April 24th 2009 Friday
By Louise
Topic: "Brunch With Bernie" Senator Bernie Sanders www.sanders.senate.gov
Topic: "News Under the Radar" Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress joins Thom www.americanprogress.org
Topic: Sam Seder (www.mvslive.com) is here to tell why his vote is being challenged!
Comments
#2
Witness accounts of bones being found inside Abu Ghraib incinerators.
morale was low to begin with—the M.P.s just wanted to know when they were going home—and there was something about living in cells at Abu Ghraib that never felt right. “We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building,” Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. “It was this huge circular thing. We just didn’t know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew—bodies.” Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. “It had bones in it,” he said, and he called it the crematorium. “But hey, you’re at war,” he said.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_gourevitch
#3
Guess who "Just Said No" to torture
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Convention Against Torture
Signed by President Reagan, May 1988
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2137_v88/ai_6742034/pg_2...
Now we may question his sincerity, but the words are right there!
#4
I hear Hannity is saying that he'll agree to be water-boarded for charity. Well, I'll believe he's serious about this if he allows the waterboarding to be done by a combination of Code Pink members, Cindy Sheehan, and mothers who live in Bagdad - i.e. he'll have to worry about whether those doing the waterboarding REALLY want him to survive - let's make the experience a bit more realistic for him so he starts to truly understand the issue for prisoners.
#5
Thom,
You briefly mentioned that torture was used to produce false confessions and create fodder for the terror alerts during the summer and fall of 2004. I haven't heard anyone else in the media discuss this angle.
It seems to me to be ripe for someone to research. Telling someone who doesn't listen to Thom Hartmann that Bush used torture to try to kill Social Security---well---people aren't going to get that. Saying that he tortured to try to find a link between Sadam and Al-quada and to ramp up fear to get re-elected is something most people can understand.
#6
I never thought I would see the day where a lobby would keep our first black president from attending a UN anit-racism conference. But I give Bush credit for two things, partially for PETFAR and completely for not allowing Israel to bomb Iran. When Bush is the calm person in the room you have to be worried. So now that the new government is even more right wing, I woner if Israel needs Obama's permission to bomb Iran (and subsequently start WWIII)?
#7
THOM said let them take their time on the torture thing -- let it get a bit chaotic.
Well, I agree about letting the individual State's attorneys general get in the fracas. That's a good thing.
However, I have a concern I've had since the beginning when I saw on a PBS show (hosted by a rightwinger I assume) who conducted the very first debate I heard on torture, clearly planted by the Bush Crime Family-Lynne&DickCheney et al. It was in the late summer/early autumn of 2004.
Clearly there has been and IS a desire to confuse the public's understanding of an heinous and illegal action -- torture.
If we wait any longer, THOM, and let this illegal torture policy go unprosecuted, how many more "debates" will be conducted to pollute young, impressionable minds? Will torture be the next new WEDGE ISSUE?
#8
One thing that smells fishy is the fact that the Murrah Bldg. target was in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma -- with Oklahoma's governor at the time being an intelligence community alumni, Frank Keating.
And he really wanted the V.P. spot with Bush II in 2000, right?
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By webmaster
Hello All
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