Well done, Plum Line.There’s a big piece of news about Dick Cheney and torture buried toward the end of this bigWashington Post piece about the torture wars.
Specifically: The White House has decided to declassify and release a classified 2004 CIA report about the torture program that is reported to have found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots on American soil — directly contradicting Cheney’s claims. The paper cites “allies” of the White House as a source.
Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives. Tellingly, neither the CIA nor the White House knocked down the story in response to my questions, with spokespeople for both declining comment. Here’s the key nugget from the Post piece:
Government officials familiar with the CIA’s early interrogations say the most powerful
evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the “top secret” May 7, 2004,
inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the
videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held,
although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to
declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month’s
release of the Justice Department’s interrogation memos…Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that “it is
difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided
information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks,”according to
the Justice Department’s declassified summary of it.This news is particularly timely in light of Cheney’s continuing high-profile claims that torture may have saved “hundreds of thousands of lives.” The report is the one I wrote about recently that the ACLU obtained through litigation in highly redacted form. It has an entire redacted sectionthat discusses the “effectiveness” of torture — or lack thereof.
2009-05-11
White House to Declassify CIA Torture Report
The Holy Grail of Torture Reports is apparently about to be released:
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11 comments:
http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2008/10/the-rumor-about.html
http://www.babybushtoys.com/products.html
BushBabyToys, eh? Pretty funny. What's your point?
Oh, and the glaring problem with the optimist123.com analysis is that is focuses on the 2000's. That's too short a time-horizon for it to be of interest to me. I wouldn't be making a big deal of it wages had only been stagnant for 8 years. It's the 30+ period of stagnant wages that troubles me.
Secondly, look at the Persons-Per-Household graph... that graphs says that the smaller the house size, the smaller the income. Doesn't that seem anecdotally wrong? The less productive, less educated among us breed like rabbits. The top quintiles should overwhelmingly have smaller family sizes than than the lower quintiles.
Thirdly, remember how when you first showed this to me I said, "these are all inflation adjusted numbers, right? I mean, not using real numbers is just the most clichéd way of misleading people with economics, so it has to be inflation adjusted." Guess what? The numbers aren't inflation adjusted. They're in absolute dollars based on whatever year the chart starts. That's basic economic malfeasance.
You'll remember I showed you this site to support the statement the the disappearing class is becoming rich. This site proves that plainly. And those are all government numbers, so if you have a better source, I'd love to see them. I just stated the rest showed another way of calculating income growth and how this site shows how calculating differently to show different things. But anyways.....
As for "The less productive, less educated among us breed like rabbits", let me say that such a prejudicial remark like that is below you. Lord forbid any conservative say this. Liberals would be falling over themselves to defend the poor against such an attack. Those damn heartless, racist, homophobic republicans....
This might suprise you, but there is other news going on in America beside the treatment of detainees. Nothing here on healthcare, cap and trade (you know, the bill that makes Obama a LIAR about not raising taxes on, what was it, on 98% (?) of Americans?), Iran, ect...
Not that its not an important issue, cause it is, but brother the horse is dead.
No point on the bush toys. I just thought you would find them funny. Nothing more sinister than that.
maybe.
"You'll remember I showed you this site to support the statement the the disappearing class is becoming rich."
Yes... that's the site at the top of this thread:
http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2008/10/the-rumor-about.html
The criticisms I leveled are directed against that argument, which does not do a good job proving anything because of basic mistakes. Leaving out inflation isn't a "different way of looking at the data," it is misleading.
"As for "The less productive, less educated among us breed like rabbits", let me say that such a prejudicial remark like that is below you.
Oh please. Cry me a river. Being PC isn't one of my big concerns.
you know, the bill that makes Obama a LIAR about not raising taxes on, what was it, on 98% (?)
If you're coming here for your partisan news, then you're doing it wrong. I only update when I have time, which is not often.
