Day: May 12, 2011

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Osama bin Laden Politics United States Waterboarding

John McCain – Torture Did Not Lead To Osama Bin Laden’s Capture

John McCain is often called many things for many reasons (we will not get into them now). But one thing you must respect Mr. McCain for is the many years he spent in captivity while flying bombing missions in the Vietnam war. John McCain was a prisoner of war and faced bouts of torture from his captors.

So when McCain talks about torture, it would be a wise idea to listen to someone with first hand knowledge. In a Washington Post op-ed written on Thursday, McCain responded to the claims of many in his own Republican party that intelligence gathered under torture led to Osama Bin Laden’s capture. Mr. McCain spoke about some of the acts employed by United States personnel, namely water-boarding;

Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.

After stating his personal feelings on water-boarding, Mr. McCain – the Republican 2008 Presidential nominee and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee – dove into the debate head-on, saying that any claims by former Bush officials that torture led to Bin Laden’s capture were “false.”

But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukaseyrecently claimed that “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” That is false.

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

This must be shocking news for those on Fox News and most of the Republican leaders, who, on the Sunday talk shows had a field day promoting the lie that torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed revealed the name of the courier to Osama Bin Laden. Instead of accepting the fact that Bin Laden was captured on President’s Obama’s watch, these partisan Republican leaders got their talking points from Fox News, and ran with it.

Mr. McCain continued;

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

One of the claims John McCain made in the 2008 presidential election was that he was still a maverick. Well you can’t get more mavericky than this.

At a time when Republicans are looking for any kind of victory, even trying to take one away from a Democratic President, one Republican is standing up and speaking the truth – a rare act. And for that, John McCain has regained his maverick status.

Hopefully, it’ll stick around for a while.

Categories
Barack Obama Newt Gingrich Politics Republican Sonia Sotomayor Soviet Union United States

Newt “Fraud And Trickery” Gingrich For President

So Newt decided to throw his hat in the ring. Mr. Gingrich has decided that what America needs now is a Republican President who’s on the ball. One who is able to see through the fraud and trickery of the Democrats. The only problem is, fraud and trickery is Newt’s middle name. Try as you may, you won’t find a politician more trickier than Newt Gingrich.

Mother Jones has a piece out that goes through some of the more inflammatory remarks and doings of Newt, since he first joined congress in 1978, spanning some of his most infamous remarks to date. These include, but not limited to;

  • His 1978 address to Congressional Republicans urging them to be more nasty
  • Another speech in 1984, where he charges Democrats of “appeasement and distributing ‘communist propaganda,'”
  • And yet another speech in 1984, where he quotes a conservative study and argues that it was time to stop using the label “patriots” when talking about Democrats. According to Newt, “enough historical evidence exists,” to prove that Democrats cannot be patriots.
  • And in 1985, when he talked about Democrats foreign policy, Newt said, “Adolph Hitler must somewhere be burning in hell, wishing he had lived two generations later, so he could manipulate Americans instead of Englishmen.”

The article, written by David Corn and Tim Murphy, details the last 33 years of Newt Gingrich. But if you don’t have the time to read through the garbage that sums up Newt’s political and personal life, the New York Times published a piece summarizing some of the more  outrageous and divisive statements;

The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine,” he wrote in his 2010 book, “To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, saying it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing Islamic law on every American village and farm.

Last year, he called for a federal law to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when he said that Mr. Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have little entrepreneurial tradition, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.” (He kind of took back that last slur.)

And even Newt’s own mother unintentionally threw him under the bus back in the 1990’s, when she quoted something he said about Hillery Clinton, then first Lady of the United States.

Yes, the fraud and trickery of Newt Gingrich is abundant. Just what we need in the White House!

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Featured

It’s Official! Conservative Media Lies… A Lot!

We’re bringing you a bit of news we’ve already known for some time, but it feels good repeating it again – and again!  So just in case there’s anyone out there who doesn’t already know, this makes it official – one more time!

A new study confirms the following – that liberal reporters and pundits stick to the facts, while the conservatives’ excuse for a reporter/pundit simply make stuff up.

The most interesting conclusion of the report is the confirmation that liberals are accurate more often than conservatives. That may be the result of the inherent slant of factual information that was first identified by fake pundit Stephen Colbert who noted that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

The top performer in the study is Paul Krugman of the New York Times. The worst performer is uber-pundit George Will.

I am a little disappointed though, I thought Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would have definitely tied for last. And let’s not forget a previous study that finds Fox News just makes stuff up.

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