We poured some water up the nose of some very evil people. They weren't physically hurt. They are terrorists. They aren't covered by the Geneva Convention and don't follow it themselves. To all the people who say we should be better than them, I say it's not about being better. It is a fight to the death and it's about winning.
President Barack Obama says in the immediate aftermath of
9/11, the United States did things that were wrong and crossed the
line. He says, quote, “we tortured some folks.”
Obama is commenting on a Senate investigation into the CIA’s
interrogation techniques. A report on that investigation’s results is
expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Obama says it’s important to remember how horrified Americans were
after 9/11. But he says it’s important to remember the U.S. must live up
to its values.
Obama also says he has full confidence in CIA Director John Brennan.
INDIANAPOLIS — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fired up a crowd of thousands inside Lucas Oil Stadium Saturday night to kick off the National Rifle Association's "Stand and Fight Rally," saying Americans' constitutional rights as envisioned by the founding fathers are under attack and policies like gun-free zones constitute "stupid on steroids."[...]She said later in her address that if "I were in charge" — a line that drew applause from the crowd — "they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."
We all knew Nancy Pelosi was likely lying. She accused the CIA of being liars. Democrats knew who the true liar was. That is why they thwarted an investigation into what Pelosi knew and when she knew it.
“We explained [at the September 4, 2002 briefing] that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”
How did she respond when presented with this information? Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used. Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ‘wrong.’ ” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes. “Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use.”
So we’re left with a “he said-she said” standoff? Not at all. Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing. Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of AZ’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”
The little-known case highlights a sharp difference between President Obama's counter-terrorism policy and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Under Obama, the CIA has killed more people than it has captured, mainly through drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. At the same time, it has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The CIA is out of the detention and interrogation business," said a U.S. official who is familiar with intelligence operations but was not authorized to speak publicly...
Widespread criticism of Bush administration interrogation and detention policies as brutal and degrading led Obama to stop sending suspected terrorists to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Public exposure also forced the CIA to close a network of secret prisons...
In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.
In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives...
Liberals in the mainstream media are now clamoring 'war crimes.'
CENK UYGUR, MSNBC contributor: Now that isn't even the most startling part of the book. He also admits to a war crime. He said, when they asked him, "hey, should we waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?" He admits it. In the book, he says I told them "Damn right." Go ahead and torture him basically.
American voters want to break out the waterboard for Nigerian underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used on this terrorist. Seventy-one percent want the military, nor civilian, authorities to investigate.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed was subjected to some of the toughest enhanced interrogation techniques. He was reportedly waterboarded some 187 times. Now, Khalid Sheik Mohammed is considered one of our best al-Qaeda intelligence assets. One former senior intelligence official attributes this cooperation to those enhanced techniques. Mohammed does claim he sometimes gave false information to interrogators.
WASHINGTON - After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."
In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.
Speaking in English, Mohammed "seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group's plans, ideology and operatives," said one of two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified. "He'd even use a chalkboard at times."
Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.
"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."
Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.
Do you remember when Newt Gingrich was vilified as the most hated politician in America? According to a new poll, Nancy Pelosi has approval ratings nearly as low as Newt Gingrich had then. Boston.com is reporting:
Embattled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has approval ratings nearly as low as Newt Gingrich when he was the primary lightning rod in Congress, a new poll says.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this afternoon found that the approval of how Pelosi is doing her job as speaker has dropped from 51 percent in January to 46 percent in March to 39 percent now.
In the new survey, conducted Thursday through Sunday while Pelosi was embroiled in controversy over how much she was told about waterboarding of terrorist suspects, 48 percent of respondents said they disapproved of her performance.
In a news conference on Thursday, she said she had been misled by the CIA -- an accusation that prompted officials of both parties to defend the spy agency and that provoked some angry Republicans to say she should put up proof or shut up and apologize.
Gingrich, the former GOP house speaker during the mid-1990s, has called on Pelosi to resign as speaker. He had his approval rating drop into the low 30 percent and as low as 25 percent in March 1997.
House Speaker Nanci Pelosi has changed her story on receiving a waterbaording briefing from the CIA. Speaker Pelosi conceded in a statement released Friday, she was told they would be used. According to Fox News:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Friday that she was briefed only once about the "enhanced" interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects and that she was assured by lawyers with the CIA and the Department of Justice that the methods were legal.
Pelosi issued a statement after CIA records released this week showed that Pelosi was briefed in September 2002 on the interrogation methods. The briefings memo appeared to contradict the speaker's claims that she was never told that waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation methods were being used.
"We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used," Pelosi said on April 23.
The emphasis seems to be on "were used," even though she conceded in a statement released Friday that she was told they would be used.
Watch as she stammers and stutters through a contrived story about the briefing she received.
Keep trying Nanci. You will be able to get the full truth out soon.
House Speaker Nanci Pelosi has claimed she did not know that waterboarding had ever been used. A released CIA memorandum proves this statement was false. Human Events is reporting:
She knew from the beginning. According to a CIA memorandum summarizing briefings to Congress on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) knew from the very beginning that those techniques -- including waterboarding -- were being used on September 2, 2002.
According to the memo the very first briefing listed is 9/4/02 with then Rep. Porter Goss & Pelosi. The summary of the briefing says:
“Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”
This directly contradicts Pelosi’s story, that “we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.”
