The acting chief of the CIA‘s operations wing ran a secret “black site” prison overseas after the 2001 terrorist attacks and later signed off on the decision to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to current and former U.S. officials. The woman, who remains undercover, now is one of several candidates that CIA chief John Brennan is considering to head the National Clandestine Service, which conducts espionage overseas and runs the agency’s paramilitary operations. [...]
The CIA is preparing to dispute the report’s conclusions, sources said.
[From] Brennan’s December 5, 2005 appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, in which he vehemently defended the Bush administration’s use of rendition — one of the key tools to subject detainees to torture:
JOHN BRENNAN: I think it’s an absolutely vital tool. I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. Government has been involved in. And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives.
[...]
In November, 2007, Brennan — in an interview with CBS News’ Harry Smith — issued a ringing endorsement for so-called “enhanced interrogation tactics” short of waterboarding:
Mr. BRENNAN: There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.
When in doubt, revive and aggravate existing anger over egregious actions (the now-discredited CIA detention and torture programs) by sticking by and promoting those who were a part of them. That’s the way to move forward, everyone knows that.
The Senate on Thursday afternoon approved John O. Brennan’s nomination to lead the Central Intelligence Agency by a vote of 63 to 34. The vote followed a filibuster by Senator Rand Paul, who spent nearly 13 hours on the Senate floor in pursuit of more information about the administration’s domestic drone policy.
After receiving a brief letter from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. assuring him that the president does not have the “authority to use a drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil,” Mr. Paul declared his effort a success, and ultimately voted to end debate (though against the nomination), bringing the total votes in favor of cloture to 81 over 16 against.
Every now and then on Twitter, I get a notification of an impending “Twitter bomb.” That means that at a specified time, as many people as possible organize to tweet a certain hashtag (#) so that a message will be sent out in large numbers, simultaneously, get a lot of attention, and hopefully trend.
Last night I got word that #WhyRepublicansNeedToGo would be the hashtag du jour. I decided to jump in for the heck of it and posted a couple of tweets like (if I remember correctly): “#WhyRepublicansNeedToGo Two words: Eric Cantor. Two more: Paul Ryan” and “#WhyRepublicansNeedToGo Gay rights, civil rights, women’s rights, voting rights, and that’s just for starters.”
I mentioned nothing about Rand Paul (who delivered the ninth longest filibuster in U.S. history), other than to retweet breaking news updates. I didn’t say whether I agreed or disagreed with him or with the speaking filibuster or with his efforts to block John Brennan’s confirmation. I offered no opinion one way or the other.
However, had anyone bothered to ask, which nobody did, I would have said that I support a speaking filibuster (and oppose incessant GOP obstruction), I am not thrilled with Brennan, I am against the use of drones to target Americans, I am for major oversight of the use of drones by any president, I am for due process, getting a fair trial in a U.S. (civilian) court of law, and against assassinating Americans and denying them the option to give themselves up.
That said, I got an onslaught of trolls, all of them Rand Paul devotees, sending inane, nasty, baiting, and/or stupid tweets last night shortly after Twitter Bomb Thirty.
I’m sharing a few of them with you because 1) I’ve been meaning to do expose you to some of the extreme comments I get for awhile now to show you what many of us deal with on a daily basis, and 2) to point out the mentality of most of the tweets I get from Republicans and Libertarians. They always initiate these direct “conversations,” I never do.
What concerns me is not so much the infantile nature of the tweets, because that’s easy enough to ignore, but that so many people (or perhaps bots, accounts created solely for this purpose) have such hostility, anger, misinformation, ignorance, and feel the necessity to repeatedly direct it at those with whom they disagree. Even after I inform trolls that they are being blocked, they continue to obliviously tweet me as if I can see their tweets (there are ways to see them, which is how I know they do this).
Their irrationality and rage infects nearly every tweet.
Republicans, be careful what and whom you rile up, incite, and embrace. As the Southern Poverty Law Center is warning, this is fast becoming another Oklahoma City bombing waiting to happen:
Below are a few samples of what I was bombarded with last night. Notably, a recurring theme is that, after they enter my stream with intentionally provocative tweets and/or misinformation and I choose to block, they default to phony outrage. They get huffy and whiny over being deprived of their First Amendment rights, which of course, pertain to government censorship, not Twitter’s option to block tweets:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I didn’t know that I lacked rights as a woman. Are you referring to little women in the womb? (I remember commenting about how developed the fetus must be if she’s referring to it as a little woman)
Another liberal that hates free speech if it means having a different opinion: @GottaLaff who blocks people she’s too ignorant to debate.
@JustinYoung30 (who apparently thinks teachers are worthy of disdain):
@GottaLaff no shit you’re not a republican. That’s your problem. I’m gonna guess you’re a teacher or leaching the system
@goodolick (3 followers, and please note the spelling of “you’re” from the account who called me stupid.):
@GottaLaff your a special kind of stupid aren’t you?
@KicheMalko (Bio: hard and raw with no regard for the law):
@GottaLaff “civil rights” like letting illegal immigrants live have welfare and food stamps? “voting rights” like let illegals vote?
@GottaLaff i dont know how im being rude but i think you need to be a little more educated on something called the constitution (I believe I reminded Malko that civil rights are indeed constitutional and that nobody has ever suggested that anyone should be allowed to vote illegally.)
What is the cause of all their anger? Why do they feel so afraid? Is it our African American president? Is it that whites are becoming a minority? Is it that they have an unhealthy reliance on firearms and solving problems with violence, so they feel common sense gun safety measures are a threat? Is it the “civil war” within their own party that makes them uneasy? They’re feeling powerless, so they have to dominate in inappropriate and dangerous ways?
Whatever it is, it is not good for this country, and they need to start listening more, agree to disagree, grow up, read and become aware of facts instead of relying solely on sources like Fox for their talking points, educate themselves, research, become more willing to hear opposing views, try using some civility, empathize, and realize we’re all in this together.
“Everytime Dick Cheney laughs, an angel gets stabbed in the back,” Jon Stewart declared the other night in a take down of Dick Cheney.
Cheney, whose vampire heart is still beating due to a defibrillator he has strapped to his body, recently took to the airwaves to trash President Obama’s foreign policy, including the recent appointment of John Brennan to head the CIA, denouncing him as a “yes man” to Obama. Now, Truthout at BuzzFlash has many objections to Brennan’s nomination, starting with his ownership of the infamous Obama administration “kill list.” But given that Brennan held senior intelligence positions in both the White House and CIA under the Bush/Cheney administration, Cheney is basically denouncing his own stewardship on intelligence matters. [...]
Cheney – along with Donald “Known Unknown” Rumsfeld — who co-quarterbacked a campaign of deception to lead us into the disastrous and deadly Iraq War. [...]
As a symbol of how destructive Cheney was to the national interest, [Valerie] Plame specialized in reducing the risks of rogue nations obtaining nuclear weapons or materials. In short, Cheney and his loyalists (and Karl Rove escaped indictment for the Plame leak by a hair) seriously compromised a US intelligence effort to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons and material just after justifying a calamitous invasion of Iraq with the chief untruthful assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. [...]
Isn’t it long past time to just say, “Stuff it Dick!”
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Lt. Col Barry Wingard is the lawyer for Gitmo detainee Fayiz Al-Kandari. For their ongoing story + related topics, please click on the link below: Kuwaiti Citizen Detained at Guantanamo since 2002
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