Thursday, December 11, 2014

Let's stop playing semantics. The Bush White House lost Osama bin Laden and washed their hands of it.

Cheney got what he wanted for Halliburton, didn't he? Avoided a lawsuit with the stockholders, right? Those are facts. Halliburton was in Iraq immediately after the troops landed. There is no confusion there. Bin Laden was no longer a concern, simply a tool for the invasion.



April 30, 2012
By Adam Serwer
...When Stahl confronted Rodriguez (click here) with the fact that KSM refused to divulge the identity of the courier who eventually led the CIA to bin Laden, Rodriguez confirmed what we already knew—that when asked about the identity of bin Laden's courier, KSM lied. 
Stahl: Well, [KSM] didn't tell you about Osama bin Laden. He didn't tell you how to get him. He didn't tell you how to find him.
Rodriguez: Some of these people were not going to tell us everything. Stahl: So you don't break 'em. Rodriguez: There is a limit, there is a limit to what they will tell us. Actually KSM lied about the courier - whose identity finally led to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the terrorist leader he calls Sheikh bin Laden was hiding.
Stahl: Now, here's what I heard: that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told you the courier had retired and threw you off the scent for a while.
Rodriguez: That was the one secret he was going to take to the grave, and that was the protection of the Sheikh. He was not going to tell us.
CBS has since posted more of the interview to its website, and the additional footage further erodes the notion that torture led to bin Laden's whereabouts. "We went to KSM and said 'What about this courier, [Abu Ahmed] al-Kuwaiti?' and he became very defensive, and he would not talk to us about it," Rodriguez says. "But later, we intercepted a message, that he was sending to the other detainees in which he said do not say a word about the courier. Which, to us meant this is important information."
Rodriguez employed a number of other well-worn fallacies in his defense of torture:...

Financial Transaction Tax

Warren Buffett and other business leaders* (click here)
In a position paper published by the Aspen Institute, the group put forth several recommendations to encourage long term focus among investors, including the proposal to “revise capital gains tax provisions or implement an excise tax in ways that are designed to discourage excessive share trading and encourage longer-term share ownership.”

If the Democrats in the US House and Senate are conflicted with the omnibus bill before the due to the burgeoning deadline for funding the government, I'd like to suggest something.

One of the reasons it is important to maintain regulations is because the USA has no residual for carrying out another bailout. It just doesn't. It is still involved in costly war and the national debt is a burden that cannot be ignored. Additionally, there were job losses and the American Dream was trashed. If the deadline for midnight is important than consider adding a "Financial Transaction Tax." It has to be permanent until a significant amount of the National Debt is paid down (at least 50%) and not recalled as of January 2014.

With a well established residual in the US Treasury the USA can at least have the ability to take care of it's citizens. The best venue for American employment, due to the role of the USA in the world, is to grow the Small Businesses in the country. They were the first ones to recover from the Great Recession.

The USA has a friend in Warren Buffet. If we can't trust a good friend and a successful fund leader, then we are simply demanding an ideology out of the wounds of the past. Wounds are a good reason, but, the USA has to find methods to rise above this nonsense that goes on with the Republicans. We have to have a long term strategy for the country and for financing the well being of our citizens. I think a Financial Transaction Tax can be a vehicle of resolving differences in the party.

*Co-signers of this paper include John Bogle (Vanguard Group), Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), Steven Denning (General Atlantic), Jack Ehnes (CalSTRS), J. Michael Farren (Xerox), Barbara Franklin (former Secretary of Commerce), Bill George (Harvard Business School), Louis Gerstner, Jr. (IBM), David Langstaff (Veridian), Jay Lorsch (Harvard Business School), Ira Millstein (Yale School of Management),Peter Peterson (Peter G. Peterson Foundation), James Rogers (Duke Energy), Felix Rohatyn (former US Ambassador to France), Charles Rossotti (former Commissioner of Internal Revenue), Judith Samuelson (The Aspen Institute), Henry Schacht (Cummins Inc. and Lucent Technologies), Lynn Stout (UCLA School of Law), Richard Trumka (AFL-CIO), John Whitehead (Goldman Sachs), John Wilcox (TIAA-CREF), Ash Williams (Florida State Board of Administration), James Wolfensohn (World Bank Group). 

If the USA moves this tax forward, the EU will be close behind in implementing theirs.
Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, and Magnolia Pictures We need to figure out a way to revert the Stock and Bond Markets, and the derivative instruments created from these equities, back to their original purpose, a place to raise capital for growing business… The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction… The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now.

The actual damage to the USA's economy in 2008 was about $1.7 trillion. That is no laughing matter and to simply allow Wall Street to do it all over again is completely irresponsible in any office of the government. But, it this flip flopping of laws is going to be the wave of the future, then we need a fix that rises about the gaming of our politics.

