The New American Politics thread

[DuffMan]

damn, that reminded me, I almost forgot this.

[Burke Salad]

GOP alienating a huge voter base in the Latino's, that should end well for them.

[PIMking]

Originally Posted by Burke Salad

GOP alienating a huge voter base in the Latino's, that should end well for them.

But it could also be said that the illegals that get citizenship from this are just more Democratic voters and buying votes per say.

Personally, it's stupid to kick a family out when they have kids here. If they're raising their kids here they're spending money and paying taxes because we all know kids are not cheap.

The one thing I don't really like is that the fact that some are just illegally here without kids. So that would be like me crossing the boarder into canada illegally and living there illegally. it's illegal simply put.

I'd rather see a sponsorship deal for those with skills to come here and work, and a visa process that is faster and smoother.

I'm not against immigration, hell I myself am an immigrant, I just want to see a legal process for those who want to come here. But the process is a bitch and takes too damn long.

what the republicans are forgetting is that this country was founded on immigration, instead of screwing people from being here lets try to get them here legally so they can be taxed like the rest of us.

All they see is brown folks coming here and "taking er jerbs"

idiots

[Flash Walken]

The US economy is so utterly dependent upon illegal immigrant labour that it would take a real and substantial discussion on America's economic situation to really deal with immigration as an issue.

Until such a time as there exists the capacity to rationally discuss and debate the current american economic situation, solutions to 'immigration problems' will be purely cosmetic solutions orchestrated for political gain.

Curbing or standardizing immigration coming from south america would have to coincide with large increases to domestic worker subsidy like raised minimum wage standards, greater enforcement of labour conditions, healthcare overhaul as well as adjustments to the tax system.

The fact of the matter is America is utterly reliant on illegal immigration at this point as a result of continued undercutting of entry level, manual labour and service industry labour standards and practices.

Unionization, corporate tax increases and comprehensive healthcare package costs would all have to rise dramatically to sustain a labour movement devoid of illegal labour.

For conservatives/republicans, the solution to the problem is worse than the problem, which is why they aren't interested in offering solutions that do anything to actively address the problem.

It's just that simple.

[Vulcan]

Yeah, for business, they like the illegal immigrants as it keeps wages down but in order to make it play to the regular guy they throw in a touch of racism and make it seem like they are protecting the good old USA. Meanwhile the lower wages screws the regular guy as he needs to compete with this cheap labour.

Also from what I've heard Bohner is sitting on a bill to solve this problem that would pass but he won't put it up for a vote. Meanwhile he calls Obama a lawless emperor. One thing about these Republicans, they have no problem twisting the truth.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Yeah, for business, they like the illegal immigrants as it keeps wages down but in order to make it play to the regular guy they throw in a touch of racism and make it seem like they are protecting the good old USA. Meanwhile the lower wages screws the regular guy as he needs to compete with this cheap labour.

Also from what I've heard Bohner is sitting on a bill to solve this problem that would pass but he won't put it up for a vote. Meanwhile he calls Obama a lawless emperor. One thing about these Republicans, they have no problem twisting the truth.

Boehner has had 1 1/2 years to put he bill up for a vote and hasn't done it. That action doesn't fit their primary purpose of obstruction.

[DuffMan]

After wasting millions and taking 2 years the latest Republican committee to try uncover the conspiracy that Benghazi was Obamas fault, has finally admitted they were wrong and there was no wrongdoing.

Back to the birther conspiracies for the Republicans.

[Tinordi]

Boehner could pass an immigration bill tomorrow if he wanted. He has one already drafted that has the votes.

[burn_this_city]

Chuck Hagel resigned as Defense Secretary.

[Flash Walken]

Kind of a big deal happened yesterday. The US Senate released their investigation report on torture abuses by the CIA.The Washington Post had this to say about it (the report summmary is located at this link as well)

The Senate released a 528-page executive summary of its study on the CIA’s detention program, more than eight years after the secret overseas prisons were shut down. The report rejected many of the agency’s claims on the effectiveness of harsh interrogation techniques.

An exhaustive five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict on a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee delivers new allegations of cruelty in a program whose severe tactics have been abundantly documented, revealing that agency medical personnel voiced alarm that waterboarding methods had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings” and that agency employees subjected detainees to “rectal rehydration” and other painful procedures that were never approved.

