Nothing funnier than carpet bombing except maybe...
Reg
location: back to the wilderness
listening to: static
registered: 1999.11.22
posts: 6470
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“Technically, US law required the CIA to seek ‘assurances’ from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk] who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified, even if such ‘assurances’ were written in indelible ink, ‘they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit.’”
"Under the Bush administration, in the context of the global “war on terror,” US renditions got “extraordinary,” meaning that the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer for trial but rather interrogation for actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt—Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib—was tortured by Suleiman himself."-----------------------------
Yes, I'd say he's not "squeamish"...belly laugh...guffaw...chuckle...-----------------------------
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, wrote after al-Libi’s “suicide” in 2009: “What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.
“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office [Cheney] ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
“There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just ‘committed suicide’ in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”
This “evidence” provided by al-Libi was also used in Powell’s infamous speech to the UN shortly before the invasion of Iraq, so on Sunday, I asked Powell about this as he left the studios at CBS:
–--
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
Reg
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“Technically, US law required the CIA to seek ‘assurances’ from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk] who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified, even if such ‘assurances’ were written in indelible ink, ‘they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit.’”
"Under the Bush administration, in the context of the global “war on terror,” US renditions got “extraordinary,” meaning that the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer for trial but rather interrogation for actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt—Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib—was tortured by Suleiman himself."-----------------------------
Yes, I'd say he's not "squeamish"...belly laugh...guffaw...chuckle...-----------------------------
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, wrote after al-Libi’s “suicide” in 2009: “What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.
“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office [Cheney] ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
“There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just ‘committed suicide’ in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”
This “evidence” provided by al-Libi was also used in Powell’s infamous speech to the UN shortly before the invasion of Iraq, so on Sunday, I asked Powell about this as he left the studios at CBS:
–--
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
