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Paul Merrell

Gov't Amasses Riot Police, Military Gear, And Opens Makeshift Prisons To Prepare For RNC - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...218511

War-Party RNC convention law-enforcement

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Authorities in Cleveland, Ohio, are adding fuel to an already “combustible” atmosphere, some activists say, as the city readies extra jail space and courtrooms and shuts down a local university to house 1,700 riot police and their weapons in preparation for demonstrations at next week’s Republican Party convention. Democracy Now! reported Thursday that city officials “say some courts will be kept open almost 24 hours per day in case protesters are arrested en masse. Authorities have also opened up extra jail space to hold protesters.” The decision to shut down classes at Case Western Reserve University to house riot police drew ire from students and faculty,
  • Adding tension to the situation in Cleveland is the fact that several Black Lives Matter protests last week saw mass arrests and violent behavior from police, leading civil rights groups in Louisiana to sue the Baton Rouge police force for violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights—not to mention the fatal police shootings of two black men in St. Pauland Baton Rouge a week prior. In Cleveland in particular, there is widespread distrust of the police department that fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and then lied about the circumstances of the killing to cover themselves. Police nationwide have also been on edge since a lone gunman ambushed a peaceful protest in Dallas, killing five officers. Moreover, it emerged on Thursday that officials from the FBI have been personally contacting civil rights activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement to warn them that they shouldn’t show up at the convention, the Independent reports.
  • As Ohio has an “open carry” law allowing the open display of guns, observers expect many convention-goers to be armed. “Should violence break out during protests in Cleveland, open-carry activists bearing long-gun rifles may distract officers, frighten demonstrators, or inadvertently endanger themselves,” CityLab argued.
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  • Activists are preparing for the worst. The Boston Globe reported that hundreds of demonstrators “will undergo training to help ensure their safety. Some will don neon green caps and be tasked with documenting—with video—the use of force by police or attacks by other groups.” “Activists are being trained to make sure their hands are always exposed, so it’s evident they are not holding weapons, and to clearly articulate if approached by police that they are ‘complying, not resisting,'” the newspaper added.
  • Heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI both told reporters that theyfear violence from “radical activists” at next week’s convention, ABC reported. “It’s a threat we’re watching very, very carefully,” FBI director James Comey said.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jul 16
     
    The DNC convention may be every bit as tension-filled, with Sanders supporters aiming to bring 1 million people to the convention to sway the vote on floor amendments to the Democratic platform.
Paul Merrell

Sheldon Adelson will support Trump as Republican nominee | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/rt-trump-as-republican-nominee

Auction 2016 Trump Adelson-endorsement

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 16 - No Cached
  • rominent Republican donor Sheldon Adelson on Thursday said he would support Donald Trump for the US presidency. Get The Times
  • rominent Republican donor Sheldon Adelson on Thursday said he would support Donald Trump for the US presidency
  • “Yes. I’m a Republican, he’s a Republican,” Adelson said at a Manhattan event when asked if he would back Trump, according to The New York Times. “He’s our nominee. Whoever the nominee would turn out to be, any one of the 17 — he was one of the 17. He won fair and square.” The Jewish billionaire, and owner of the pro-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom, said he believes Trump “will be good for Israel,” and noted, without elaborating, that the two spoke recently. Adelson donated tens of millions of dollars to Mitt Romney and organizations supporting the Republican challenger in the last election, and was by far the largest such donor. Adelson had previously declared Trump to be “very charming” after meeting him in December, but stopped short of endorsing him or supporting his campaign. Trump has prided himself in his campaign speeches on not needing the support of mega-donors like Adelson, whom other candidates, at the time, were assiduously courting. In October, Trump tweeted “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!”
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  • He’s got some work to do,” Ryan said, noting that “the bulk and the burden” was on Trump to begin the healing after a brutal primary campaign and the brash billionaire’s string of insulting remarks about other candidates, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, women and others. “It’s time to set aside bullying. It’s time to set aside belittlement,” Ryan said.
  • US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the nation’s top Republican, said Thursday he was not yet prepared to support Trump as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, signaling a deep rift within the GOP. “To be perfectly candid… I’m just not ready to do that at this point,” Ryan told CNN. “I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify this party.” Ryan, who repeated he would not accept the nomination in case of a contested convention, was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012 and is currently second in line to the presidency.
  • Thursday’s comments were all the more startling because Trump has now emerged as the party’s standard-bearer and Ryan will be co-chairman of the Republican presidential nominating convention in July. Trump shot back within minutes. “I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda,” he said in a statement. “Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people.”
  • Paul Merrell on 07 May 16
     
    Looks like Adelson is trying to repair the damage in his relationship with Donald Trump. Adelson is one of the largest Israel-firster donors in U.S. politics but made the mistake of backing Marco Rubio.  The exchange of comments by Paul Ryan and Trump suggest that there will be a battle for leadership of the Republican Party in Congress if Trump is elected. Trump has thrown down his gauntlet. 
Gary Edwards

