Rumsfeld Tours Iraq, Celebrates Successe s

““I'm a mid 30's Catholic conservitive heterosexual male married father of three. and it seems that around everycorner their is someone that is attempting to contaminate my core belief system.”

Good gawd! You are everything that is evil according to the extreme left! Ya racist, religiously intolerant, oppressor you! LOL!

I for one like your views.”

““I am not (and if it came across that way -- I am sorry -) questioning YOU, rather the writer. The WRITER left out that part. To me, and again, I apologize if this comes out wrong, the writer has a biased opinion and it is proven when he leaves that part out.”

I’m fully aware that when someone posts a link any criticism of the link can be construed as criticism of the poster too and they are put in the position of having to defend the writer. I was just explaining why I included the whole quote (plus the original cite has copy written the text so it can’t be snagged). Because of the fact it is a right wing writer I still used it because it contained the quote. We can’t throw the quote out simply because of the opinion surrounding it. The fact that the left doesn’t have much written on this shouldn’t be a surprise either.”

“Laqtis has a point. until there are polititians that are more conservitive I will vote for the lesser of the 2 evils as I see it. The problem is when you vote on a couple of current issues and not the core beliefs you end up with a bigger mess afetr the fact.”

“"I will vote for Kerry for the same reason you will be voting for Bush; voting for the leser of the two phucks."

Those phuckers!!!”

“LMAO”

“or better yet -- Phuck the Phucking, Phuckers.



Whelp, Gotta get on with the day.

GET OUTSIDE, EVERYBODY!!”

“Roger Wilco.”

“I've gotta go

I ought to do something for the pocket change they give me.”

“"Phuck it all the phucking brrrrats,
She don't want a baby that looks like that..."

Great, now I have to go diggin' through my cassetts and hear the whole album!”

“How bout that! We all agree on something:

Neither of the two major candidates encapsulates everything we stand for.

We all agreed on something on a political thread. Note the day and time. Alert the media.”

“But the other guy sucks worse!!

heh-heh-heh-heh...”

“birch is right to point out that many people we know and perhaps ourselves are capable of the kind of brutality that has occurred. These people aren’t exactly living under ‘normal’ conditions as they are living in an area where cheering crowds would celebrate while their bodies are desecrated.

However, that’s what command and control is supposed to prevent. I don’t want to prejudge the outcome but it seems pretty clear that the use of civilian contractors is going to figure pretty big in this. They were used to isolate the military command from the evil that was perpetrated in Central America and other places and their use has been expanded greatly under Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld set the tone when he declared a couple of years ago that the Geneva Convention really doesn’t apply anymore. In any corporation, the CEO is ultimately responsible for the effects of their policies. In the real world, a resignation would be expected when things go horribly wrong.”

“I can't be racist I'm Mixed. Or can I”

“There was a law professor from Duke on the boob tube yesterday saying the "interrogation specialists from private defense contractors" could still be prosecuted under federal statute. Sounds good to me!

Apologies are helpful, but convictions....


Speaking of atrocities in Central America, how's the confirmation of Negroponte coming along?”

“"I can't be racist I'm Mixed. Or can I"

As opossed to being "stirred"? j/k Generally any type of minority that are conservative are either sell outs or just plain brainwashed [please refer to page 3 of the liberal handbook for full explaination].”

“I think you're all a bunch of sexual Pre-Verts. Stop drinking fluoridated water!”

“Yeah. Negroponte's rise out the ooze sort of confirms my suspicions.”

“He's testifying right now on capitol hill.

link

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, an Armed Services Committee member and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said asking Rumsfeld to step down is premature and sends the wrong message.

But he said there are "more questions and more questions and more questions" that need to be answered about the way the scandal has been handled.

"I think ultimately you have to go right up the chain to the secretary of defense or to the civilian leadership of the military. ... We don't know where this is going to lead," said Roberts.

Among the questions lawmakers say they want answered:


Were enlisted personnel acting on their own, or carrying out orders from higher-ups?


What role did private contractors play at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad?


Why didn't Rumsfeld tell lawmakers about the controversy last week when he briefed them hours before CBS first aired the graphic abuse photos?”

“They just dragged some lady kicking a screaming, "fire Rumsfeld" out of the chamber.”

“Just another Friday afternoon in our nation's capital.”

“Fire the whole lot of em'!”

“Anyone seen Lyra?”

“Now that you mention it.....”

