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Ledeen a torturer? never say

Thread ID: 16201 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-01-05

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TexasAnarch [OP]

2005-01-05 18:16 | User Profile

ledeen [url]http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen.asp[/url]

December 30, 2004, 8:43 a.m. Journalists at War

The Washington Post shows lousy judgment.

 I’m surprised that no one has picked up on the article by Dana Priest on the front page in Monday’s Washington Post, entitled "Jet is an Open Secret in Terror War." Dana Priest is a pretty big star in the Post’s firmament, and gets to write lots of stories that the editors consider important. But this one is very peculiar, because most of the ink is spilled on a single CIA operation: the use of a Gulfstream aircraft to transport suspected terrorists and accomplices to places where they are interrogated and/or arrested.

We learn a lot about the plane, including its tail number, the company that owns it, the names (which Priest reasonably infers are "cover" names) of the company’s executives, and several sightings of the plane, from Pakistan and Cairo to Stockholm, Riyadh, Rabat, and of course Washington. Amidst all these data, Priest raises a serious issue, namely whether the terrorists and their pals were brought to foreign countries in order to be subjected to far harsher interrogations — perhaps including torture — than could be used here. In that connection, she quotes Martin Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, who claims that we are in violation of the U.N.’s Convention on Torture, and she trots out "Anonymous," a.k.a. Michael Scheuer, who slams his previous employers, saying they just do what they’re told.

 If the article were all about this issue, one could understand its presence on the front page, but the rest of it is all about the plane, its travels, and its owners. It’s pure voyeurism and expose, and one has to ask, “Why?” To be sure, there is a lot of interest in the CIA, and even a book of recipes by CIA kitchen personnel would attract some attention, but this article seems to me to be the sort of thing that a serious news organization should stay away from. It is all too easy to read this and conclude that the Post is outing CIA operations and personnel just for the fun of it. Or because they hope it will encourage somebody to do something really newsworthy.

 What public interest is advanced by all this detail? None I can think of. Are there any other consequences of such a story? You bet: People who wish us ill, including officials and agents of hostile intelligence services, now have a target, and they have some names (phony though they may be) to put into their databases, thereby placing those people at risk of exposure or worse. Apparently Priest piggybacked on an earlier story in the Boston Globe, and her own article just appeared in The Australian, so people all over the world can now watch for the Gulfstream and listen for the names.

 At a minimum, this story will cost money (the CIA might well decide to cash in the Gulfstream and use a different aircraft). At worst, some people will be damaged, embarrassed, physically hurt, or subjected to gratuitous harassment. The unlucky lawyer who filed the incorporation papers for the company that owns the plane told the Globe, "I’m not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for reasons I don’t know." Now there’s a really important statement for America’s readers. The implication couldn't be clearer: This guy's a bum, doing something he shouldn't.

I think the Post showed lousy news judgment on this story, and I wonder whether anyone at CIA made that argument to the editors. After all, some American journalists are now facing jail because the name of a covert agent was revealed; is it so different from this case, where cover names are exposed? I wish Dana Priest had devoted her considerable talents to the pony buried in the mountain of aeronautical detail, the torture issue. (I have long questioned both the morality and the utility of torture, because a normal person under torture will say most anything to stop the pain.) [B]If she decides to do that, I hope she writes the really hard story: torture in its many forms, all over the world: U.N. officials’ torturing of little African girls; Iranians’ torturing of young bloggers; Saddam’s torturing of his own people. I[/B]’ll even give her some research assistance, because the Post knows far more about it than it has let its readers know.

 [B]Some time ago, the Post was given tapes of public torture sessions in Baghdad before the liberation of Iraq. It showed tongues being cut out, hands and arms cut off, legs broken, and decapitations. So far as I know, the Post only mentioned it once, and then only to "blame" advocates of Operation Iraqi Freedom for trying to counter bad news from Abu Ghraib. If the Post were really concerned about having a fully informed readership, it could have posted the tapes on its website. We had some of that material — not nearly as much as the Post did — and posted it at AEI. [/B]

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ledeen squirms to evade responsibility for the entire “war on terror” debacle,  It’s interesting (not) that he sees all “advocates of Operation Iraqi Freedom” tarred by Abu Ghraib, not that he ever advocated torture, heaven forbid, just the opposite.

This performance epitomizes what I mean by “Jewish”, used in its most derogatory connotation. .

It goes with “U.N. officials’ torturing of little African girls” as blame-shifting accusation.  The U.N. isn’t controlled by Israel and the AEI, one understands: bad guys?  -the worst.