GOP Platform Rejects UN Agenda 21 as Threat to Sovereignty - 0 views

thenewamerican.com/...da-21-as-threat-to-sovereignty

Agenda-21 GOP-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13
     
    Too bad Romney didn't think enough of the GOP Platform to sell it to the American people.  Probably cost him the election, and us our country. "The official GOP platform approved at the Republican National Convention in Tampa included tough language rejecting the United Nations "sustainability" scheme known as Agenda 21 for the threat it represents to national sovereignty, drawing praise from conservative and Tea Party leaders across the country. The Republican Party document also rejected any form of UN global taxes and slammed a wide range of the international body's controversial programs.  In a section of the 54-page platform entitled "Sovereign American Leadership in International Organizations," the GOP noted that multilateral bodies such as the UN and NATO sometimes fail to serve the cause of peace and prosperity. As such, the U.S. government must always reserve the right to go its own way. "There can be no substitute for principled American leadership," the platform says. The UN in particular remains in "dire need of reform," Republicans said in the document, attacking the global organization's "overpaid bureaucrats," its "scandal-ridden management," and the fact that some of the world's most barbaric tyrants hold seats on the so-called "Human Rights Council." Unless and until the situation improves, the platform stated, the UN can never expect the full support of the American people. Some Republicans such as Congressman Ron Paul go further, calling for the United States to get out of the UN entirely. Some matters, however, are non-negotiable. "We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty, and we oppose any form of U.N. Global Tax," the platform explains. The language echoes a resolution adopted by the GOP earlier this year slamming the planetary scheme to enforce so-called "sustainable development" on the world. Since then, state and local Republican parties as well as state legisl
Paul Merrell

Bombshell! A NEW Republican Candidate To Enter Presidential Race!?! - 0 views

www.thepoliticalinsider.com/didate-enter-presidential-race

Auction 2016 Condi-Rice

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • With a few days before major Republican primaries in states such as Florida and Ohio, the Republican establishment has turned their attention to creative ways to defeat conservative businessman Donald J. Trump, who appears to be unstoppable. Now, it’s been confirmed that a major group of Republican donors and insiders are working hard to convince former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (a Republican) to run for President! Apparently, the plan is to have her run as an independent. But that could change if the Republican convention in Cleveland ends up being a hotly contested, brokered convention.
  • The group believes Rice is the only candidate that polls well enough to be a serious candidate in a three-way race between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Her favorability is high… at least 15% higher than her negatives in every battleground state. Plus, Rice is a minority who could win over voters that traditionally don’t vote for Republicans. Rice would have until early May to make a decision and turn in the thousands of signatures required in individual states to appear on the ballot.
Gary Edwards

The Basic Library - Article V Project To Restore Liberty - 2 views

articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/the-basic-library.html

Heritage-of-freedom freedom-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 13
     
    "Free Google Book Search (360 B.C.) The Republic - Plato (46 B.C.) Cicero's Brutus - Cicero   (1517) Discourses on Livy - Machiavelli (1553) The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude - Étienne de La Boétie (1690) Two Treatises of Government - John Locke   (1698) Discourses Concerning Government - Algernon Sydney Sidney's Discourses and Locke's Second Treatise were recommended by Jefferson and Madison as containing the "general principles of liberty and the rights of man, in nature and society" (1748) The Spirit of Laws  - Montesquieu (1748) The Principles of Natural and Politic Law - Burlamaqui   (1755) Old Family Letters - John Adams (1758) The Law of Nations- Vattel   (1764-1769) The Writings of Samuel Adams (1765-1769) Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766) The Declaratory Act (1770) The Writings of John Adams V1-2              The Writings of John Adams V3-4              The Writings of John Adams V5-7              The Writings of John Adams V8-10   (1771-1788) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1772) The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants (1774) A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress - Hamilton (1774) Novanglus - John Adams Principle Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1776) Common Sense- Thomas Paine One Incident which gave a stimulus to the pamphlet Common Sense was, that it happened to appear on the very day that the King of England's speech reached the United States, in which the Americans were denounced as rebels and traitors, and in which speech it was asserted to be the right of the legislature of England to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. (1776-1783) The Crisis- Thomas Paine (1780) Journal of the Convention for Framing the Massachusetts Bay Constitution (1785) Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: in Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (1787) The Anti-Federalist (audio) (1787) The Federalist
Paul Merrell

Time for GOP panic? Establishment worried Carson or Trump might win. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html

Auction 2016 Trump Carson Republican-establishment

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them. Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands. The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.
  • According to other Republicans, some in the party establishment are so desperate to change the dynamic that they are talking anew about drafting Romney — despite his insistence that he will not run again. Friends have mapped out a strategy for a late entry to pick up delegates and vie for the nomination in a convention fight, according to the Republicans who were briefed on the talks, though Romney has shown no indication of reviving his interest.
  • South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, herself an outsider who rode the tea party wave into office five years ago, explained the phenomenon. “You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’ ”
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  • There are similar concerns about Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is gaining steam and is loathed by party elites, but they are more muted, at least for now.
  • Still, the party establishment’s greatest weapon — big money — is partly on the shelf. Kenneth G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot and a billionaire supporter of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said he is troubled that many associates in the New York financial community have so far refused to invest in a campaign due to the race’s volatility.
  • “Some of them are in, but too many are still saying, ‘I’ll wait to see how this all breaks,’ ” Langone said. “People don’t want to write checks unless they think the candidate has a chance of winning.” He said that his job as a ­mega-donor “is to figure out how we get people on the edge of their chairs so they start to give money.” Many of Romney’s 2012 National Finance Committee members have sat out the race so far,
  • The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the worries. “We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?” Angst about Trump intensified this week after he made two comments that could prove damaging in a general election. First, he explained his opposition to raising the minimum wage by saying “wages are too high.” Second, he said he would create a federal “deportation force” to remove the more than 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. “To have a leading candidate propose a new federal police force that is going to flush out illegal immigrants across the nation? That’s very disturbing and concerning to me about where that leads Republicans,” said Dick Wadhams, a former GOP chairman in Colorado, a swing state where Republicans are trying to pick up a Senate seat next year.
  • Said Austin Barbour, a veteran operative and fundraiser now advising former Florida governor Jeb Bush: “If we don’t have the right [nominee], we could lose the Senate, and we could face losses in the House. Those are very, very real concerns. If we’re not careful and we nominate Trump, we’re looking at a race like Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, getting beat up across the board because of our nominee.” George Voinovich, a retired career politician who rose from county auditor to mayor of Cleveland to governor of Ohio to U.S. senator, said this cycle has been vexing. “This business has turned into show business,” said Voinovich, who is backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “We can’t afford to have somebody sitting in the White House who doesn’t have governing experience and the gravitas to move this country ahead.”
Gary Edwards

