November
GW Bush - - Posted on September, 7 at 11:34 pm by Tim
From his speech yesterday admitting the existence of secret CIA prisons:
Some may ask: Why are you acknowledging this program now? There are two reasons why I’m making these limited disclosures today.
Yep. The Senate and the House of Representatives.
Posted in GW Bush |
September 8th, 2006 at 12:10 am
Trackback.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Key Bush quotes :
“The terrorists…”
“These terrorists”
“Terrorists in this program…”
“…they will continue to be treated with the humanity that they denied others.”
Here’s the punchiline :
“…and they will be presumed innocent.”
Hilarious.
That Bush delivered this calvacade of disinformation in front a carefully screened audience of 9/11 widows and orphans is beyond disgusting.
We may never know the validity of the intelligence drawn from the non-torture, humanity-friendly interrogation techniques used on these suspects, or whether or not the US, Australia, other countries have been saved from post 9/11 terror attacks, but to pretend these “evil-doers” will get anything like a fair trial is completely absurd. And that includes David Hicks.
Enough with the delusions and illusions that the War On Terror is not using terror as a tool to prevent further terror attacks against us.
We’re all adults, we can take the truth.
Even if one of those truths turns out to be that CIA ringers raped children in front of their parents in no-longer-secret foreign rendition prisons to get information.
We can handle the truth.
Can’t we?
The best place to hide the truth has always been in a forest of lies.
As Howard well and truly knows. We just need more chainsaws.
September 8th, 2006 at 8:58 am
“We may never know the validity of the intelligence drawn from the non-torture, humanity-friendly interrogation techniques used on these suspects…”
But we DO know!
Bush rattled of a string of victories and disasters averted by the CIA using the current methods. It’s amazing how many plots he said were foiled and how many “evil doers” were captured using information extracted under torture.
Frankly, I’m stunned.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:29 am
As long as it’s all truth, Mars. There’s been no shortage of ‘facts’ slipping from the lips of Bush in the past six years that were later revealed to be exaggeration, complete fabrication or wishful fantasy.
Like all sane people, I want terrorists, and those who intend to commit terror, rounded up and prosecuted to the full force of the law. But as seen we’ve the Jack Thomas case, when the law isn’t followed, the prosecutions don’t stick and the credibility of the charges diminishes.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Of course Darryl… but until I see proof that the preznit has fudged the facts (again) it’s hard to argue against (apparent) success. Getting information which saves lives has to be a good thing, doesn’t it?
September 8th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Yep mars it sure does. And that’s why i’m with you. If the preznit says all those lives have been saved by torture (not) well I believe him. After all, this is a war, and we all know you can’t tell the people the truth in war time. It would aid the enemy wouldn’t it?
September 8th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Appreciate the sarcasm, Aussie Sheila. Thanks.
Apart from my doubts that Khalid Sheikh Mohamad actually provided information under torture, I still can’t DISPROVE much of what the preznit said.
(From memory it was reported a while ago the KSM was a particularly tough nut to crack. The story goes that his faith in Allah was helping him keep what he knew to himself. Then again that may have been a story fabricated by the yanks to fool other Islamic nutjobs into believing their identities were still safe)
September 8th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
So how to square Bush’s remarks and some of the views expressed here with the facts, as reported by security blogger Bruce Schneier a couple of days ago (via Boing Boing):
“In the twelve months immediately after 9/11, the prosecution of individuals the government classified as international terrorists surged sharply higher than in the previous year. But timely data show that five years later, in the latest available period, the total number of these prosecutions has returned to roughly what they were just before the attacks.
Federal prosecutors by law and custom are authorized to decline cases that are brought to them for prosecution by the investigative agencies. And over the years the prosecutors have used this power to weed out matters that for one reason or another they felt should be dropped. For international terrorism the declination rate has been high, especially in recent years. In fact, timely data show that in the first eight months of FY 2006 the assistant U.S. Attorneys rejected slightly more than nine out of ten of the referrals.
