The Bush Years Compendium

[At Home 0]

This is the part where you tell us what conservatism and liberalism means to you, then we discuss...?

[SuperJerk 0]

Based on his definitions, I think snuffbox confused conservatism with libertarianism, and liberalism with authoritarianism.

 

There are too many legitimate sources available that explain the meanings of these two ideologies for me to need to define the terms. Sufficed to say, in all my years of political study and involvement, I rarely if ever seen definitions as simplistic and inadequate as the ones he offered.

[Guest]

In other words, a cop out.

[Slayer 0]

Limbaugh yesterday "Obama will ruin this country, Bush had us going the right direction"

He said the same thing when Clinton took over for Bush Sr

[SuperJerk 0]

In other words, a cop out.

I don't want to be accused (again) of making anything up, so I'm just referring people to check some official sources.

[snuffbox 0]

I don't think I'll continue this particular argument.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

How can anyone, even the most ardent GOP talking point regurgitators, say that the country was headed on the right path?

[snuffbox 0]

Letter-in-parentheses is far more important to some people than facts or realities.

[Art Sandusky 0]

The Bush years holdover that bugs me most is "The Democrat Party," like it isn't even worth describing as a set of ideals but rather some filthy object. We still say "Republican Party" instead of Republic. Ooh, now there's a scary little bit of newspeak. The Republic Party.

[snuffbox 0]

It is no coincidence that our handicapped friend, Marvin, uses that dipshit term as well.

[snuffbox 0]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

 

Well, if it worked in 2004.

[SuperJerk 0]

Secret Bush memos made public by Obama

Document says no warrant needed to search and seize terror suspects

 

The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action.

 

Yoo also suggested that the government could put new restrictions on the press and speech, without spelling out what those might be.

 

"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

 

 

 

Remember, they hate us for our freedom.

 

[SuperJerk 0]

More torture memos released:

 

Bush-era interrogation memo: No torture without 'severe pain' intent

 

Story Highlights

Memo: To violate torture law, must have intent to inflict severe suffering

Obama says releasing memos vital to maintaining transparency, accountability

Legal memos offered guidance to CIA on "enhanced interrogation"

No prosecution for actions consistent with memos, official says

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture when there was no intent to cause severe pain, according to a Bush-era memo on the tactics released Thursday.

 

"To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," said an August 2002 memo from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to John Rizzo, who was acting general counsel for the CIA.

 

"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. ... We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent," Bybee wrote.

 

The Bybee opinion was sought on 10 interrogation tactics in the case of suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.

 

The memo authorized keeping Zubaydah in a dark, confined space small enough to restrict the individual's movement for no more than two hours at a time. In addition, putting a harmless insect into the box with Zubaydah, who "appears to have a fear of insects," and telling him it is a stinging insect would be allowed, as long as Zubaydah was informed the insect's sting would not be fatal or cause severe pain.

 

"If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so ... you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death," the memo said.

 

Other memos allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet.

 

On waterboarding, in which a person gets the sensation of drowning, the memo said, "although the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result" to violate the law.

 

Authorities also were allowed to slap a detainee's face "to induce shock, surprise or humiliation" and strike his abdomen with the back of the hand in order to disabuse a detainee's notion that he will not be touched, the memos said.

 

Bybee noted in the memo that the CIA agreed all tactics should be used under expert supervision. Other memos said waterboarding can be used only if the CIA has "credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent" and if a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent, disrupt or delay an attack, and other methods fail to elicit the information.

 

Another memo to Rizzo, from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on May 10, 2005, noted that nudity could be used as an interrogation technique.

 

"Detainees subject to sleep deprivation who are also subject to nudity as a separate interrogation technique will at times be nude and wearing a diaper," it said, noting that the diaper is "for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique."

 

"The detainee's skin condition is monitored, and diapers are changed as needed so that the detainee does not remain in a soiled diaper," the memo said.

 

Another Bradbury memo laid out techniques and when they should be used in a "prototypical interrogation."

 

"Several of the techniques used by the CIA may involve a degree of physical pain, as we have previously noted, including facial and abdominal slaps, walling, stress positions and water dousing," it said. "Nevertheless, none of these techniques would cause anything approaching severe physical pain."

 

All of the CIA techniques were adapted from military "survival evasion resistance escape" training, according to a May 30, 2005, memo from Bradbury to Rizzo.

 

"Although there are obvious differences between training exercises and actual interrogations, the fact that the United States uses similar techniques on its own troops for training purposes strongly suggests that these techniques are not categorically beyond the pale," the memo said.

 

The memo said waterboarding and other techniques were used on Zubaydah; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and identified as "KSM" in the memo; and another suspected al Qaeda leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

 

"The CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques," the memo said.

 

"These legal legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for 'high value detainees' in U.S. custody," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement. "The techniques are chilling. This was not an 'abstract legal theory,' as some former Bush administration officials have characterized it. These were specific techniques authorized to be used on real people."

 

In releasing the memos in response to a public records request from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, the Obama administration informed CIA officials they will not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder promised in a separate statement that officials who used the controversial interrogation tactics were in the clear if their actions were consistent with the legal advice from the Justice Department under which they were operating at the time.

 

"My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record," President Obama said in a statement released from the White House.

 

Obama prohibited the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding shortly after taking office in January. Such techniques "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer," he said Thursday.

 

The president said that while United States must sometimes "protect information that is classified for purposes of national security," he decided to release the memos because he believes "strongly in transparency and accountability" and "exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release."

 

Obama argued that "withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time."

 

"This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States," he said.

 

He added that the officials involved in the questionable interrogations would not be subject to prosecution because the intelligence community must be provided "with the confidence" it needs to do its job.

 

The president pledged to work to ensure the actions described in the memos "never take place again."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/16/us....ents/index.html

[SuperJerk 0]

A former FBI Agent wants to clear the record on how effective our interogation techniques (the ones people who are pro-torture claimed were not working) were before the CIA and the Bush Administration's Justice Department decided to get creative.

 

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

 

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/...tml?ref=opinion