Arnold Ahlert: The Real American Divide - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44059

Angelo-Codevilla Ruling-Class Country-Class Patriotism

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton provided great examples of the Ruling Class' arrogant mindset. Pelosi believes, as she stated last week, that white, non-college-educated men who vote Republican have “voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God — the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose.” Clinton was worse. Regarding abortion on demand, she insisted last year that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” In other words, one embraces the progressive elitist viewpoint, or one is a religiously inspired bigot with a passé worldview that must be demolished. Thus it is no surprise these elitists conflate anything that dissents from their globalist agenda as a “world of wall-builders,” who have “already done great damage,” states The Economist. That damage includes the Brexit, the rise of nationalist (read: right-wing) parties, and “more electoral victories for closed-world types who pose the greatest threat since Communism.” In other words, elitists disdain national sovereignty and democratically determined destiny, logical responses to skyrocketing levels of elitist-enabled terrorism and uncontrolled immigration, and deeply felt concerns by non-elitists about a global economy that has devastated millions left behind in its wake.
  • The Ruling Class “solutions” for Country Class problems? “Let goods and investment flow freely, but strengthen the social safety-net to offer support and new opportunities for those whose jobs are destroyed,” The Economist states. “To manage immigration flows better, invest in public infrastructure, ensure that immigrants work and allow for rules that limit surges of people.” Codevilla explains what this really means, noting that “our Ruling Class' first priority in any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning those who run it, meaning themselves.” To achieve that end, new laws are longer than ever, “because length is needed to specify how people will be treated unequally.” Thus, these laws become “primarily grants of discretion,” because “all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower.” Codevilla adds, “This defines ‘crony capitalism.’”
  • If that sounds familiar, maybe it’s because WikiLeak emails reveal the DNC granted itself the sole discretion to empower Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination, right from the beginning. Thus, when Hillary spoke of “bringing people together” during her speech at the convention, it was really about doing so on her and her fellow insiders' terms. And when she promised to get money out of politics, it can be assumed the billions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Foundation — dollars that conspicuously align themselves with a number of dubious initiatives — will remain exempt, even as another sham investigation of Clinton behavior conducted by an equally corrupted IRS lends an imprimatur of genuine concern to the spectacle. “If Americans, or at least a majority of them, have not completely lost their own self-regard as a free people, then the November election should turn out to be a referendum on the ‘ruling class,’ and a massive repudiation of Hillary Clinton’s sense of entitlement to be the first woman elected President of the United States,” writes American Thinker’s Salim Mansur. Perhaps. But traditional thinking dies hard. And a corrupt mainstream media — epitomized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger drinking wine and celebrating with Democrat delegates at the convention’s conclusion — isn’t about to jeopardize their own Ruling Class status to provide the Country Class with any potentially unifying political insight. Which brings us to Donald Trump. In exclusive communication with The Patriot Post, Codevilla maintained there were no circumstances under which he could support Hillary or any other Democrat, but his view of Trump “is more unfavorable than ever.” He does, however, grant that Trump “is the lesser of two evils.” He sees both candidates as “identical in their disregard for the U.S. Constitution and in the establishment of a post-republican regime — an empire of the will, by of and for favored sectors of the ruling class.”
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  • No doubt Codevilla’s take resonates with millions of Americans appalled by a broken, Ruling Class-dominated political system that produced both candidates. Yet realistically, we are faced with a binary choice, made by either commission or omission. And while Codevilla believes “there is no vehicle for opposition” as yet to a Ruling Class “represented by the establishment of both parties,” our own Mark Alexander warns that “the outcome of the November election will not only determine our president for at least the next four years, but also the composition of the Supreme Court for at least the next quarter-century.” That quarter century could be one in which a constitutionally contemptuous Supreme Court majority appointed by Hillary Clinton makes representative government obsolete, and eliminates any chance, short of armed revolution, for the Country Class to take America back from the Ruling Class. A nation where, as Ayn Rand put it, “The government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” A Trump presidency may be nothing more than a distasteful, bite-the-bullet
  • impediment to Ruling Class hegemony. But it is better than no impediment at all.
  • “While most Americans pray to the God who created us in His own image, our Ruling Class prays to themselves as saviors of the planet and as shapers of mankind in their own image.” —from The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo Codevilla, 2010. While many still frame the 2016 election in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, those divisions are losing their meaning. This election could be the first one in which Americans will either choose to continue abiding a globalist Ruling Class and their government-dominant, one-world agenda, or decide that national sovereignty, the Constitution and American exceptionalism and individualism are worth preserving. To be clear, nationalism does not equal protectionism, nativism or Islamophobia, nor is it solely embraced by know-nothing rubes unworthy of serious consideration — despite the ongoing efforts of the Ruling Class to paint it that way. Codevilla calls people who oppose the Ruling Class the Country Class, and he describes it as a diverse, often inharmonious group that “shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards as inept and haughty.”
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 16
     
