Barack Obama's CIA 'amnesty' condemned by human rights groups

Barack Obama's decision to grant an amnesty to CIA operatives who used controversial interrogation techniques on terror suspects has been criticised by human rights groups as a failure to uphold US laws.

Human rights groups and former detainees in US custody welcomed Mr Obama's decision to publish memos detailing harsh interrogation techniques used under the Bush administration.

But they condemned the decision not to prosecute CIA agents who use interrogation practices described by many as torture.

Mr Obama said he wanted to turn a page on what he called "a dark and painful chapter", condemning the aggressive techniques - including waterboarding, shackling and stripping - used on terror suspects. But he promised not to legally pursue the perpetrators, a move designed to allow the US to put the episodes in the past.

The decision left some bitter in the Muslim world, where there was widespread anger over abuse of detained terror suspects. It threatens to tarnish somewhat Mr Obama's growing popularity among Arabs and Muslims, who have cheered his promises to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and withdraw US troops from Iraq.

"All of us in Guantanamo never had hope or faith in the American government," said Jomaa al-Dosari, a Saudi who spent six years in the detention centre before being released last year. "We only ask God for our rights and to demand justice for the wrongs we experience in this life. There will be a time in history when every person who committed a wrong will be punished."

The editor of the Saudi Arabia-based Arab News daily, Khaled Almaeena, said the decision not to prosecute "sends the wrong message".

"They destroyed people's lives ... Unfortunately, they're allowed to go scot free," he said of agents who carried out the techniques.

The Obama administration on Thursday released secret CIA memos detailing interrogation tactics sanctioned under the Bush administration.

The memos authorised keeping detainees naked, in painful standing positions and in cold cells for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family also were used.

Two former top Bush officials on Friday criticised Mr Obama's decision to release the justice department memos, saying it would create "timidity and fear" among US spies.

"The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy," General Michael Hayden, the former CIA director, and Michael Mukasey, the former attorney general, wrote in an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Obama's attorney general offered CIA operatives legal help if anyone else takes them to court, although the administration's offer of help did not extend to those outside the CIA who approved the so-called enhanced interrogation methods or any CIA officers who may have gone beyond what was allowed.

Bush Memos Parallel Claim 9/11 "Mastermind’s" Children Were Tortured With Insects

By John Byrne

Read the full memos here.

April 17, 2009 "Rawstory" -- Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.

The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.

At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.

The statement was made by Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, who gave a detailed account of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American guards in Pakistan. In his statement, Khan asserted that one of his sons was held at the same place as the young children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Click Here to read more.

Salbuchi - Things Aren't Always What They Seem - Pt 1



Salbuchi - Things Aren't Always What They Seem - Pt 2

CIA Proprietary Agencies
by Bradley Moscrip

Herewith a listing of what are called ‘proprietary agencies’ or, more to the point, front groups, for our official state torturers and rendition water boarders. This is not a complete listing by any means but all beginnings are difficult. Under international law, it is illegal to torture people but the Bush people had no interest in international law.
They have left us, thank God, but the rest of us have to carry the burden of their sins. A complete listing would be of great value for the rest of the world.
Our native rattlesnake warns trespassers by rattling a warning .This shows a form of reptile class but also shows the rest of us the way. .Another listing of public value might be the home addresses of the rip off bankers and other socio-economic bandits.

Click here: http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2928.htm to see the list