As for Obama's "Lie", let's examine it. First, if Obama pledged that he would veto any bill that would raise taxes on those making less than $250k, then you're right, that would have been a campaign promise/lie. Of course, you'll find no such veto pledge. What Obama did say is:
"Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
You'll notice he says "my plan." Well guess what? Obama doesn't just get to pass his plan. I know it comes as a shock after the unconstitutional Bush Administration, but Congress is, in fact, a co-equal branch of government. Obama cannot simply dictate his preference to Congress. He has to work with them. I know it's not the arrogance we're used to, but it is the way the system is supposed to work.
If he played by your rules nothing would get done, and all the problems that we elected him to get started fixing would go unfixed for another 4 or 8 years. That is unacceptable, and unserious from a national security perspective, so therefore there are not veto threats. But make no mistake, the President's Plan does not raise taxes on the middle class.
In particular, the Cap-and-Trade bill will raise the cost of living for the middle class family by $175/yr in 2020.
The chart shows how many americans are in which income bracket. This is raw data from the census bureau. It doesn't matter how you spin it, turn it around or analyse, the numbers are simple. This many americans earned this much money. Period. Once again, if you have figures that show otherwise lets see them.
As for the whole PC think, Kudos! I was baiting you with tongue firmly in cheek and to your credit you didn't fall for it.
Bravo.
Now this next part is incredible. Am I to believe that the cap and trade bill was thrust upon Obama? That he was appearently forced to accept whatever congress did and he was not complicit in passing this bill? Seriously, in order to accept your premise I have to believe that he didn't know that cap and trade bill would raise taxes on all of us.(remember the famous bankrupting of the coal industry remarks?). Or better yet, he found a way to do cap and trade without it costing more for consumers if only congress accepted his plan. The whole thing was a contradiction before the election (not raising taxes while supporting a cap and trade system)and it turned his no tax increase pledge into a joke now that the bill has been passed.
Here's another problem with that bill: Where was the transperency on the part of the Democrats on this? "A" bill was only available just 24 hours before the vote but it was not the "final" bill that was voted on. Nope, the "final" version was (admittedly) missing 300 pages of amendments. Where do these amendments come from? How where those decisions made? Why was there no public hearings on this bill by any of the committees that were involved in its drafting? I don't know about you but i prefer my congressperson to at least have a chance to read what they are voting on. Once again the Democrats have rushed through a major piece of legislation. Now I realise the president can't be held responsable for what congress does. However, he is the party leader coming off a massive landslide election victory with wide popular support. Where's his leadership in this?
We should talk about this bill on its merits too, 'cause its a dog. Europe instituted this system years ago and for every green job it created, two other manufacturing jobs were lost. (heard this on CNN) This bill will further drive industry to developing countries with no pollution controlls at all, so it actually could make things worse! A great example of the law of unintended consequences.
Here's Obama from the San Francisco Chronicle, january of 2008:
"The problem is not technical, and the problem is not sufficient mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington.
The problem is can you get the American people to say this is really important and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake, and climate change is a great example.
When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations.
That will cost money…they will pass that money on to the consumers. You can already see what the arguments are going to be during the general election. People will say Obama and Al Gore …these folks...they're going to destroy the economy.
This is going to cost us 8 trillion dollars or whatever their number is. If you can’t persuade the American people that, yes, there is going to be some increase on electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage and changing light bulbs and more efficient appliances, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy that the economy will benefit."
So, there you have an admission by the president that HIS plan would raise costs. But, in his defense he states that improvements in efficiency will offset the cost. Yeah, right. In order to work, the plan has to be painful so that industry is complelled to change its ways. The european plan ultimately fell apart and failed because the individual countries involved weren't willing to hurt their industry and issued too many credits. Wow, imagine that; politics became involved. That could never happen here. I'm sure that our congress is immune to any political influence from industry, constituents, or unions. Anyways, you can read about the european cap and trade at:
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/12/gao_report_skeptical_of_ets_cr.shtml
Sorry, was a little long in the tooth on the last post. Here is the complete URL.
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/12/gao_report_skeptical_of_ets_cr.shtml
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/12/gao_report_skeptical_of_ets_cr.shtml
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/12/nyts_reports_failure_of_cap_tr.shtml
wierd how it won't cut and paste that url correctly. Maybe this will work. Feel free to delete the prior post
Anyways, this site is not allowing me to cut and paste the url, so just do a google serch, you'll have no trouble finding info.
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