    ""While most Americans pray to the God who created us in His own image, our Ruling Class prays to themselves as saviors of the planet and as shapers of mankind in their own image." -from The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo Codevilla, 2010. While many still frame the 2016 election in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, those divisions are losing their meaning. This election could be the first one in which Americans will either choose to continue abiding a globalist Ruling Class and their government-dominant, one-world agenda, or decide that national sovereignty, the Constitution and American exceptionalism and individualism are worth preserving. To be clear, nationalism does not equal protectionism, nativism or Islamophobia, nor is it solely embraced by know-nothing rubes unworthy of serious consideration - despite the ongoing efforts of the Ruling Class to paint it that way. Codevilla calls people who oppose the Ruling Class the Country Class, and he describes it as a diverse, often inharmonious group that "shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards as inept and haughty." Ruling Class haughtiness, argues Codevilla, derives from "an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance," and engenders "a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins … and saints," all conveyed in an "in" language that serves as their "badge of identity." Irrespective of their professions, the Ruling Class is also united by the reality that "their road up included government channels and government money. … Hence, whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway in, America's Ruling Class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats." Just as critically, this "fraternity" can only be joined by one who Codevilla says "shares the manners, the tastes, and the i
Paul Merrell

Inside the Battle Over the CIA Torture Report - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...le-over-the-cia-torture-report

war & peace CIA torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report redactions

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • After months of internal wrangling, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally set to release its report on President George W. Bush-era CIA practices, which among other details will contain information about foreign countries that aided in the secret detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. Several U.S. officials told us that the negotiations are nearly complete between the Central Intelligence Agency and the committee's Democratic staff, which prepared the classified 6,300-page report and its 600-page, soon-to-be-released declassified executive summary. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's chairman, is set to release the summary early next week. Her staff members had objected vigorously to hundreds of redactions the CIA had proposed in the executive summary. After an often-contentious process to resolve the disputes, managed by top White House officials, Feinstein was able to roll back the majority of the disputed CIA redactions.
  • Among the most significant of Feinstein’s victories, the report will retain information on countries that aided the CIA program by hosting black sites or otherwise participating in the secret rendition of suspected terrorists. The countries will not be identified by name, but in other ways, such as code names like “Country A.” This falls short of Feinstein’s original desire, which was to name the countries explicitly, but represents a big victory for the committee nonetheless. In a victory for the CIA, Feinstein reluctantly agreed to allow the redactions of the pseudonyms of agency personnel mentioned in the report. The CIA maintained that any reference to individuals working under cover that offered clues to their identities could place them in harm’s way. “We need to understand the role that particular countries played across time. Even having pseudonyms for countries in the report is important for a full accounting,” said Raha Wala, senior counsel at Human Rights First, which advocated on behalf of the report’s declassification.
  • The CIA and some Republican senators had argued that even such masked identifications could be deciphered, leading to compromised relationships with those countries’ governments. In June 2013, the top intelligence official at the State Department, Philip Goldberg, wrote a classified letter to Congress warning against the disclosure of the names of countries who had participated in the program.
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  • John Rizzo, who served as the CIA's acting general counsel during the black-site program and later wrote a memoir, "Company Man," said the agency has long fought against declassifying any information on the locations of the secret prisons overseas. "That was something we had fought for years and years," Rizzo told us. "Up to now one of the only remaining classified facts about the program was the names of countries where there were black sites." Rizzo said the concern about even referencing the locations of the black sites is that one could piece together the locations with other information that is likely to be in the final public report. One Republican Senate staffer familiar with the negotiations over the report said Feinstein's office relented on some concerns about redacting information that could identify countries hosting the black sites. "Do you scrub enough information to prevent that information from being released?" the staffer said. "It ended up as a half-step in-between, some of the stuff she wanted released and some of the information identifying the countries has been redacted."
  • There is also a risk that any information about foreign countries that aided the CIA programs, even using code names,  could be matched against public reporting that already exists to make them more identifiable. There have been news reports about cooperation by the governments of Poland,  Lithuania, Romania, Thailand and others. "Just because something is leaked doesn’t mean it’s still not secret," Rizzo said. "A national security secret is still a national security secret until the government says otherwise."
  • Originally there had been bipartisan support for the majority staff’s investigation, and the committee’s Republican staff was initially part of the investigation -- but it withdrew early in the process. Even after the Republican staff disowned the investigation, some Republican senators continued to support declassification, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
  • The release will not include internal CIA documents that the agency accused Feinstein’s staff of improperly removing from a CIA facility that had been set up for the investigators to work at. Feinstein said that her staff had removed the documents, including a review by Panetta, only after CIA officials tried to surreptitiously remove them from computers being used by the committee’s staff. “What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of significant CIA wrongdoing,” Feinstein said on the Senate floor in July. “The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14
     
    Nations that knowingly hosted the CIA "black sites" won't be named, as though their own citizens should be deprived of that information. I still maintain that there would be no need for redacting CIA agents' names who participated in the torture if they were named in criminal complaints as they are required to be by the Convention Against Torture, which -- through the Constitution's Treaty Clause, is "the law of this land." 
Paul Merrell

Federal Judge Rules for Anti-Trump GOP Delegate - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...unbound-voting-him-rnc-n607461

Republican-convention delegate-voting-rights litigation Trump

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • A federal judge blocked enforcement Monday of a Virginia law binding delegates to support the primary winner at the nominating convention. It was a victory for Carroll "Beau" Correll, a delegate to the Republican national convention who argued that the law violated his First Amendment rights to vote for his preferred candidate. Correll supported Ted Cruz in the primary, while Donald Trump received the most votes in the state.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16
     