The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive. For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the two years after 9//11, for example, the median sentence — half got more and half got less– was 28 days. For those referrals that came in more recently — through May 31, 2006 — the median sentence was 20 days. For cases started in the two year period before the 9/11 attack, the typical sentence was much longer, 41 months”
Apologies for the long quote but I think its important to make this information more widely known. Despite the rhetoric and the ‘increased’ terrorism risk as well as the (presumed) increase in FBI and CIA anti-terror activities there has been no concomitant change in the outcomes of all that activity. As Scheier says:
“How do I explain it? Most “terrorism” arrests are not for actual terrorism; they’re for other things. The cases are either thrown out for lack of evidence, or the penalties are more in line with the actual crimes. I don’t care what anyone from the Justice Department says: someone who is jailed for four weeks did not commit a terrorist act.”
September 9th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Entropic Cycle
The winds lashed the ocean
A swirling mass hit
Randomising, confusing patterns as it rode
As the tsunami hit the shore
I woke
And remembered
Some chrome & concrete place
Thousands upon thousands of balconies
Interconnected
A uni of possibilities
Defined in one moment
Me, isolated, from the one I love
In the chat of the unremembered
September 9th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Til we crossed
Alerted by thunder, remarkable in cadence
And looked to the above
To the moment
Of the change…and the fear
For there, remarkable
The sky did open
Opal in colour & vastness
Alien flotillas
Shifted & foretold
Fires in the sky
Never before
We were so alone
Clouds rolling, fired upon
Exploded light
Perturbations
Claustrophobic
The vision crashed upon us
No escape
All gain..or loss?
September 9th, 2006 at 5:43 am
I awoke
In the midst of the largest mall
Incomplete, yet solid, unlived
We had come from afar
Investigated, explored, as we often do
Looking out from the massive windows
A dome of a million hopes
Somehow left to gather dust
In a future fleeing the untold
We gathered as a group
A multi-coloured few
And observed, chatted, relieved to be here
September 9th, 2006 at 5:43 am
Then
Came the tremors, the shattering of calm
From a distance we queried, perplexed
Rumbles disturbed, energised my thoughts
‘It’s like two fangs of fire’, I stated
And one replied
‘Merely the volcanoes…
Below the ridge
In the dense of the fog’
Nervous
Some dispersed, I remained
Chained by my fear, my everfear
And the curious, the desire to confront
The THE
September 9th, 2006 at 5:44 am
Clouds swirled in the above…the fire fed
A darkening, swirling pattern became the obvious
My heart’s pattern duplicated the repeated crash
The drumbeat of insanity
The expected but forgotten
The fangs of fire drew closer
And it was then I saw the truth
World turned on its head
Blaze of destruction emanated from above
Did not feed from the below
This was no burrower’s beneath
This was Hellclone…
September 9th, 2006 at 5:45 am
In this instant of the recognising I did yell
To the girls in forecourt
Under the dome
To the protected by all and only glass
‘move!’
pianos played
echoed
as the shrubs shrivelled
the air condensed
ears popped
the rage outside erased the view
stole sanity
the doors, the big ones opened
the howl raised the sense of panic
the large Mexican man attempted to spread the wings
of a locked door, I shifted in their direction
I saw the gap of their freedom
In their smiles
Vanish
In a milli-second, w/ a flash
Clothes, burnt, dropped silently to the ground
The big empty hit my gut
A gaze into the void, the vortex
And I’m off…
Running to..to the auditorium
To the safe, her safe…
Enveloped by the storm, the concrete, the big, the big empty
September 9th, 2006 at 5:45 am
I’m awake…
Really awake this time
I hear there’s a storm in the Top End
Gaia protect them
Are these the end days?
I sometimes wonder between a bite & sip
I used to luv lookin’ to the sky
But now I’m not sure I’ll see saviours
As Bronk limps thru the door
Dad writes concerned
Friends look to protection spells
I’m no Superman
She tells
Entropic cycle
September 9th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Was reading yesterday how the preznit’s claim that Abu Zubaydah’s morsel of intel (extracted under totrure) revealed the existence of Razmi Binalshibh… was… gasp… bogus.
Counterterrorism experts and intel agencies knew about Razmi well before Abu Zubaydah was even captured!
Slowly (too slowly, for the general population) the truth comes out. Actually the facts are revealed pretty bloody quickly thanks to the internet and the masses of sceptics out there, it’s just that the propaganda has already taken root.