The 528-page document catalogues dozens of cases in which CIA officials allegedly deceived their superiors at the White House, members of Congress and even sometimes their peers about how the interrogation program was being run and what it had achieved. In one case, an internal CIA memo relays instructions from the White House to keep the program secret from then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of concern that he would “blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

Washington Post

One of the most lengthy sections describes the interrogation of the CIA’s first prisoner, Abu Zubaida, who was detained in Pakistan in March 2002. Abu Zubaida, badly injured when he was captured, was largely cooperative when jointly questioned by the CIA and FBI but was then subjected to confusing and increasingly violent interrogation as the agency assumed control.

After being transferred to a site in Thailand, Abu Zubaida was placed in isolation for 47 days, a period during which the presumably important source on al-Qaeda faced no questions. Then, at 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2002, the CIA launched a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming him against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-size box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited, and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”

The treatment continued for 17 days. At one point, the waterboarding left Abu Zubaida “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” CIA memos described employees who were distraught and concerned about the legality of what they had witnessed. One said that “two, perhaps three” were “likely to elect transfer.”

The Senate report suggests top CIA officials at headquarters had little sympathy. When a cable from Thailand warned that the Abu Zubaida interrogation was “approach[ing] the legal limit,” Jose Rodriguez, then chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, cautioned subordinates to refrain from such “speculative language as to the legality” of the interrogation. “Such language is not helpful.”

Through a spokesman, Rodriguez told The Washington Post that he never instructed employees not to send cables about the legality of interrogations.
Abu Zubaida, also known as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was waterboarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours. In October 2002, Bush was informed in his daily intelligence briefing that Abu Zubaida was still withholding “significant threat information,” despite views from the black site that he had been truthful from the outset and was “compliant and cooperative,” the report said.

The document provides a similarly detailed account of the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who fed his interrogators a stream of falsehoods and intelligence fragments.

Waterboarding was supposed to simulate suffocation with a damp cloth and a trickle of liquid. But with Mohammed, CIA operatives used their hands to form a standing pool of water over his mouth. KSM, as he is known in agency documents, was ingesting “a LOT of water,” a CIA medical officer wrote, saying that the application had been so altered that “we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”

Washington Post

Mr. Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, said repeatedly that the detention and interrogation program was humane and legal. The intelligence gleaned during interrogations, he said, was instrumental both in thwarting terrorism plots and in capturing senior figures of Al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and a number of former C.I.A. officials have said more recently that the program was essential for ultimately finding Osama bin Laden, who was killed by members of the Navy SEALs in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The Intelligence Committee’s report tries to refute each of these claims, using the C.I.A.'s internal records to present 20 case studies that bolster its conclusion that the most extreme interrogation methods played no role in disrupting terrorism plots, capturing terrorist leaders, or even finding Bin Laden.

The report said that senior officials — including former C.I.A. directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden — repeatedly inflated the value of the program in secret briefings both at the White House and on Capitol Hill, and in public speeches.

The New York Times

The committee’s report concluded that of the 119 detainees, “at least 26 were wrongfully held.”

It said, “These included an ‘intellectually challenged’ man whose C.I.A. detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former C.I.A. sources, and two individuals whom the C.I.A. assessed to be connected to Al Qaeda based solely on information fabricated by a C.I.A. detainee subjected to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The New York Times

Canada had a role in the United States’ extraordinary rendition program, allowing the CIA to use its airspace and airports repeatedly after Sept. 11, 2001 for secret fights transporting detainees to prison sites outside the U.S. A total of 20 aircraft linked to the CIA made stops in Canada during 74 flights, according to reports. In addition, the RCMP provided inaccurate information about Canadian citizen Maher Arar to the United States, leading to his rendition to Syria in 2002 where he was held for a year and tortured. Mr. Arar was eventually awarded $10.5-million in a legal settlement.

Sukanya Pillay, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the group has been concerned about information-sharing practices since the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We are very concerned about new torture directives that were unveiled in the last few years,” Ms. Pillay said, adding that they appear to open a door for Canadian intelligence agencies to rely on information provided by countries known to torture.

“If one of our closest partners in the global counterterror effort engaged in practices that would run afoul of the legal obligations under the convention against torture, it does raise very serious questions about what the implications are for Canada and how Canadians may have been affected,” she said.

The Globe and Mail

Here are the report's biggest conclusions and revelations:
1. "Enhanced interrogation" includes torture
Sen. Dianne Feinstein writes in the report that the Committee's findings reveal that "CIA detainees were tortured."