    Apparently some Republican delegates have a political death wish. Voting against the winning candidate on the first ballot is poltical suicide.
Gary Edwards

First Draft of Her Story: Sarah Palin Announces What a Future Presidential Campaign May... - 0 views

www.humanevents.com/article.php

Sarah-Palin Five-Point-Plan

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Sep 11
     
    Sarah Palin did not announce whether she would enter the 2012 presidential contest in a fiery and substantive speech in Iowa on Saturday, but she did make three more significant announcements that, in the long run, will potentially be more important than a potential future announcement date. First, as part of a five point plan to revive America's economy, Palin called for the elimination of the federal corporate income tax as a way to "break the back of crony capitalism." Her reasons for eliminating the federal corporate income tax, though, were more important than the actual proposal because it was a way in which she drew a line to differentiate herself from not only President Barack Obama, but nearly every other GOP presidential candidate, most notably Texas Gov. Rick Perry.  Second, on the three year anniversary of her vice presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008 when Palin, a reform minded governor who had record approval ratings, invigorated the flailing McCain campaign, Palin cast herself squarely as the anti-McCain. Palin said that she could not understand why some people referred to Tea Partiers as "hobbits," a clear reference to McCain's remarks that denigrated a political movement his critics claim he shamelessly, like a typical politician, used to get re-elected only to turn his back on it once he got back to his familiar Washington trappings. Palin has written on her Facebook page that America needs a "do-over" in 2012, and her speech gave more fuel to the thought that Palin believes America should get a 2008 rematch against President Obama with her name on top of the Republican ticket.  Third, her speech was significant because, should she choose to enter the presidential race, it put forth a skillfully crafted blueprint that would allow her to seamlessly run a primary and general election campaign at the same time, much like what then candidate Obama did against Hillary Clinton and George W. Bus
Paul Merrell

Ted Cruz's National Security Plan Features War Crimes | ThinkProgress - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...cruz-carpet-bombing

Auction 2016 Cruz war crimes war-criminal-wannabes

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • In Thursday night’s GOP debate, the final matchup before the Iowa caucus, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeated his promise to conduct “carpet bombing” in the Middle East to combat ISIS forces. Yet he did not acknowledge that carpet bombing is a war crime under the international Geneva Conventions. The Fox News moderators challenged Cruz on his voting record not lining up with his “tough talk” on national security. “You opposed giving President Obama authority to enforce his red line in Syria,” they asked. “You have voted against the Defense Authorization Act for three years. How do you square your rhetoric with your record, sir?” Instead of addressing the discrepancies in his voting record, Cruz defended his past promises of “carpet bombing” and “saturation bombing” parts of Iraq and Syria, saying it was a successful strategy for the United States during the Persian Gulf War.
  • The Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. joined decades ago along with nearly every other country in the world, explicitly forbids carpet bombing. “Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden,” the agreement reads. “An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.” When Cruz said Thursday that the U.S. should “lift the rules of engagement” in wartime, he did not explain whether that included rejecting the Geneva Conventions. Cruz is also incorrect to cite the Gulf War as a positive example of carpet bombing. The U.S. used laser-guided precision bombing during that conflict, which “substantially reduced the accidental damage that would otherwise have befallen civilian buildings.” Even so, thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Cruz, who is poised to win or take second place in the Iowa caucus, has previously offered incorrect information about carpet bombing.
  • Cruz is also not the first GOP candidate to advocate for a practice that violates international law. In December, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump called for the ability to assassinate the family members of terrorists. Such intentional killing of civilians would consitute a war crime.
Paul Merrell

Presidential poll: Donald Trump pulls ahead of Hillary Clinton - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...esidential-polls-election-2016