And, with alluding by “cover names” indirectly to “John Israel”, no doubt  just that, at the infamous torture sessions; but deliberately chosen for incriminating effect as if it were not to be omitted.  This would be the CIA not letting Mossad off the hook.

The core of the impending indictment, however, hanging heavy, heavy over their heads like the sword of Allah and the tsunami of Indonesia, is the contamination – debasement – of the name and character of Christianity by association with its use of Zionist Jews terrorizing Arab and  Muslim people for the sake of Eratz Yosrael.  Essentially, equating Christ with YHWH, thus killing Him again, and again, this time with intent forever so to do.  And with box-office gusto, to boot! Jewish Christianity.  (“Jesus for Jews”).  That’ll save ya.

For the record, the line attributed to one of the prison guards “The Christian in me says its wrong, the corrections officer likes to see a grown man pee on himself” was likely a planted deliberate smear, a PR device to associate Christianity with the deeds.  It is not, of course, a specifically Christian-abhorrence.  It is a human one.  He could have said “As a human, I know its wrong….”.  This quote makes Christianity come off as saving  weak men from bestiality.

A key factor commented on by Seymore Hersh in this regard is the religious significance Islamic places on male modesty and the shame of homosexuality.  Thus, for the JIA (“Jews, Israelis, Americans” – Friedman) to inflict it on their males as “interrogation procedures” is profaning their source of sanctity in the name of “Iraqi Freedom”.  That is what they are teaching “freedom” is, by example.  It is what freedom is, in their depraved mentality – to do that whenever they like to whoever they want, and get by with it.

We now see where this mentality has brought the country.  There are only two options:  Pull Out (as soon and seemly as possible, whatever happens Jan 30) … or install a Draft.  The level of bleeding reached now is simply intolerable.  Disasters elsewhere don’t diminish it, they reinforce it.  Now those who did it must pay.  That is the word, now.  History owes them.

[url]http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&u=/washpost/20050105/ts_washpost/a48446_2005jan4&printer=1[/url] Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees

1 hour, 23 minutes ago By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writers

“….His former colleagues say that throughout this period, Gonzales -- a confidant of George W. Bush's from Texas and the president's nominee to be the next attorney general -- often repeated a phrase used by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to spur tougher anti-terrorism policies: "Are we being forward-leaning enough?" But one of the mysteries that surround Gonzales is the extent to which these new legal approaches are his own handiwork rather than the work of others, particularly Vice President Cheney's influential legal counsel, David S. Addington.

Gonzales's involvement in the crafting of the torture memo, and his work on two presidential orders on detainee policy that provoked controversy or judicial censure during Bush's first term, is expected to take center stage at Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) hearings tomorrow on Gonzales's nomination to become attorney general. The outlines of Gonzales's actions are known, but new details emerged in interviews with colleagues and other officials, some of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were involved in confidential government policy deliberations.

On at least two of the most controversial policies endorsed by Gonzales, officials familiar with the events say the impetus for action came from Addington -- another reflection of Cheney's outsize influence with the president and the rest of the government. Addington, universally described as outspokenly conservative, interviewed candidates for appointment as Gonzales's deputy, spoke at Gonzales's morning meetings and, in at least one instance, drafted an early version of a legal memorandum circulated to other departments in Gonzales's name, several sources said.

 Conceding that such ghostwriting might seem irregular, even though Gonzales was aware of it, one former White House official said it was simply "evidence of the closeness of the relationship" between the two men. But another official familiar with the administration's legal policymaking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such deliberations are supposed to be confidential, said that Gonzales often acquiesced in policymaking by others.”

This qualifies Gonzales for the title “butt-boy”, as they refer to them on the Don  Imus MSNBC show.  Promotion of the very one taking the heat for turture is A.  a blatancy-ploy act of last-ditch desperation at cover-up; B.  an announcement that the abomination torture mentality is the way a forward-leaning Justice Department looks to go; C.  What Republicans are, in addition to being pathological liars and psychotic killers.

 It also implicates the neocon links through Cheney (Libby, Feith, AEI).  The White House is withholding documents possibly showing complicity with pro-Israeli war planners to deliberately degrade Arab and Muslim people.

 "WE ARE ALL TORTURERS NOW" says the NY Times article heading.  Not that that they object, of course.   "WE ARE ALL JEWS NOW"  they like to say, too, quoting James Woosley.  They were never more, at heart.  That's why they are dead men talking to each othere calling themselves "us".