“-- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a congressional committee Friday that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops "occurred on my watch as secretary of defense. I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility.

LINK”

“I'm listening to it right now live on NPR. McCain was ripping him. Now it sounds like Ted Kennedy is weighing in...”

“From Rumsfeld's Rules:
"If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes. "”

“Also:

"The price of being close to the president is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don't tell him the truth. Others won't do it."”

“It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.


Don't divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.”

“"Delay only compounds mistakes."

"They want to win the White House more than they want to win the war, and our enemies know it," charged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.”

“Now there are some young americans expressing there right to free speech.”

“Ah, the liberals do love bad news. Violin's virtually slobbering. LOL!”

“Ya see... That's why the simple declarative apology he made completely threw me off, LOL

The Rumsfeld I know is the one I always see pulling some serious RPMs in the briefing room at the Pentagon.

(as pictured above, <G>)”

“I’d much prefer some good news for a change Nigal. I’m not to keen about sharing this sin. With this gang, it’s been one cluster#&%!$ after another.”

“I dropped an 'o'.”

“I dropped the soap. Well, not so much as "drop" but threw it down.

I didn't get to see all of Rummy's testimoney but I doubt it's the Smoking Gun ya'll are hopin' for.”

“Hey, I think I do see Lyra back behind that sign! But, I don't think she's part of the protest; it looks like she's delivering some lunch.”

“An innocent bystander? I doubt it.”

“Not bloody likely! LOL


Bush really cracked me up yesterday. He was standing there with King Abdullah and the reporter asked him if he was going to ask for Rumsfeld's resignation and he said...

"He's a... a... really good Secretary of Defense."


The local station I was watching last night didn't show that part. It would've made the newscast run toooo long, I suppose.”

“"They just dragged some lady kicking a screaming, "fire Rumsfeld" out of the chamber."
Phaedrus
11:26:49 AM

"Anyone seen Lyra?"
bearmagnet
11:34:19 AM

Well, if it was a "lady" ti coulc not have been lyra >;^]”

“"could"

Rumskull is a really good Secretary of Offense.

Violin, I too would like to see some good news for a change........


.....like Dubya resigning.”

“Rape Rooms: A Chronology
What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded.”

“For all the talk about investigating this months ago, they just now charged the young woman thats been shown so often on the news.

I wonder if we are ever going to see some one higher then a PFC charged with anything....”

“Good grief......"it could.."”

“They sadi yesterday that in the coming days, more photo's will be released, and been Rummy himself said that they will be tame compaired to these ones.



Don't let the door hit ya in the ass, Donald Duck”

“The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bull#&%!$ anyone.”

much, much more...”

“I've said all along it wasn't just some rogue soldiers. It goes all the way to the top where Bush declared these people "enemy combatants" who are nor granted any rights under the Geneva Conventions.


NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was not the result of a few misguided soldiers, but of a decision last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to expand a clandestine operation against al Qaeda to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, according to a report in The New Yorker.

Rumsfeld's goal was to bring the success of the secret terrorism program to Iraq in an effort to "generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency," the magazine reports.

The rules governing the secret operation were "Grab whom you must. Do what you want," according to a former intelligence official whom Seymour M. Hersh quotes anonymously in "The Gray Zone."”

“nor = not”

“Newsweek is reporting that the president signed off on the interrogation plan that led to thing and probably the detention of Nick Berg in violation of his civil rights as an American citizen. They were instructed to hold whomever they wanted to without cause.


* snip *

Indeed, the single most iconic image to come out of the abuse scandal—that of a hooded man standing naked on a box, arms outspread, with wires dangling from his fingers, toes and #&%!$—may do a lot to undercut the administration's case that this was the work of a few criminal MPs. That's because the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade. "Was that something that [an MP] dreamed up by herself? Think again," says Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. "That's a standard torture. It's called 'the Vietnam.' But it's not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them."

Who might have taught them? Almost certainly it was their superiors up the line. Some of the images from Abu Ghraib, like those of naked prisoners terrified by attack dogs or humiliated before grinning female guards, actually portray "stress and duress" techniques officially approved at the highest levels of the government for use against terrorist suspects. It is unlikely that President George W. Bush or senior officials ever knew of these specific techniques, and late last —week Defense spokesman Larry DiRita said that "no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses." But a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."

The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive, policy of interrogation in a covert war—designed mainly for use by a handful of CIA professionals—evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war. Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break prisoners' resistance to interrogation.


*Snip*

Link”