not have a record of waterboarding." Could this then be a new development? If so, Ahmadinejad will clearly want to invoke the "Americans did it first!" argument. Sadly, he would be right - regardless of the fact that Iran's torture record is far more brutal and far less justifiable than Cheney's. But he and Yoo have blurred the bright line forever.
OF COURSE (and I write this to pre-empt any sort of "he's making a moral equivalence" argument) Iran's torture is far more brutal than Bush/Cheney's.

Read More at 2 Political Junkies >
There have been 66 comments posted in response to this story.

June 24, 2009 - 06:22 am
NEWS FEED: 2 Political Junkies

News From The UK

By dayvoe@gmail.com (Dayvoe)

Woven into an article in the Times describing former Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts for a private inquiry into Britain's role in Bush's Iraq war is this enticing tidbit - one that only reinforces what we already knew:
This news comes amid new evidence to suggest that Mr Blair knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

A memo dated January 31, 2003, by Sir David Manning, then Mr Blair’s policy adviser, outlines how President Bush told Mr Blair he had decided on a start date for the war — almost two months before the invasion.

Paraphrasing the President’s comments at the meeting, Sir David noted: “The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled (sic) in for March 10.

Read More at 2 Political Junkies >
There have been 46 comments posted in response to this story.

May 19, 2009 - 05:51 am
NEWS FEED: 2 Political Junkies

More On Cheney's Iraq/al-Qaeda Claims

By dayvoe@gmail.com (Dayvoe)

It was something I missed last Friday.

Cheney has been caught in another lie. McClatchy begins:
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.
Chew on that for a moment before going on to the next two paragraphs:

Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

Read More at 2 Political Junkies >
There have been 81 comments posted in response to this story.

May 15, 2009 - 05:37 am
NEWS FEED: 2 Political Junkies

More On Cheney's Use of Torture

By dayvoe@gmail.com (Dayvoe)

It starts here.

After writer Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, points out some obvious facts about the Bush Cheney administration, for example:
First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.
he drops the big one on us:

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.

Read More at 2 Political Junkies >
There have been 38 comments posted in response to this story.