"I also believe that the conditions of confinement and the use of authorized and unauthorized interrogation and conditioning techniques were cruel, inhuman, and degrading. I believe the evidence of this is overwhelming and incontrovertible," she writes.

Feinstein isn't alone. President Obama said over the summer that, in the past, "we tortured some folks." And Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a POW during Vietnam, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that the harsh interrogations described in the report amount to torture.

The CIA has claimed throughout its defense of the program that these coercive interrogations "saved lives" -- the most significant point the Senate committee refutes in its report.

CNN

The release of a U.S. senate report on harsh CIA interrogation techniques has elicited condemnation, a call for prosecution – and new revelations from the countries involved in the Americans’ global intelligence-gathering plans.

After denying the fact for years, a former Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, acknowledged Wednesday that Poland had let the CIA run a secret prison on its territory but insisted that Polish officials did not authorize the harsh treatment or torture of its inmates.

Globe and Mail/AP

The CIA hired two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, to develop enhanced interrogation techniques to be used on terror suspects and other detainees. The pair did not have any experience as interrogators, specialized knowledge of al-Qaeda, backgrounds incounterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise. Their prior experience was at the U.S. Air Force survival, evasion, resistance and escape school, according to the report.

Despite that, the psychologists "carried out inherently governmental functions," including personally using techniques they designed on "some of the CIA's most significant detainees." The psychologists then formed a company specifically to work with the CIA.

By 2008, the CIA's Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Group (the lead unit for detention and interrogation operations) outsourced 85 per cent of its workforce to that company. The contractors were paid more than $80 million, along with an extra $1 million to protect the contractors from "legal liability arising out of the program."

CBC

We have come to a critical moment in the debate about torture. It’s no longer possible, as it was when the images of Abu Ghraib emerged in 2004, to pretend that these events were rare, exceptional or the work of a few rogue agents. Nor will it be easy to assimilate them into that beloved average image of our national goodness. We are confronted with our own barbarity, as we have been confronted with the barbarity of the Islamic State.
We torture, they behead. We beat men senseless, slam their heads into walls, strip them naked and leave them to die, while they march men into a field and put bullets in their heads. We might still cling to the idea that our crimes are not quite so bad as theirs. But to quibble over the degree of cruelty we tolerate is to acknowledge that cruelty is now standard practice. Unless we punish the guilty, we can have no more illusions that there is anything fundamental about who we are, how we are governed or what religion we practice, that distinguishes us from the worst in the world.

How does the national image survive this? The usual forces will struggle to resist the new information. Some will wear blinders; others will see things selectively. But what do the rest of us do, everyone one of us who woke up, yesterday, to a powerful feeling of helplessness and shame? If the report leads to no further investigation, no indictments or prosecution, does it then just lay there, on the side of history, as something that can’t be assimilated, while the national image slowly comes back to its usual, gauzy, soft focus on our own unquestionable goodness?

If no one in public life is capable of punishing the guilty, if nothing comes of this but more denials and obfuscations, if the CIA is indeed more powerful than the president, the Congress and the Constitution, what is left of our beloved and benign national image?

Washington Post

5. Mock Executions.
The report was pretty coy about this, but it mentioned that the CIA conducted "mock executions" on two occasions. No details were given about what exactly that meant, but ask Fyodor Dostoyevsky (who went through a pretty elaborate one at the hands of Tsarist torturers), it's an attention-getter.

The CIA also spent time threatening harm to family members (including threats to sexually abuse one detainee's mother), and/or promising detainees that they would never leave captivity alive. This passage, about Abu Zubaydah, who of course is not what one would describe as a good person, stood out:

Over the course of [an] entire 20-day "aggressive phase of interrogation," Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, a depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet. The CIA interrogators told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped confinement box.

I measured that out in my living room this morning and nearly needed diapers myself at the thought of being in one of those boxes for even ten seconds. Of course, they didn't just put people in these boxes, or promise them they would spend the rest of their lives there. They also put some guests in:

6. Insects.
The report only mentions insects twice and doesn't provide any details. There have been reports about many of these techniques before, of course, and some details about the insect idea have leaked out. It may be that they would tell a suspect like Zubaydah that a stinging insect is about to be placed in the box, and then they would put a non-stinging insect like a caterpillar in there. But who knows? We may have to wait for some future reporter to FOIA the unclassified version to find out exactly what species of vermin they dumped in there.