Auction 2016 polls Clinton Trump Stein Johnson

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton start the race to November 8 on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points among likely voters, and the contest sparking sharp divisions along demographic lines in a new CNN/ORC Poll.Trump tops Clinton 45% to 43% in the new survey, with Libertarian Gary Johnson standing at 7% among likely voters in this poll and the Green Party's Jill Stein at just 2%.
  • The topsy-turvy campaign for the presidency has seen both Clinton and Trump holding a significant lead at some point in the last two months, though Clinton has topped Trump more often than not. Most recently, Clinton's convention propelled her to an 8-point lead among registered voters in an early-August CNN/ORC Poll. Clinton's lead has largely evaporated despite a challenging month for Trump, which saw an overhaul of his campaign staff, announcements of support for Clinton from several high-profile Republicans and criticism of his campaign strategy. But most voters say they still expect to see Clinton prevail in November, and 59% think she will be the one to get to 270 electoral votes vs. 34% who think Trump has the better shot at winning.
  • Neither major third party candidate appears to be making the gains necessary to reach the 15% threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, with just three weeks to go before the first debate on September 26.The new poll finds the two major party candidates provoke large gaps by gender, age, race, education and partisanship. Among those likely to turn out in the fall, both candidates have secured about the same share of their own partisans (92% of Democrats back Clinton, 90% of Republicans are behind Trump) but independents give Trump an edge, 49% say they'd vote for him while just 29% of independent voters back Clinton. Another 16% back Johnson, 6% Stein.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Women break for Clinton (53% to 38%) while men shift Trump's way (54% to 32%). Among women, those who are unmarried make up the core of her support, 73% of unmarried women back Clinton compared with just 36% of married women. Among men, no such marriage gap emerges, as both unmarried and married men favor Trump.Younger voters are in Clinton's corner (54% to 29% among those under age 45) while the older ones are more apt to back Trump (54% to 39% among those age 45 or older). Whites mostly support Trump (55% to 34%), while non-whites favor Clinton by a nearly 4-to-1 margin (71% to 18%). Most college grads back Clinton while those without degrees mostly support Trump, and that divide deepens among white voters. Whites who do not hold college degrees support Trump by an almost 3-to-1 margin (68% to 24%) while whites who do have college degrees split 49% for Clinton to 36% for Trump and 11% for Johnson.
  • Support for Johnson seems to be concentrated among groups where Clinton could stand to benefit from consolidating voters. Although direct comparison between the poll's two-way, head-to-head matchup and its four-way matchup doesn't suggest that Johnson is pulling disproportionately from either candidate, his supporters come mostly among groups where a strong third-party bid could harm Clinton's standing: Younger voters (particularly younger men), whites with college degrees, and independents, notably.
  • The poll follows several national polls in August suggesting that the margin between the two candidates had tightened following the conventions. A CNN Poll of Polls analysis released Friday showed that Clinton's lead had been cut in half when compared with the height of her convention bounce.Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Tuesday, Clinton shrugged off a question about the CNN/ORC survey."I really pay no attention to polls. When they are good for me -- and there have been a lot of them that have been good for me recently -- I don't pay attention," Clinton said. "When they are not so good, I don't pay attention. We are on a course that we are sticking with."While enthusiasm for the campaign has continued to inch up, it remains well off the mark compared with this point in other recent presidential election years. In the new poll, 46% say they are extremely or very enthusiastic, compared with 57% at this point in 2012, 60% in early September of 2008 and 64% in September 2004.Further, nearly half of voters say they are less enthusiastic about voting in this election than they have been in previous years, while just 42% say they're more excited about this year's contest. Although this question hasn't been asked in every presidential election year, in CNN/ORC and CNN/USA Today/Gallup results dating back to 2000, this poll marks the first time that a significantly larger share of voters say they are less enthusiastic about this year's election. The lack of enthusiasm spikes among Clinton supporters. A majority of Clinton's supporters say they're less excited about voting this year than usual (55%) while most of Trump's backers say they're more excited this time around (56%).
Paul Merrell

GOP's Last Line of Anti-Trump Defense - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...ast-line-of-anti-trump-defense

Republican-convention delegate-voting-rights litigation Trump

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • The last-ditch hopes of the Republican Party establishment to block Donald Trump’s presidential nomination may come down to whether the GOP convention frees delegates to vote their consciences on the first ballot, a prospect possibly made more likely by the appointment of two anti-Trump party loyalists to head the Rules Committee. But the rules of any convention are ultimately set by the delegates themselves, meaning that a vote on whether to bind delegates based on the will of voters in state primaries and caucuses likely will be decided by a majority of the delegates in approving or rejecting the proposals of the Rules Committee, a test of whether pledged Trump delegates will remain loyal to the candidate or follow the will of some party establishment figures who still want to stop Trump.
  • Plus, there are some in the “Stop Trump” faction who insist that delegates are free to vote their consciences in any event – regardless of state laws and party rules – a position bolstered by a federal court ruling on Monday blocking a Virginia state law binding delegates to support the primary winner.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16
     
    Detailed analysis.
Paul Merrell

Source: Paul 'Republican No More,' Not Ruling Out Third-Party Run - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...d-Of-Tonight-Show-Announcement

election 2012 ron paul

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Upset by how the Republican Party establishment “disrespected” them during the Republican National Convention, over 300 Ron Paul supporters joined a conference call on Sunday night to discuss plans to urge Paul to run as a third-party candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket.  Speculation about Paul’s intentions will intensify even more because Paul will appear on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno on Tuesday night to make an announcement, presumably about whether he will make a third-party run or support Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
Paul Merrell

Pelosi says Iran deal has the votes, and Podhoretz urges Israel to attack Iran - Mondow... - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...pelosi-podhoretz-israel

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Iran-negotiations Congress Pelosi

