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Flashback: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

Emptywheel
Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:33 EDT

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Comment: Little wonder then that Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to masterminding thirty terrorist plots including an assassination attempt on President Jimmy Carter!

Israel's Pathology

Ira Chernus
Truthout
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:08 EST

Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I've heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject.

From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above.

Perhaps, though, none of these factors ultimately make much difference. Perhaps it matters not a whit what the US or the Palestinians do, because the Israeli government and the bulk of Jewish Israeli voters are just too sick to move toward a just peace. At least that's one man's opinion.

The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews' reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.

Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:10 EST

National security adviser James L. Jones has decided that CIA chiefs of station in countries across the world will continue also to represent the office of the director of national intelligence, ending a brief turf battle between the heads of the two spy organizations, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

At issue was a May directive by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who as head of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community, including the CIA, asserted that in "rare circumstances," he could select someone other than a CIA station chief to be his representative to foreign governments or international organizations. The directive provided that, in "virtually all cases globally," the representative would be a CIA station chief and that, before the appointment of anyone else, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta and the local U.S. ambassador would be consulted.

Robert Reynolds
IrishCentral.com
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:58 EST

The resignation of Greg Craig as White House counsel is a sad day for civil liberties in America. Craig, who was a member of the Irish Voice Legal 100 group this year, was a fearless proponent of exposing those who ordered torture of prisoners in American custody.

The first set of torture abuse photos got out because of Greg Craig and no one else. Isn't it interesting that his resignation is followed by a major publicity offensive about the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and those from 9/11?

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:01 EST

'Torture at the touch of a button'

Israeli researchers have developed a portable device that causes excruciating sensations of burning and can be built for just $250,000, raising fears that even the world's poorest, most oppressive governments will now be able to use advanced non-lethal weapons on their civilian populations.

The Man-Portable Active Denial System, developed by researchers at the College of Judea and Samaria, can beam a microwave ray that causes skin surface to heat up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the nerve cells in the skin to think they're on fire.

Jeff Gates
Criminal State
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:55 EDT

The lead-up to the first U.S.-Iran talks in three decades saw a replay of the same modus operandi that induced the U.S. and its allies to invade Iraq in March 2003. Then as now, the invasion of Iran is consistent with a regime change agenda for Greater Israel described in a 1996 strategy document prepared by Jewish-Americans for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As with Iraq, the threat of weapons of mass destruction is again marketed as a causa belli. As with Iraq, the claim is disputed by weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts. The Iraqi program had been shut down a dozen years before the invasion. In Iran, there is no evidence that uranium is being enriched beyond the low levels required for energy and medical purposes.

Reports of a "secret" processing plant failed to note that Iran suspended uranium enrichment from 2003 until 2005. Seeing no change in the political climate except more sanctions and more Israeli threats to bomb its nuclear sites, Iran began building and equipping a new facility.

As with Iraq, there is no direct threat to the U.S. As with Iraq, mainstream U.S. media focused not on Israel - the only nation in the region known to have nuclear weapons - but on Iran. Enrichment is relatively easy compared to the steps required to design, build and reliably deliver a nuclear warhead. Activity around each of those steps can be readily detected.

Flashback: At What Cost the Israel Lobby?

Jeff Gates
Criminal State
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:41 EDT

More than 46 years ago, President John F. Kennedy sought to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 1963, he wrote the last in a series of insistent letters to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Those letters sought what Israel now demands of Iran: international inspections of its nuclear facilities. The key difference: Kennedy knew for certain that Israel, while portraying itself a friend and ally, repeatedly lied to Kennedy about its nuclear weapons development at the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert.

Best estimates point to sometime between 1962 and 1964 when Israel produced its first weapon in what is now a vast nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads. Kennedy's letter to Ben-Gurion was anything but friendly. The words he chose were drawn not from diplomacy but from the instructions that a judge gives a jury on criminal culpability. In that brusque letter, the U.S. commander-in-chief insisted that this purported ally prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Zionist enclave was not developing nuclear weapons.

Jeff Gates
Criminal State
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:23 EDT

The Nobel Committee again piqued the interest of those who marvel at the impact of an annual ritual of global branding that in 1973 labeled Henry Kissinger a peace laureate! As with many aspects of unconventional warfare, what emerges in the foreground often obscures behavior that remains concealed in the background.

Anyone paying attention knows that pro-Israelis manipulated the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq. That same source is now hoping to expand this war to Iran - without being detected. In an irony of epic proportions, this award may enable that deceit.

Pundits charge that Barack Obama was given the 2009 peace prize for Not Being Bush. The Nobel Committee cited Obama's multilateralism in contrast to Bush's unilateralism. Yet the same pro-Israeli networks that deployed phony intelligence to manipulate decision-making in the Bush presidency remain active inside the Obama presidency. At least Bush had the mass murder of 9-11 to rationalize his choices.

The manipulation of consensus beliefs discredited the U.S. when it went to war on fixed intelligence. A similar mental manipulation generated consensus support for trade and financial policies that systematically devastated the U.S. economy. The challenge for Tel Aviv is how best to continue its agenda for Greater Israel now that the manipulation of public opinion has grown more transparent - and when entire communities, reeling from the impact of massive financial frauds, are aware that something fundamental is amiss.

Khalid Amayreh
The Peoples Voice
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:17 EST

Ashkenazi

There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel's pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhood.

Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory.

As a nefarious mass murderer, Ashkenazi, like the rest of Israeli war criminals, ought to be in the Hague preparing his defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all the crimes he perpetrated put him on equal footing with Nazi war criminals who had stood trial for their own crimes against humanity during the Second World War.

Israel Lobby Routs Obama As Dollar Dies

Paul Craig Roberts
The Peoples Voice
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:00 EST

It did not take the Israel Lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration's "no new settlements" position. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel's latest victory over the US government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

In May President Obama read the Israelis the riot act, telling the Israeli government that he was serious about ending the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians and that a lasting peace agreement required the Israeli government to abandon all construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

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