Putting someone in a coffin for 20 days with insects crawling all over him would be considered sadistic by any self-respecting third-world torturer. Then again, it's not clear that your average old-school torturer, lacking an American's inherent sense of industrial planning and organization, would have come up with stuff like:

7) The "Rough Takedown."
From the report:
At times, the detainees at COBALT were walked around naked or were shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time. Other times, the detainees at COBALT were subjected to what was described as a "rough takedown," in which approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape. The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.
That detainee named Gul Rahman was said to have died after one of these choreographed scare-scenes. The report writes: "Rahman, after his death, was found to have surface abrasions on his shoulders, pelvis, arms, legs, and face."

Apparently the officers rushed him, shouted at him to "get down," did the bizarre routine of cutting his clothes off (there is an unmistakable obsession with nudity in these interrogations), ran him through a kind of gauntlet where "although it was obvious they were not trying to hit him as hard as they could, a couple of times the punches were forceful," then dragged him through the dirt outside the cell.

Here again, it's not so much the outrage that American citizens physically abused people, it's just the weirdness of this scripted attack: who thinks of this stuff? And who sat around coming up with ideas like hanging people by their arms for hours on end, or hanging them with just their toes touching the ground, or:

8) The Cordless Drill.
No commentary necessary for this description of the interrogation of suspected Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was:

Placed in a 'standing stress position' with 'his hands affixed over his head' for approximately two and a half days… Later, … while he was blindfolded, [a CIA officer] placed a pistol near al- Nashiri's head and operated a cordless drill near al-Nashiri's body.

The report blithely notes that Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations, which brings up another point:

Rolling Stone

With this from a 2003 article:

The Bush administration edited the Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which for 50 years has provided guidance to soldiers on how to treat prisoners. The latest version, produced in 1992, specifically prohibited “abnormal sleep deprivation,” which the manual calls “mental torture,” and “forcing an individual to stand, sit, or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time” which it considers “physical torture.”

But in 2006, the Bush administration removed that language and added Appendix M, which authorized “separation,” isolating the detainee from others to prevent him from gathering information from others or learning new counter-interrogation techniques. The report found that the tactic “could inflict significant mental and physical stress” on a detainee and could technically allow him to be interrogated for 40 hours straight, with only four-hour rest periods on either end. Appendix M also forbids sensory deprivation, but allows goggles, blindfolds and handcuffs to “generate a perception of separation” for up to 12 hours, or longer if security necessitates it, the report said.

The Obama administration to date hasn’t re-edited the manual to remove Appendix M or restore the deleted language.

3. We Still Aren’t Sure about Renditions: The practice of kidnapping suspects and sending them to foreign countries to be interrogated began long before the Sept. 11 attacks. The first known incident was believed to have been authorized by President Bill Clinton, who seized Ramzi Yousef in Pakistan and put him on trial for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Later, the U.S. began sending suspects to other countries, not for trial, but interrogation.

There were about 70 renditions before 9/11, the report said. The number of renditions after 9/11 is in dispute, but the report cites a 2007 investigation by the European Parliament that found the CIA flew as many as 1,245 extraordinary rendition flights between 9/11 and February 2007. But former CIA director Michael Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2007 that the actual number of rendition flights is “a tiny fraction of that,” and that most of the flights carried equipment or documents, not detainees.
More is known about how the detainees were treated. The foreign governments gave “diplomatic assurances” that they wouldn’t abuse the detainees, but those were “unreliable,” the report said. In fact, the report found that detainees were “more likely than not” to be tortured or subject to “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.”

The report cited examples such as hanging detainees from limbs, beating them with metal rods, or shocking their genitals. U.S. officials knew what went on because they sometimes were involved in interrogations, the report said.

PBS

[Caged Great]

The most nauseating thing recently is watching all these blanks coming out of the wood work to justify their heinous actions. Absolutely deplorable, each and every one of them.

[Thor]

Favorite part is Fox news trying to spin this as irresponsible to release these documents because it puts our intelligence and armed forces in danger.

YES, like no one knew about torture until today.

[Itse]

Of course it's important to remember this is not a reason why some people hate or distrust the US. Not at all.

They just hate freedom.

[burn_this_city]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/opinio...html?hpt=hp_t1

Here's an article from a Gitmo detainee that was never charged with anything.