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 15 - No Cached
  •      House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is “confident” that the House would be able to uphold the president’s veto of a potential Republican-backed bill to kill the deal. “More and more of them have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference, referring to members of the Democratic caucus. “They’ve done this not blindly but thoroughly,” as they examined the agreement over recent weeks.
  • House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is “confident” that the House would be able to uphold the president’s veto of a potential Republican-backed bill to kill the deal. “More and more of them have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference, referring to members of the Democratic caucus. “They’ve done this not blindly but thoroughly,” as they examined the agreement over recent weeks.
  • The fear among major Jewish organizations that they will be drawn into the domestic U.S. political fray over the nuclear deal is prominent in statements released by both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Both organizations have refrained from strongly attacking the nuclear agreement and defining it as a disaster, instead leading the public to believe that they instead have misgivings over large parts of the agreement, and that they hope that Congress will review it in depth. The U.S. Reform movement, too, issued a convoluted statement that fell short of taking a decisive stance on the agreement. Norman Podhoretz has never had this problem. He became a neoconservative because he wanted a big U.S. military budget to support Israel. Now he sees the writing on the wall and calls for an Israeli attack on Iran, in Wall Street Journal: I remain convinced that containment is impossible, from which it follows that the two choices before us are not war vs. containment but a conventional war now or a nuclear war later.
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  • Israelis are waking up to their abandonment by the majority of US Jewry. Sort of the anti-67 War. Haaretz says the lobby is in crisis. Boldface mine: Israel’s consul general in Philadelphia, Yaron Sideman, warned Jerusalem this week that the American Jewish community is divided over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and does not stand united behind Israel in the controversy. The problem is that Israel has burned up its influence over the White House, and US Jews don’t want to be exposed as Israel supporters: a CEO of one of the Jewish federations in the Philadelphia region told [Sideman] that in his view, Israel’s status vis-à-vis the Obama administration is at a low point, which could adversely affect the Jewish community. He cited the Jewish leader telling him, “In the next year and a half (until the end of President Barack Obama’s term) Israel’s and the Jewish communities’ maneuvering space regarding advancing Israel’s interests is extremely limited to non existent.” Even those who oppose the deal are reluctant to come forward because they will be seen to be advancing Israel’s interest over the U.S. interest. Nice play, Netanyahu.
  • Given how very unlikely it is that President Obama, despite his all-options-on-the-table protestations to the contrary, would ever take military action, the only hope rests with Israel. If, then, Israel fails to strike now, Iran will get the bomb. And when it does, the Israelis will be forced to decide whether to wait for a nuclear attack and then to retaliate out of the rubble, or to pre-empt with a nuclear strike of their own. But the Iranians will be faced with the same dilemma. Under these unprecedentedly hair-trigger circumstances, it will take no time before one of them tries to beat the other to the punch. And so my counsel to proponents of the new consensus is to consider the unspeakable horrors that would then be visited not just on Israel and Iran but on the entire region and beyond. The destruction would be far worse than any imaginable consequences of an Israeli conventional strike today when there is still a chance to put at least a temporary halt, and conceivably even a permanent one, to the relentless Iranian quest for the bomb
  • Oh and here is the ultimate chutzpah, right up there with killing your parents and asking for a light sentence because you’re an orphan. In a call to Israel supporters, Bret Stephens says that lawmakers should kill the Iran deal because if they support it, it will haunt them the same way voting for the Iraq war has haunted them. Stephens pushed that disastrous war. Oh and Stephens threatens their financial contributions, too. Glenn Greenwald has the clip:
Paul Merrell

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html

class warfare income inequality economic mobility land of opportunity myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
  • But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
  • Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
  • Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
Paul Merrell

GOP Platform Subcommittee Approves 28 Pages Plank | 28Pages.org - 0 views

28pages.org/...mittee-approves-28-pages-plank

war & peace 9-11 28-pages Republican-platform

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • The national security subcommittee of the GOP platform committee today approved a plank that calls for the declassification of 28 pages that are said to link the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers. The plank was introduced by Maine state senator Eric Brakey, who contacted 28Pages.org director Brian McGlinchey last week after hearing his interview on The Tom Woods Show. McGlinchey helped Brakey draft the plank’s language.
  • Planks are official expressions of the party’s opinions on various issues. To be incorporated in the final platform, the 28 pages plank must first be approved on Tuesday by a majority of the full, 112-member platform committee. Then, along with all the other proposed planks, it must be approved by the full body of next week’s GOP convention in Cleveland. If adopted, the plank would represent an important new endorsement of the release of the 28 pages. Supporters of declassification already include more than 70 Democratic and Republican members of Congress, former members of the 9/11 Commission and the editorial boards of many of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today.
  • Brakey’s 28 pages plank reads: Delivering Transparency on Foreign Government Ties to 9/11 As the nation continues to confront terrorism at home and abroad, the American people are being denied access to information that can provide vital insight into the funding of Islamic extremism: 28 classified pages from a 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry into the September 11 attacks. A former senator who co-chaired the inquiry says the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier” of the 9/11 attacks and that, by shielding the kingdom from consequences for its actions, the redaction has encouraged its continued sponsorship of extremism and paved the way for the rise of ISIS. President Obama twice promised 9/11 family members he would release the pages, which could be invaluable in their pursuit of justice in the courtroom. However, his administration has refused to declassify them, even in the face of bipartisan support for their release that includes former 9/11 Commission members and 73 current representatives and senators. These pages must be released. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight.”
Paul Merrell

Beware: Someone Is Trying to Convince You That Bernie Can't Win | Common Dreams | Break... - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...g-convince-you-bernie-cant-win

Auction 2016 Sanders MSM Dem-Establishment

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Perhaps you’ve noticed. Some people and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. Their target is Bernie Sanders and the growing army of his supporters who are fed up with politics as usual and the grip of Wall Street and corporate America on our political, economic and social system. The theme is to desperately convince us that Sanders can’t win. They repeat it over and over, even though Sanders polls as well or better than Hillary Clinton does against every leading Republican candidate. Behind this effort is an alarmed corporate old guard that still runs the Democratic Party establishment and their allies in the corporate think tanks and the media, with a special nod to NBC/MSNBC, which is owned and operated by General Electric and Comcast.
  • In this scenario to blunt the Sanders’ surge, and what it represents for the millions of people who want to reverse income inequality, guarantee health care to everyone, break up the banks, carry out meaningful environmental justice and criminal justice reform, and all the other far reaching planks of Sanders’ campaign and the coalition supporting it. A thrust of their effort is to persuade Sanders supporters that he cannot win, in large part by using all the well-funded mechanisms in their control to retard wider exposure to the message of Sanders and his allies. The power elite form of turning down the gaslights. Here’s a small part of how the manipulation works. 
  • The Democratic National Committee slashes the number of debates and schedules debates on Saturday nights when far fewer people are watching, and pressures its elected officials and convention super delegates for an early endorsement in an effort to lock down a coronation of their preferred candidate. Meanwhile the media, in particular NBC/MSNBC which has the biggest network audience of presumed Democratic Party voters, limits coverage of Sanders while it’s parent company, GE, also directs its Hollywood subsidiaries, including Universal Studios (co-owned by Comcast) and its NBC shows, to line up its contracted celebrities to endorse the politics as usual campaign. Other national media, which also has a stake in the status quo, contributes as well. While Sanders has now drawn more than 400,000 people to his rallies – far more than any other candidate – he routinely receives less coverage than most of the other leading candidates. A report, circulated by Media Matters, found that on one network alone Donald Trump has been given 81 minutes of coverage compared to less than one minute for Sanders, even though, as The Nation’s John Nichols notes, Sanders has broader support among Democratic voters than Trump does among Republicans in the first voting state, Iowa.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In a fall speech to the DNC, Sanders put it bluntly. “The people of our country understand that given the collapse of the middle class and a grotesque level of income inequality, we do not need more establishment politics or establishment economics.”  “What we need,” Sanders emphasized, “is a political movement that is prepared to take on the billionaire class, a movement that works for all of us and not just the corporate class and a handful of the wealthiest people in this country.”  It’s a message, a campaign, and an uprising that has sent chills through those whose primarily loyalty is to the wealthy donors in mansions and corporate suites and the policy architects on Wall Street.  But it’s a message that sure has resonated in the grassroots.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15
     
