Senate Armed Services Committee Meeting.. (on nbc now)

Sen Warner looking for nominations..

McCain answering, he is open for nominations at this time.


Let's see how kosher this investigation goes...

(www.cspan.org for those w/out cable)

...to the 'abuse' scandal. But didn't they know about this back in January?

I don't think I can stomach another white wash..

I'm really going to be sick.

Iraqis. Aren't these people under Bush?

babble....of our wonderful military....heartened by Bush's words...yuck.........
I thought he was from Virginia....not babble-lon-ia....(weak attempt at humor)....

sickenly so.

but they weren't in Iraq!


As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few bad apples"
whose actions "do not reflect the nature of our country."

hearings...Teddy has been really eloquent lately and dead on balls accurate with his descriptive metaphors..

thanking Taguba.

that are ongoing. In other words...we are going to stall giving answers.

Saturday, May 08, 2004, 01:50 A.M.
Rumsfeld warns of worse prison-abuse images


By Craig Gordon
Newsday

<snip>

One of Rumsfeld's testiest exchanges occurred when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pressed him to describe who was in charge at Abu Ghraib prison. When Rumsfeld suggested that the answer be given by Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of Central Command, McCain interrupted:

"No, Secretary Rumsfeld, in all due respect, you've got to answer this question," McCain said. "This is a pretty simple, straightforward question. Who was in charge of the interrogations? What agencies and what — or private contractors were in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions to the guards?"

When Smith tried to answer, McCain interrupted again: "Mr. Secretary, you can't answer these questions?"

Rumsfeld said the responsibility rested with officers who oversaw detentions and with military intelligence officers in charge of interrogations. "And the responsibility, as I have reviewed the matter, shifted over a period of time," he said.

Several senators also pressed Rumsfeld to explain how far up the chain of command the approval to "soften up" prisoners for questioning was known or approved, though the answer remained unclear. An Army investigation said military interrogators enlisted military police from the 800th Military Police Brigade to set "physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation" of prisoners.

At one point, Rumsfeld brought his undersecretary of intelligence, Stephen Cambone, to the table, and Cambone indicated that he was aware of recommendations by one senior officer to improve efforts to get more information out of interrogations but didn't say whether he had signed off on them. ((collective amnesia all over again))

<snip>

newsblaster.cs.columbia.edu/NBproxy.cgi?sentence=135

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:5Af5053RbKkJ:newsblaster.cs.columbia.edu/NBproxy.cgi%3Fsentence%3D135+Cambone+%22Rumsfeld+warns+of+worse+prison-abuse+images%22&hl=en

===

Who is this Stephen Cambone? Washington Times reporters Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough recently wrote the following (strangely the original page with this article has disappeared; I recovered this from the Google cache):

Stephen Cambone has assumed sweeping power over the Pentagon's intelligence bureaucracy as the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

We obtained a copy of a May 8 memorandum from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz setting up the new office. It states that the office takes over all 286 persons and policies attached to the intelligence, counterintelligence and security, and other intelligence-related issues that were in the portfolio of the assistant defense secretary for command, control, communications and intelligence, once the Pentagon's top intelligence official.

Mr. Wolfowitz said the new office is in charge of "all intelligence and intelligence-related oversight and policy guidance functions" in the office of the secretary of defense.

Mr. Cambone, a protege of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who has little intelligence experience, will have several deputies, including three charged with intelligence warning, war fighting and operations, and counterintelligence and security.

The key phrase of the implementing guidance memorandum relates to the office's power over other Pentagon intelligence agencies that in the past have resisted control by Pentagon policy-makers.

It states that the new undersecretary will "exercise authority, direction, and control over the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Security Service (DSS) and the DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA)."

<snip>


http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~gabriel/weblog/2003_05_01_archive.html

===

What else do we know about Dr. Cambone? He is a 1982 political science Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School. He was the staff director of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, also known as the "Rumsfeld Commission."

Here's the kicker: besides being "a protege of Donald Rumsfeld," he also was one of the authors of the Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses, the radical, Strangelovian document that formed the basis for the Bush administration's National Security Strategy.

So, having failed, despite Judith Miller's best efforts, to find any evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq, the Pentagon is sending a new team of 1400 people, headed by one of Rumsfeld's closest buddies, a civilian political science Ph.D. with little intelligence experience, who also happens to be a neoconservative PNAC guy (a "Straussian," too, for those who think that matters). What are the odds that he will not claim to find something?