Welcome to Gitmo II
Obama doesn’t talk like Bush; he just acts like him

By Ted RallMarch 24, 2009 " State Journal-Register" -- NEW YORK — You can’t blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He’s ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn’t allow torture. He’s even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as “enemy combatant” and “war on terror.”But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama’s inaugural address may have promised to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” but — in all the ways that matter — he’s keeping all of Bush’s outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about “moving forward.” But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama’s changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric.Closing Gitmo, reported The New York Times, was merely “a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies. But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.”What will happen to the 241 POWs still at Gitmo? They won’t be called “enemy combatants” anymore but most won’t be going home. “The filing signaled that, as long as Guantánamo remains open, the new administration will aggressively defend its ability to hold some detainees there,” wrote the Times. Where will they go after that?Welcome to Gitmo II — courtesy of Barack Obama.Countless victims have been tortured by U.S. military personnel at Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan where Bush imprisoned 600 people without charges. Some were murdered in the camp’s notorious “salt pit.”“Even children have not been spared,” says Amnesty International.Now Bagram is being expanded — nearly doubled in size — in order to accommodate 200-plus detainees from Gitmo, as well as future POWs from Obama’s expanded war against Afghanistan. As bad as Guantánamo was, conditions at Bagram are worse.Extraordinary renditions, the Times reports in a different article, will continue under Obama.“In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently,” says the paper, “Obama nominees endorsed continuing the CIA’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.”During the 2008 campaign Obama’s critics accused him of saying nothing, albeit beautifully. Now that we’ve gotten to know him a bit, it’s time to refine that assessment: He’s just a weasel. An eloquent weasel. But a weasel who says the right things while doing the opposite.On March 9, Obama ordered federal agencies to suspend Bush’s infamous “signing statements,” sneaky documents issued after the signing of a bill that ordered government agencies not to enforce the very same bill he’d just approved in front of the cameras. Signing statements, says the American Bar Association, use one-man dictatorial rule to negate the people’s will as expressed by Congress and are thus “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.”“Yet two days later — literally — Obama signed a $410 billion spending bill and appended to it a signing statement claiming that he had the constitutional authority to ignore several of its oversight provisions,” writes Glenn Greenwald of Slate.Greenwald regrets having to quote the vile Rich Lowry of the right-wing National Review magazine. So do I. But even the right is right sometimes:“Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism. First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult.”This week’s example is Obama’s grandstanding over $165 million in bonuses paid to executives of AIG, which received billions in federal bailout money. He feigned outrage: “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” But his Treasury Department knew about the bonuses — which amount to roughly 55 cents per American — ages ago. He also knows there isn’t much the government can do legally to claw the money back.Unlike the word count limit of this column, Obama’s perfidy knows no limits. He’s already become more dangerous to democracy and basic human rights than George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, he has no political opposition. Cheney may nitpick, but most Republicans are happy to see Bush’s policies remain in place. Meanwhile, liberals remain loyal, silent and tacitly pro-torture.Ted Rall is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.

Cheney Assassination Squads




Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
By Eric Black Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am

At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”
Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.”
The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government official who had experience with many of the crises.
And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Vietnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.
At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?”
Replied Hersh:
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

Click here: http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring to read more.

Biden Urges NATO Allies to Help Tackle Problems in Afghanistan


Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Biden has asked NATO allies for more help to step up the fight against the Taliban
US Vice President Joe Biden urged NATO allies to help tackle worsening security conditions in Afghanistan and step up international efforts against the Taliban.

US Vice President Joe Biden told NATO that the situation in Afghanistan was a threat to the West as a whole.

"The deteriorating situation in the region poses a security threat not just to the United States but to every single nation round this table," Biden told representatives of the 26-nation military alliance during a visit to Brussels on Tuesday, March 10.

"It was from the very same mountains that the attacks of 9/11 were planned," he said, adding that NATO should seek "pragmatic solutions" to its war in Afghanistan.

Biden said options included direct talks with moderate factions of the Taliban, most of whom are only involved in the insurgency for the money.

"We are not now winning the war, but the war is far from lost," Biden told a news conference after three hours of talks.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government had long supported dialogue with those members of the Taliban, who are not connected with "terrorists."

Click here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0%2C%2C4084230%2C00.html to read more

Here We Go Again With the Iranian Nuclear Scare
By Eric S. Margolis

March 09, 2009 "Khaleej Times" -- - While the United States was fighting for its economic life, Obama administration officials and the media issued a blizzard of contradictory claims over Iran’s alleged nuclear threat, leaving one wondering who is really charge of US foreign policy?

Much of the uproar over Iran’s so-far non-existent nuclear weapons must be seen as part of efforts by the Israeli lobby to block President Barack Obama’s proposed opening to Teheran, and to keep pressing the US to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Israel’s supporters and most Israeli military experts insist Iran has secret weapons programmes. Israel knows about covert nuclear programs, having run one of the world’s largest and most productive.

The hawkish Hillary Clinton’s naming of veteran Israel supporter Dennis Ross as her special adviser on Iran and the Gulf suggest she is more interested in building future domestic political support than securing balanced advice.

Meanwhile, confusion over Iran grew sharply. New CIA director, Leon Panetta, said ‘there is no question, they (Iran) are seeking that (nuclear weapons) capability.’

Pentagon chief Adm. Mike Mullen claimed Iran had ‘enough fissile material to build a bomb.’ Fox News claimed Iran already had 50 nuclear weapons. While the American Rome burns, here we go again with renewed hysteria over MWMD’s - Muslim Weapons of Mass Destruction. Wars drums are again beating over Iran.

Click here: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2009/March/opinion_March33.xml&section=opinion&col= to read more.

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.
By Philip Giraldi - American Conservative Magazine

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.
But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Edmonds’s case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. According to the Department of Justice, such an investigation “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”
After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London. On Jan. 6, the Times, a Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world, with follow-ups appearing in Israel, Europe, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Japan—but not in the United States.

Click here: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22071.htm to read more & to see the Documentary: "Kill The Messenger" By Sibel Edmonds.