The banks, like Citicorp, like to state they paid all the bailout back with interest. But, they never admit the citizens of this country were never made whole again! So, before Citicorp becomes self-righteous they need to reassess their real landscape of disaster.

The end of Quantitative Easing is over as well. The banks are squirming at the fact they might actually have to work for a living.

Are we a country of laws?

I didn't find Director Brennan's statements or answers to questions helpful.

The US Senate document spells out some very troubling realities beyond 'the idea' that bizarre treatment of human beings were helpful.

The facts are the facts. The law is the law. These are not grey issues. I don't find Director Brennan's statement about how the CIA can explain away the infractions of treatment of human beings as a reason to disdain the US Senate report.

The USA can't simply discuss changing direction on the treatment of prisoners on foreign soil as a matter of daily business. The allies of the USA that may have assisted with these VIOLATIONS of treaties made for the sole purpose of preventing the torture of human beings were not in the room when the discussion about tweaking torture beyond any agreed standard. How can the Director of the CIA be so repugnant to the facts complied by the US Senate?

The Senate wasn't in the room where it was decided to throw out the rule book and simply torture people because the CIA in all it's arrogance thought it prudent.

This only confirms Rumsfeld's Cabal and how that culture ran rampant in all the areas of government concerning war. 

The CIA decided the end justifies the means no matter the form or offense. That is not law, it is however arrogance. The USA is it's own sovereign authority with ties to other nations. Brennan is offensive in his idea of FAIRNESS. Fairness. There needs to be fairness in the chambers of the great CIA? Somehow the people of the USA are missing the point that the CIA has to be treated with fairness and regard. 

Where USA agencies decide they can make up their rules and activities as they happen, who then has control and will the actions taken benefit the USA or another country or interest? No, sir, the CIA is wrong and the USA is worse for it.

Brennan should have conducted an apology to the people of this country for the facts now before it.

I am sure there are other qualified people such as Joe Wilson or someone he may recommend that can handle the directorship of the CIA with better outcomes within the standards the country has set as limits in the CIA's practice. Mr. Brennan is too offended by the questions and obviously occupied with a defense of his leadership to stay in that capacity.

Poland admits complicity in allowing a CIA Black Site within their borders.

The Poland site wasn't the only site in the world. I am quite sure there were others. Poland was also compromised in that they are a former Soviet State ans was seeking security for their people from NATO. If Poland was attempting to increase assurance into or with NATO it would have done whatever the USA wanted. 

Poland, however, is not simply a babe in the woods. They actively took on two provinces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia were acting as peacekeepers along the border when the conflict began. It was Poland who first launched the attack.

The Five Day War (click here)  A thousand people died in the two provinces. They had no means of military defense. It was a one sided confrontation from the beginning. 

December 10, 2014
By Carol J. Williams

A U.S. Senate (click here) report on interrogation abuses by CIA operatives around the world spurred two former leaders in Poland to confirm, after years of denials, that the country hosted one of the “black site” detention facilities where the alleged torture occurred.

Former President Aleksander Kwasniewski said in a radio interview Wednesday that he approved the clandestine operation in 2002 after the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush urged Poland to assist in the global war against terrorism launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.

But Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller denied knowledge of the abuses reportedly committed during the interrogation of terror suspects, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda kingpin Abu Zubaydah and the prisoner accused of bombing the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri.

The U.S. side asked the Polish side to find a quiet site where it could conduct activity that would allow to effectively obtain information from persons who had declared readiness to cooperate with the U.S. side,” Kwasniewski said at a Warsaw press conference, according to the Associated Press.

The CIA site opened in December 2002 and closed 10 months later, Kwasniewski said, after he pressured Bush to wind up the operation over which Polish officials felt they had too little control. Kwasniewski was president of Poland from 1995 to 2005....

Now the propaganda starts.

The US Senate review of the CIA. 

"It is not bipartisan?"

The American Press has absolutely no idea how to treat the report because it is not a political document.

Years of research and reporting has gone into this document. It is not a political document. The problem with the document is that it is all based in FACT. The actionable intelligence of this document is that those responsible can be held for trial, that is why the American media can't get it's head around these facts without spinning it to create a benevolent dialogue for the Republican administration of George Walker Bush.

The fact is the USA has been the toy of the right wing since the elections of 2000 were manipulated to favor Bush by his brother. Since that day, this country was dragged through disaster after disaster of the Bush administration and now the compilation of the most egregious, other than actually declaring war on the unarmed country of Iraq and killing tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people, acts of that administration exists. That is the fact. 

The American Press needs to review how they provided news coverage during Watergate and then they might understand how to deliver FACTS to the country. 

Bipartisan. The US Senate Committee on Intelligence IS BIPARTISAN. Senator Feinstein is the chair, thank god. But, to say this is some kind of witch hunt through the CIA and their egregious treatment of prisons is quite frankly disgusting.