Here's my question for Cambone: who wrote the following sentence in the PNAC report?

On page 60, in the section "Transforming U.S. Conventional Forces," which discusses long-term plans for the U.S. military:

"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."


<snip>

http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~gabriel/weblog/2003_05_01_archive.html

Good info there.

" "And the responsibility, as I have reviewed the matter, shifted over a period of time," he said." Does he mean when Bush switched everything ocver to Condi?

quotation taken from 1st half of article.

because they need to hang Karpinski and protect a few other people.

I have a thread on MG Barbara Fast here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=543196#545120 That's one of the people they desperately need to protect because if she comes down, Miltary Intel comes down as well as the civilian intel agencies who were working there.

TYY:hi:

Sorry if off topic. Hear this quite often lately, and just wondered.

detainee is being held pending a resolution of status (EPW or release them)...thet have not been classified yet. detainees can be held indefinitely..and so can internees..but they have been classified-held for specific reason.

mostly democrats..

I'm getting this straight from my husband..a military police soldier

The example he gave is..say shots were fired from a building...they would sweep the building detaining everyone in the building...then the actual sniper would become the internee.

a detainee is held accused of a crime, while an internee is not accused of a crime, but is held prisoner as a "...preventive security measure..." during an armed conflict.

.jc.

Got a lot of his kind on Wall Street. Mostly in firms under or about to be under indictment.

Fay is investigating this at this time.

War is Peace... :wtf:

it might make sense or be close to the truth.

what a neocon TOOL. :puke:

read KRUGMAN today!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/11KRUG.html

Douglas Feith, President Bush's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy — and number three man at the Pentagon — reportedly summed up Protocol One of the Geneva Conventions of 1977 as "law in the service of terrorism".

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/07/rights/index.html

from what should be the business of the hearings.

The important part is: are Iraqis living in a free country?

ongoing. Cites gen. Fay investigation again...looks like a day of stonewalling.

is being put forward BEFORE the main witness speaks. Usually the accusations are made FIRST and then the explanation after. This admin is shitting bricks, imo, and it shows.

He was only charged to investigate MP's and prison operations around abuse.

Military Intel is going to pay for this....big time.

just spoke to the point of contractors, another investigation recommended and is ongoing. His area of investigation was military police, not military intelligence.

He actually looks sort of jolly. That's good, good to see he's comfortable up there.

hmmm :eyes:

the blame. I tried to follow what he said and I am lost. Anybody here got a handle on what he really said?

Military and Rummy.

testimony? Simply from time aspect alone. I hope most of the questions are asked o Gen Taguba?

used to deny, confuse, intimidate, take time, dilute testimony.

Cambone undersecretary is trying to coverup the RESPONSIBITY that the civilian defense authorities have in the TORTURE.

Warner is letting him...

Trying to shove this thing way down the chain of command to the local level. "We did nothing wrong in Washington", what a set-up. Any dummy can see through this.

see why she got bored!

7th husband????

What a goon . . .


I vote, does you?

Obfuscate and spin . . .

Taguba has his proverbial hands tied right now . . .


As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few bad apples"
whose actions "do not reflect the nature of our country."

lack of supervision, leadership, etc.


asking about CIA and contractors involvement....

lots of information contained w/i 6,000 pages

Taguba says,
Yes, sir.

Arrogance... it is like he thinks Levin is a fly he wants to swat.

"Tactical control of all units"

Cambone disagrees....

Bwhahahahaha....its finger pointing...

Intel vrsus regular army!!!

Karpinsky was more or less taken from command and MI effectively put in charge..

she retained her role as in charge of detention operations...so she's lying when she claims they (MI) kept her out...

were different from camp x-ray...That was not my understanding...Is he lying?


failure.

think he just fumbled that one.

edit to add quotation marks.

This is an important issue..

Like, as in, last effing Saturday????????


(re: Cambone appointment)

They all make me sick . . .


As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few bad apples"
whose actions "do not reflect the nature of our country."

Torture Sanctioned by Pentagon

Bar Association: Torture Sanctioned by Pentagon Appointees
Salon is reporting that a report compiled by the Committee on International Law of the New York City Bar Association has found that the American military's treatment of detainees and prisoners of war in Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq violates international law — and the compilers of the report say that the techniques employed by interrogators at prisons such as Abu Ghraib were "sanctioned by Pentagon political appointees."