[DuffMan]

Dick Cheney should go to jail.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Dick Cheney should go to jail.

I find it appalling they wasted a perfectly good heart on an 80 year old war criminal. He should be well into his dirtnap by now.

[Tinordi]

Unconscionable that these criminals walk today as free men.

They detained and tortured 26 innocent men.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Unconscionable that these criminals walk today as free men.

They detained and tortured 26 innocent men.

And of course when leadership promotes and condones an activity, it trickles down to the rest of the group.

This is from an article I posted a few pages back, about the alarming rate of war crimes being committed in afghanistan by american forces:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...last-year.html

The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan as recently as last year, according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul.

The human rights organization alleges that the U.S. military has routinely failed to properly investigate reports of criminal behavior and, in some instances, tampered with evidence to conceal wrongdoing. On the rare occasions when servicemen are held to account, the report found that the compromised military justice system seldom secured justice for the victims of enforced disappearances, killings, and abuse that included torture.

“President Obama has admitted that ‘we tortured’ people in the past—but this is not the Bush administration, this is torture happening under Obama,” said Joanne Mariner, the author of the report.

While torture and other abuses by the CIA and the military were sanctioned by the Bush administration, Obama entered office vowing to end such practices. There have been a number of prosecutions and punishments of military units that have committed crimes and atrocities in Afghanistan under Obama, but Amnesty says the White House has to do more to ensure his policy changes are respected in the field.

A survivor of one of the most egregious assaults on civilians detailed in the report told The Daily Beast he had been forced to listen to the last gasps and sobs of his dying daughter, who was seven months pregnant, while the Americans threatened to kill anyone who moved. “She was calling out for help, maybe she wanted to share her last words before she left us forever,” said Muhammad Tahir, a civil servant.

Four years after two pregnant women, two criminal justice officials, and a teenage girl were shot dead during a party to mark the birth of a grandson in Khataba Village, Paktia Province, Tahir and his family are still waiting to be interviewed as part of an investigation the U.S. military promised to carry out.

“There is a shocking lack of accountability for the killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. forces, including civilians killed in circumstances that raise concerns about war crimes,” said Mariner. “There is very strong evidence that war crimes were carried out.”

The report, titled “Left in the Dark,” includes detailed investigations of 10 incidents in which at least 140 civilians, including 50 children, were killed in dubious circumstances. In the aftermath of nine of these, eyewitnesses and families report that no one was ever interviewed by the U.S. military.

“President Obama has admitted that ‘we tortured’ people in the past—but this is not the Bush administration, this is torture happening under Obama.”
A Pentagon spokesman did not deny the allegations in the report but reiterated U.S. policy on torture and war crimes. “The Department of Defense does not permit its personnel to engage in acts of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in its custody,” said Maj. Bradlee Avots.

[Flash Walken]

Canada's hands aren't clean

Speaking in the House of Commons Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed the idea that the Canadian intelligence community was in any way implicated in the report.

"This is a report of the United States Senate," Harper said. "It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada."

A statement released by the office of Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney said, "Our Government does not condone the use of torture, and certainly does not engage in it." It added that Canada "will continue to ensure that intelligence is reviewed and assessed by Canadian intelligence experts before it is acted upon."

However, as Juneau-Katsuya points out, intelligence Canada shared with the CIA led to the torture of a number of Canadians.

"That's exactly what took place with Maher Arar, that's exactly what took place with Omar Khadr, that's exactly what took place with tons of other people," says Juneau-Katsuya, who calls Harper's stance "a very hypocritical position."

Harper's dismissive tone about the Senate report obscures how closely Canadian intelligence works with its American counterparts, says Juneau-Katsuya.

He says that Canadian spies have a "phenomenal" relationship with the CIA. Not only do they share intelligence related to foreign threats, but CSIS has liaison officers that work in CIA headquarters, and vice versa.

Given their close working relationship, did Canadian intelligence agents witness any of the CIA's torture tactics?

"It would be speculation on my part," says Juneau-Katsuya, "but I think it's very likely."

He adds that "some [Canadian agents] might have had the wise reflex not to be there and simply say, 'I wasn't present.'"

But the bottom line is the Canadian government "cannot deny the fact that we were aware of the practices."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/cia-torture-r...ence-1.2867716

[nik-]

It'll be forgotten by the next news cycle because the general public doesn't care that their governments are terrifying.