Tele-phoney -  Inter-tube style

The younger you are, the less likely that you played a parlor  game called Telephone, as iPods, gaming devices, PCs, and other technologies crowd out attention spans, and finger control becomes more important than a well-chosen phrase, or a decent memory.

Well, now we know that the implementation of the Bush torture policy was based on so called Chinese brainwashing techniques from the 1950s.

What we also know is that these techniques were never about getting truth from prisoners, it was about making them lie.

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

In fact, it was not just the 1950s, and it was not just the Chinese.

The North Vietnamese used these techniques to get John McCain to make an, "anti-American propaganda "confession".

This is where torture has taken us.

The same CIA operative that tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraq before the runup to the March 2003 invasion has now come out to say the agency is doing the same thing with Iran. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in late 2007 said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

Barred from using his real name, the onetime undercover agent, filed a motion in federal court late Friday requesting that the government declassify legal documents showing what he contends was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency claims. He alleged in a 2004 suit that the CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior intelligence managers over his attempts to report direct challenges to the conventional wisdom at the time about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The CIA refuses to make the claims public because it deems the information top secret.

Two weeks ago, Democratic Chairman Henry Waxman, head of the House Oversight Committee, subpoenaed the relevant documents--specifically interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney-- related to the outing of CIA Operative Valarie Plame.  According to the Committee, the Justice Department has refused to comply.

The Justice Department has informed the Committee that it will not comply with a congressionally issued subpoena to produce interview documents from the investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, including documents from the interviews of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Chairman Waxman wrote to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to request information regarding the terms under which Fitzgerald interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the course of his investigation into the leak.

As others have noted here, Sy Hersh's new piece in the New Yorker is enough to scare the s**t out of anyone who has followed the rumors about a potential attack on Iran.  Hersh is now giving interviews further sounding the alarm.  

It has been obvious for months that the Cheneyites want to bomb Iran.  The Olmert govt has made its plans equally clear.  The US buildup in the Gulf and the recent Israeli exercises all demonstrate the fragility of this moment.

U.S. Military is now poised for a 2 weeks surgical strikes inside Iran.  The American public and the Obama campaign better be ready because with the pending bill  on Iranian Naval Blockade in the congress, engagement is now inevitable.  And it’ll occur at the earliest September 5 and no later than October 13, 2008.  

After eight years of running (and ruining) this country as Shadow President, Dick Cheney is expected to announce that he'll be running in this November's elections. I've found one reputable news source covering the story so far, waiting for confirmation from others...

For now, check this out: RSN: Cheney To Announce November Bid

More details to come.

Do you remember last week's press that the White House would not open emails from the EPA? They reported that the EPA was trying to publish a report on how  greenhouse gases could be regulated, and that if they weren't then citizens would be "endangered"? But the White House would not open the EPA's emails!!

Monday's Wall Street Journalhas received a copy of the squelched report and it concludes:

REGULATIONS ARE FEASIBLE

HARM WILL FLOW TO US CITIZENS IF THEY ARE NOT ENACTED

THE SAVINGS TO CITIZENS FROM THE REGULATIONS WILL BE UP TO $2 TRILLION

Sy Hersh’s New Yorker piece has been diaried.  Nothing new.  Yawn.  So what if the Gang of Eight is in bipartisan pursuit of further war crimes.  Should they ever find their way to the gallows, I will not object in the least.  My general objections to the death penalty would be puny standing next to their colossal crimes.  Money for covert terrorist operations against Iran was essentially appropriated last year by the following reprehensible, two-faced colossally stupid maggots on the Gang of Eight:

For dumb reasons, all of this dumbness enabled by dumb legislators, as well as being fought in a dumb way, resulting in a dumb, stupid civil war which is being further enabled by another bunch of dumb, stupid legislators, creating the biggest and dumbest deficit and indebtedness ever in the whole damned world and history, as well as featuring dumb, stupid and stupidly arrogant torturers, clunks, dumoxes and asses... and it's my birthday and I get to call everyone dumb, every damn, dumb person who ever did anything to create or enable the unending continuation of damn dumb stupidity.