Joe Conason of Salon reports that Scott Horton, a partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler and chair of the Committee on International Law was told by "senior" members of the Judge Advocate General Corps that high ranking political appointees were behind the abuse. Says Conason:

http://www.warblogging.com/

Lack of protection

<snip>

Indeed, Horton says that the JAG officers specifically warned him that Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith,one of the most powerful political appointees in the Pentagon, had significantly weakened the military's rules and regulations governing prisoners of war. The officers told Horton that Feith and the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, were creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" that would allow mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Douglas Feith, President Bush's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy — and number three man at the Pentagon — reportedly summed up Protocol One of the Geneva Conventions of 1977 as "law in the service of terrorism".

In the past, Conason writes, all interrogations conducted by military personnel were monitored by a member of the Judge Advocate General corps from behind a two-way mirror. All interrogations were monitored, and the JAG officer was "emplowered to stop any misconduct". But senior Pentagon officials removed that requirement. Not only did JAG officers no longer monitor interrogations, but private military contractors were allowed to conduct interrogations.

<snip>

After hearing the complaints of the JAG officers, Horton and his bar colleagues wrote to Haynes and the CIA's general counsel in an effort to clarify U.S. policy on the treatment and interrogation of detainees. Those inquiries, he recalls, "were met with a firm brushoff. We then turned to senators who had raised the issue previously, and assisted their staff in pursuing the issue directly with the Pentagon. These inquiries met with a similar brushoff." The Bush administration wanted no meddling by human rights lawyers as it brought democracy and human rights to the benighted region.

<snip>

Horton says that career military officers at the Pentagon were "greatly upset" by what they regarded as the deliberate destruction of traditions and methods that have long protected soldiers as well as civilians. Those officers, and others who may have evidence to offer, are obviously reluctant to step forward and speak because they fear reprisal from the Pentagon and the White House. They have been instructed not to talk to anyone about these issues. It is to be hoped that in the investigations to come -- whether or not Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Feith keep their jobs -- those conscientious officers will be able to tell what they know about the decisions that led to this national disaster.


<snip>

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/07/rights/index.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x49554

If personal responsibility is a core conservative principle...these people are the most liberal people in history...
failure.

I'm hoping all the other Democrats are just as aggressive and some Repubs will aloso be as honorable...

You found breaks of the Geneva convention?
Yes sir!

"Yessir". Taguba to question by McCain.

to the max

hmmmm . . . I guess that does it!!!

Just a few bad apples . . . yeah right . . .


As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few bad apples"
whose actions "do not reflect the nature of our country."

directions, not the policy from the top.

on the Generals. All the fancy decorations and ribbons and medals. It kind of looks like halloween . . .


Does anyone know that you’re my hero . . . .

this is for him.

her excuse that she was precluded from controlling certain areas of the prison.

of Bremer's concerns.

that she was excluded from certain areas of the prison, from his interviews wih her...

it came across like Karpinsky could have been prevented from entering certain places...but as long as she remained in charge of the detention operations...she would have access to any area

MI can keep you out by claiming that you "compartmentalized intel" is being processed in there and that you only have a Top Secret clearance.

Just saying it's possible. Personally, I'm not totally buying it. But why is no one asking if http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x543196">MG Barbara Fast, head of intelligence for the U.S. command in Baghdad, ever visited? The intel part belonged to her and wings 1A & 1B were reportedly under her control.
The interrogators, civilian and military, were all hers. But not a peep about her, it's as if she doesn't even exist.

On edit (I know you read this already but posting for others)

...except for one brief mention, the 55-page report contains nothing about the role of the top military intelligence officer in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast. As head of intelligence for the U.S. command in Baghdad, Fast was in charge of interrogators at Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were beaten, sodomized and photographed in sexually degrading positions.

from: Report Steers Clear of Interrogators' Boss

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/08/Worldandnation/Report_steers_clear_o.shtml

because they all need to be

:nuke:

areas of Abu Ghraib. Taguba says that she was in charge of all detention facilities, and it is hard for him to believe she was excluded from any area of any facilities.

Oops, sorry I duped what kentuck said. I'm not fast enough.

for comfort.

Let them have it!

ooooohhhhh . . .



Does anyone know that you’re my hero . . . .

because they are terrorists, criminals, who probably have American blood on their hands. Does this man not read?

only MI and private contractors...Kennedy asked about ALL 3

rules and regulations if at your level there is no clear understanding?

as meaning Miller intended to fix the disorder tha existed in Abu Ghraib. Riiiiiight.

Only six or seven persons are involved. These prisoner aren't in there for traffic violations, they probably have American blood on their hands.

