(1) If widespread acts of Torture are found to have been Institutionalized (by your direction), the sickening violations at Abu Ghraib (etc.) were not, as you claim, “just the action of some soldiers.” They would also be considered torturous culminations which originated from a “Call To Action” – a War Crime since the Nuremberg Trials.
(2) Assembling a team of sycophantic (neocon) lunatics to purposely redefine the term/word Torture so that you could claim all the following torturous actions were “Legal” (according to secret opinions) did not (actually) make the crimes “Legal.” Certainly, this was an intended cover – for the public, as well as the Supreme Court (if necessary). Yet, as some court will eventually say: The Truth is clearly proclaimed (though some tried in vein to rewrite it). WindHarps
The Truth of 9/11: “Surveillance/inside information led to Knowing It Was Coming. Based on the latter, covert actions were implemented that would Enhance the Outcome. Then, Standing Down (just long enough) during the occurrence assured an expectation of success.”
It was quite welcomed to see your article ending with a time-line of “inactivity” – Before 9/11. Combined with all the “coincidental” inactivity and seeming indifference, which just happened to benefit the hijackers’ goals (such as the FBI’s quashing of reports from Phoenix, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York, and John O’Neill’s resignation from the FBI over what he considered “repeated obstruction of his investigations into al-Qaeda,” etc.), there was also significant “activity” – behind closed doors. Qwest Communications, for example, was served with National Security Letters (as were other tele-coms), before 9/11, in relation to a (secret and illegal) Warrantless Surveillance program. Many could wonder: with all the supposed apathy going on previous to the planes striking their targets, what was the “ticking time-bomb” scenario which led them to covertly bypass FISA – well before they ever hit?
Keith Olbermann: “The government knew about some phone call from a safe house in Afghanistan into the U.S. about 9/11? Before 9/11? You didn’t do anything about it? Either the Attorney General just admitted that the government for which he works is guilty of malfeasant COMPLICITY in the 9/11 attacks, or he’s lying.”
Norman Mineta: “I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane [was] coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, ‘The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.’ And when it got down to, ‘The plane is 10 miles out,’ the young man also said to the vice president, ‘Do the orders still stand?’ And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, ‘Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?’“
Van Jones Resigns: “QUESTION: . . . he was on an organizing committee for a 9/11 Truther march. Your administration has been very active in knocking down the so-called Birthers, . . . who allege without any evidence, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that the president was not born in the United States. How can the administration tolerate somebody who subscribes to a different insane conspiracy theory, as a senior adviser?” To clarify significant extremes: 9/11 Truthers mainly base their cases of question, and desire for an independent investigation, on scientific and documented evidence – where “evidence to the contrary” of the official version is overwhelming in many areas/facets. Most of the 9/11 Commission, for instance, completely ignored or purposely obscured considerable “evidence to the contrary” of their predetermined results/goals. As far as conspiracy theories, a passage from Debunking 9/11 Debunking: “Assuming that one of the two conspiracy theories about 9/11 is irrational, because it is contradicted by the facts, is it the official theory or the alternative theory?” Truth: “the birther movement includes . . . members of Congress” (none of whom has been run out of town), “while connection to the truther movement can help cost [an] . . . obscure administration official his job.” As a result of the ongoing public floggings of Truthers, a “30%” open-minded visit to the 9/11 Scholars for Truth web site is recommended for substance. Moreover, as suggested before, a written debate between Bob Cesca and David Ray Griffin would be quite revealing.
(Iraq) One Day After:Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and “testily” asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including theFBI and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying “Please update and resubmit.”
Timing: “The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop. There in fact were no such contacts.” (In time to be used in a worldwide propaganda campaign for an illegal/illegitimate War). Timing: “(Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)” (In time to be “incidental,” purely coincidental, and wholly convenient.
Ray McGovern:
“Now there are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions. This is the bottom line for me; just as Hitler in 1933 cynically exploited the burning of the parliament building, the Reichstag, this is exactly what our President did in exploiting 9/11.”
Senator Max Cleland:
11/21/03: Regarding the 9/11 Commission: “It is a national scandal.”
3/23/04: “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9/11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up.”
Louis Freeh – Director of FBI, 1993-2001:
“Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of [lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed] Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it ‘was not historically significant.’ This astounding conclusion—in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings—raises serious challenges to the commission’s credibility. . . .”
Col. Robert Bowman:
“[W]ho put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney. I think the very kindest thing that we can say about George W. Bush and all the people in the U.S. Government that have been involved in this massive cover-up … is that they were aware of impending attacks and let them happen. However even that is high treason and conspiracy to commit murder.”
“And yet there are those who would say, look, let’s take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.” WindHarps
“Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of War Crimes.”
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