The second in a series of Iraq war studies has been released by the Army's Combined Arms Center.  The study concludes that "planning" for post-Saddam Iraq was ". . . not well thought out, planned for, and prepared for before it began."

"Additionally, the assumptions about the nature of post-Saddam Iraq on which the transition was planned proved to be largely incorrect."

Remember:  The Republicans are supposed to be the experts in national security and John McSame wants another 100 years of this nonsense.

Boy, the wingnuts really don't know what to do about this North Korea situation.  It's really a foreign concept based on "diplomacy" and "incentives for compliance" and other fantasyland hippie stuff they must have come up with on the pot-smokers lawn in the Haight-Ashbury.  Real men know that such multilateralism is excessively dangerous and will cause all of us to be blown to bits.

HEWITT: By the way, I -- I'm still trying to find two tickets to the Ohio State-USC game. And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I'd pay fair price. They -- they know Ohio State's gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they're gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama.

For those of you who wasted time watching the House Judiciary Committee try to get responses from John Yoo and David Addington yesterday, the only worthwhile moment from the 5 hour session was a definitive statement of which branch of government vice president Dick Cheney belongs to.

Cheney's counsel David Addington gave the description, and congressman Steve Cohen (D, TN) provided the assessment that should go down in history as a precise summary of the Dick Cheney's role in our Government:

Dick Cheney is a Barnacle.

The Cheneyista faction in the Bush Administration and Congress is once again laboring mightily to place the idea of a U.S. attack on Iran before the Bush Administration leaves office back on the table. The American public and the Congress quite reasonably still have a very bad taste in their mouths from the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, so in recent weeks we've seen renewed Cheneyista efforts to re-package a U.S. attack on Iran as something more palatable.

In Congress, the Cheneyistas are promoting a resolution demanding that the President work to ban all gas exports to Iran, which could not be achieved without a blockade, an act of war. Such a blockade would surely provoke Iranian retaliation, providing a rationale for U.S. counter-retaliation, and who can say what the end result of that cycle of escalation would be?

Interesting article in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot - Chairman Of Joint Chiefs Says To Military: Stay Out Of Politics.  While I applaud the Chairman, the timing seems a little suspect.  Some how I don’t remember a similar message in 2006 or 04, 02, 2000.  In fact, I cant ever remember one.  Me thinks the Chairman doth protest too much..........

According to CBS News, Bush is considering a bombing campaign against Iran and its nuclear facilities, which Robert Gates is against because it "could touch off a third war in the region". Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen is now on his way to Israel to discuss (be begged by the Israelis on) this. It looks like George Bush may be about to leave us a going away present. To every idiot who voted to reelect this a**hole, thanks a lot.

The verbatim headline from CBS affiliate WCBSTV’s website goes like this: "IAEA Chief: Iran Could Make Nuke In 6 Months" But, what the ominous title suggests is, at least in my mind, significantly different than what the IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei meant with his statement to Al-Arabiya television on June 20.

Of course, headlines like this automatically raise red flags in the minds of those people who normally just scan the headlines instead of stopping to read the whole articles. We’re all guilty of that, myself included. After all, it’s a busy world and time is valuable.

But, that’s what makes this type of sensational-hype-journalism so dangerous for those of us seeking the truth about the issues we face as Americans, especially war; while at the same time making it so politically expedient for those in the Bush administration trying their utmost to bolster their [trumped-up] road to war with Iran.

Unfortunately, most Americans just scan the headlines.

Every once in a while, I like to find out what the wingnuts are saying.  I used to put on Limbaugh once in a while if I drove to get lunch, or Hannity on the way home for work now and again.  It helps because I when I engage a wing-nut (aka visit my dad) I know what the arguements will be before he opens his mouth, and I have my answers already worked out.