Going on now about Husseins torture stories.

This fucking asshole just doesn't get it.

When they are caught in criminal, immoral or illegal activities they jump up and down shouting 'What about him? What about him?'. They seem to think that if others are violating rules, regulations, laws or codes of decency then they also have the right to do so.

They act like spoiled children. I am ashamed to live in a nation where a prick like can rise to a position of power (not to mention , the entire bush administration).

I am more outraged at the outrage than the violations!!!!
This guy is a criminal.
Political agendas being served by this!!!!

um, did I say that correctly?

IOW - whaddapoophead.

Not concerned about the abuse or torture...

I can't believe what he is saying!!!
"I'm outraged by the outrage!!"

UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!

"The prisoners aren't there for traffic violations." WTF?!?!?

and fighting for his life. He knows it's coming to an end real soon once these hearings get HOT! He has voted 100% of the time with the Christian Coalition agenda.

My deepest sympathies to the good people of that state. This guy is unfreakingbelievable.

Pornography Debacle In Inhofe's Office Showcases Hypocrisy Over Hormel Tantrum

WASHINGTON -- The hypocrisy of Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., who objected to James C. Hormel's recess appointment as the ambassador to Luxembourg on "moral" grounds, was put on full display today as several of his aides were discovered to have downloaded large quantities of pornography off the Internet, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

"The sanctimonious, holier-than-thou veil was ripped from the face of Senator Inhofe," said HRC Communications Director David M. Smith. "In light of this astounding hypocrisy, we call on Inhofe to lift his holds on all nominations and apologize to James Hormel and the American public for letting his bigotry stand in the way of the nation's business."

Computer pornography was discovered during a systems check, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. The newspaper reported that there was such a voluminous collection of lewd and lascivious material that it "messed up the senator's computer system." A source told Roll Call that three male staffers were responsible. An Inhofe spokesman said in the article that "this resulted in immediate and appropriate disciplinary action being taken against those involved." There is no word on whether the staffers were fired.

Last week, Inhofe blocked all pending Clinton administration nominations because he was upset over the June 4 recess appointment of openly gay philanthropist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. Inhofe attacked the appointment with a blistering statement. "President Clinton has shown contempt for Congress and the Constitution," Inhofe said. "He has treated the Senate confirmation process as little more than a nuisance which he can circumvent whenever he wants to impose his will on the country."

<snip>

http://www.rslevinson.com/gaylesissues/features/collect/religiousreich/blreich007.htm

"Show a picture of mass graves for every picture of prisoners."
Tit-for-tat.
Gotcha last.
Except...one has nothing to do with the other.
What a moran.

I wonder if he also runs an under-age girl sex ring? Or if he is just a customer?

the whole "they probably have American blood on their hands" is NOT an excuse for our soldiers acting like monsters.

having them in prison.
He has not asked one question!!!

please tell me this asshole is drunk or heavily drugged with whatever Rush is taking this week. please tell me he doesn't really believe the crap that's coming out of his mouth.

The donation form? I missed it.

If you scroll down, after the petition for Rumsfeld to resign (275K signatures to date) is a 'donate' button.

Big whoop, Inhofe, you total piece of fundie shit!

anti-do gooders as well.

acid...so, what's the fuss"

Good gawds...Inhofe is a blithering idiot

Pleeeeaaase.

HEAVEN FORBID PEOPLE WHO FIGHT FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ALL HUMANS BE CONSIDERED HEROIC. This guy is a disgrace.

Seems to be what he is saying??

He's so freakin offended that "human rights do gooders" would be going to the prisons to check for any signs of human rights abuses! I almost choked on my coffee when I heard that one.

What kind of alternate universe am I living in when HUMAN RIGHTS is considered a bad thing???

I need to leave this country.

He knows of no other American qualified to prosecute this war? Did I mishear?

just 7 bad soldiers . . .

You stupid jerk . off Inhofe . . . You're really helping outrage the rest of the world with your ignorant, stupid, absurd comments . . .you are pathetic . . . just pathetic . . .

nothing else. this guy is revolting.

they want to drown

is revealed that this was a systemic problem and HUNDREDS of soldiers may be involved?


failure.

load getting slow.

It boggles my mind that someone can be so totally ignorant . . .

It just boggles my mind . . .

SEN BYRD!!!!!


failure.

from higher up or at least no evidence of such order... a surprising answer...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1575937

Sorry I just woke up ! :coffee: