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"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq –- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the vice president’s office [Republican Dick Cheney] had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.""Suskind says the order to forge such a letter was written on “creamy White House stationery” but gives no details about how it was created or how it was delivered to Iraq." -By Johanna Neuman -LAtimes
"I am appalled by Senator John McCain's reaffirmation of support for the use of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. Senator McCain has once again chosen to align himself with President George Bush, whose reprehensible spying program on Americans is a grave threat to our Constitutions guarantees of privacy and limited executive power. It is clear that Senator McCain, President Bush, and their Republican allies in Congress will continue to use scare tactics and fear mongering to claim that a president can simply chose to ignore America's laws... Senator McCain opposes a bipartisan House compromise bill that preserves appropriate court review of all surveillance of US citizens and gives judges the discretion to review all the necessary documents related to telecom lawsuits without offering blanket immunity.""Yet there's a more important issue here, which is why the neo-cons are pressing McCain to adhere to the Bush administration's line. And that's the administration's theory of the so-called unitary executive, which says that the president's use of military force cannot be reviewed by courts." ... "McCain's earlier statements -- especially where he says presidents must "obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress" -- seem to question the administration's interpretation. Beyond wiretapping, that touches on topics such as John Yoo's so-called torture memos, the applicability of the Geneva Convention to detainees, Bush's signing statements, and military commissions. Questioning the justifications for Bush's warrantless wiretapping means questioning the rest; no wonder McCain seems a little worried about where this may lead." -By Declan McCullagh -CNET
"[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]""The Article II citation is key, since it refers to [Republican] President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001." -By Ryan Singel -Wired"We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution."
[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]"In an excerpt published on NPR's website, Sanchez writes[:]"
""CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job."" ... ""That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC [National Security Council] knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. [Republican] Vice President Cheney knew about it. And [Republican] President Bush knew about it."" ... ""There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of [General] Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done."" ... ""In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.""
[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]"And regarding Abu Ghraib, Sanchez writes -- according to Eli Lake of the New York Sun -- that the [United States] U.S. was torturing prisoners." ... "A remarkable admission."
""In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the [Republican President] Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service...I saw the cynical use of war for political gains by elected officials and acquiescent military leaders. I learned how the pressure of a round-the-clock news cycle could drive crucial decisions. I witnessed those resulting political decisions override military requirements and judgments and, in turn, create conditions that caused unnecessary harm to our soldiers on the ground..."" ... ""Over the fourteen months of my command in Iraq, I witnessed a blatant disregard for the lives of our young soldiers in uniform. It is an issue that constantly eats away at me.["]"
[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]-By Jake Tapper -ABCNEWS.com
"During the last few months of 2002, while the highest levels of the U.S. government were sparring with Saddam Hussein and setting up the case for an invasion of Iraq, there is irrefutable evidence that America was torturing and killing prisoners in Afghanistan...In retrospect, the Bush administration's new policy triggered a sequence of events that led to the use of harsh interrogation tactics against not only al Qaeda prisoners, but also eventually prisoners in Iraq—in spite of our best efforts to restrain such unlawful conduct.""
McCain's "Spiritual Guide" Rod Parsley "We get off on warfare!" |
"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the "liberal media" didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."
"I like [Bush]. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left -- I mean -- like him personally.""Or they'll point to "liberal" Tim Russert -- Tim Russert -- about whom [Republican Vice President] Cheney press aide Cathy Martin said: "I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used. It's our best format, as it allows us to control the message." That's the same "liberal" Tim Russert who confessed that he operates by the defining law of the Government propagandist: "When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy -- our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission."" ... "Or look at the recent "controversy" reported by the Associated Press over whether NBC News' reputation as an objective news outlet is being tainted by virtue of the "liberal" commentators MSNBC features. Nobody questioned whether CNN's objectivity was imperiled by featuring the likes of [right-wing commentators] Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, nor, for that matter, did anyone raise these questions about NBC when, for years, MSNBC shows were hosted by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough and Michael Savage." ... "But a single unapologetic Bush critic appears on the TV -- Keith Olbermann -- and this rarest of occurrence suddenly leads to controversy over whether the "respectability" of television news can survive while allowing a single "liberal" voice to be heard." -By Glenn Greenwald -Salon