    Sanders is getting the same treatment Ron Paul got last time around. But my guess is that like Trump, if elected Sanders wouldn't live long enough to take office. 
Paul Merrell

CIA 'tortured al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in water-f... - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...hem-in-water-filled-baths.html

war & peace CIA torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA. “They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.” The account of extreme CIA interrogation comes as the US Senate prepares to publish a declassified version of its so-called Torture Report – a 3,600-page report document based on a review of several million classified CIA documents.
  • A second source who is familiar with the Senate report told The Telegraph that it contained several unflinching accounts of some CIA interrogations which – the source predicted – would “deeply shock” the general public. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that authored the report has promised that it will expose “brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation”. The Senate report is understood to accuse the CIA of lying and of grossly exaggerating the usefulness of torture. It is being angrily opposed by many senior Republicans, former CIA operatives and Bush-era officials, including the former US vice president Dick Cheney, who argue that is it poorly researched and politically motivated. The CIA has previously admitted that it used black sites to subject at least three high-value al-Qaeda detainees to “enhanced interrogation” – namely Mohammed, the alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and alleged senior Bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah.
  • The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA. “They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    If this report is accurate, there are some CIA types desperately in need of being confined to a prison for the rest of their lives, as well as all superiors who knew of it but did not act to stop it. They need to be removed from humanity's gene pool. And for my money, anyone who was tortured should be set free and paid hefty damages. 
Paul Merrell

US military denied treatment to soldiers exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq (+video) -... - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...chemical-weapons-in-Iraq-video

war & peace Iraq U.S.-WMD U.S.-foreign-policy veterans

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The New York Times's C.J. Chivers has dropped a bombshell of a scoop that details 17 US troops and seven Iraqi policemen who were exposed to old chemical weapons in Iraq, some of whom were declined appropriate medical care and service awards on the grounds of secrecy.If Mr. Chivers' reporting holds up – and there's little reason to doubt his deeply-reported piece – this is a scandal that eclipses long waits and poor funding at VA hospitals in the US. Sure, far fewer people were affected by exposure to mustard agents or sarin in Iraq, but these allegations represent enormous callousness and a direct breach of trust with soldiers.
  • Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’” he said. “There were plenty.” That chemical weapons from before the first Gulf War remained in Iraq was an operating assumption at the time the US invaded the country in 2003 and was established fact by the end of that year. But, while the US made the search for evidence of ongoing chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons programs a priority (it failed to find any), disposing of whatever they did find apparently was not.
  • The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds. “I felt more like a guinea pig than a wounded soldier,” said a former Army sergeant who suffered mustard burns in 2007 and was denied hospital treatment and medical evacuation to the United States despite requests from his commander. Congress, too, was only partly informed, while troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. “ 'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • That's the central issue in Chivers' piece, which is hard to read in full without mounting anger. But the following four graphs contain the nut of the scandal here, as I see it (emphasis mine): 
  • In the first year of the US-led war, the military didn't have the manpower to secure all of the hundreds of conventional weapons bunkers that littered the country. The shells, RPGs, and rifles that were looted from these bunkers were put to use by the then-growing Iraqi insurgency to attack both foreign soldiers and the new government in Baghdad.Chivers' story details how as late as 2008, US soldiers were involved in the secret destruction of chemical weapons in ways that violate the protocols set out in the United Nations's Convention on Chemical Weapons. The lax US approach appears to have led to the exposure of the soldiers – and it left behind an unknown quantity of old chemical weapons, some possibly in the hands of anti-government insurgents like the so-called Islamic State. The US knew it was leaving old chemical weapons behind when soldiers withdrew from the country at the end of 2011. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations had ever made their destruction a priority. 
  • Much of the reaction to the story has missed the central point, distracted by partisan finger pointing. Fox News predictably frames the story as "There were chemical weapons in Iraq after all." No. This is not news – and the possible existence of old sarin and mustard agent shells inside the country was not the reason that the Bush administration presented for going to war. Folks on the left have focused on the fact that these old chemical weapons were US "designed." That isn't really news either (nor that the US was notably silent about Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war).The story is an enormous breach of trust between the US and its own soldiers. It starts with the officers and the members of the Bush administration involved, whose names the story doesn't give.
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