Newsweek: Bigger WH showdown looming - Dems probing allegations of torture of detainees

[sabra]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17739889/site/newsweek/

Interrogating the Interrogators

Republicans in Congress didn't question the administration's rough treatment of captured terrorists. Now the newly empowered Democrats want answers.


March 22, 2007 - After years of largely ignoring the issue, two Senate committees have launched major inquiries into the handling of terrorist suspects captured after the September 11 attacks, congressional staffers tell NEWSWEEK. Although they are still in the early stages, the probes into allegations of torture, abduction and mistreatment of detainees hold the potential for an even bigger congressional showdown with the White House (and ultimately Attorney General Alberto Gonzales) than the current standoff over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is conducting an inquiry into "detainee abuse," said Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Sen. Carl Levin, the new Democratic chairman of the panel. The probe is a formal, full-scale investigation and several committee staffers have been assigned to it, according to a Senate staffer who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. At the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee, under new chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, has launched its own "review" of detention, interrogation and "extraordinary rendition" activities of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, said Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Rockefeller. An official familiar with the Intelligence Committee inquiry said that Rockefeller has already held one closed-door hearing on rendition and will soon hold another classified hearing on CIA detention activities.

...

But the intelligence committee also operates largely in secret; information it gathers in the course of its probes is often kept confidential. Levin, the Armed Services chairman, could prove more of a threat to the administration. He is known as a bulldog investigator and has shown no compunction about demanding access to sensitive documents that other lawmakers have failed to obtain. Last week, Levin, along with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, attended the hearing on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The senators later released a joint statement stating the allegations of prisoner mistreatment "must be taken seriously and properly investigated."

[Beetwasher]

1. Bring It All Out

All of it. Expose it to the light of day. Don't let up for a second.

[villager]

3. "*all* of it" of course, would eventually go back to Dallas '63 and before that....

Can American people really handle the truth?

[Virginia Dare]

4. Speaking for myself, yes and I welcome it...n/t

[villager]

8. well, yes -- the only way out is through....

...and America's been avoiding the truth about its collective self for a long while...

[Pacifist Patriot]

9. Me too.

[bobbie]

36. Very true villager

"ALL of it" would reveal the US as a country that lost its legitimate government on Nov 22, 1963 and has been one big sham ever since. It's a lot to absorb, but Americans damn well better deal with the truth if they ever want to get their country back.

That would mean they/we have to learn *real* history.

But as Mort Sahl said in his bio "Heartland":

"Now you know there are murderers among us, killers of the dream.
You know what they did.
I know some of you don't want to get involved, but you began your involvement when you began life.
Do it for the best friend you ever had, John F. Kennedy.
Do it for yourself.
You must do it, because there is no one else."

[Hubert Flottz]

14. I agree!

Attack BushCo from every direction on everything. The more off balance he is from these many valid investigations, the more lame and harmless this duck will become. Make BushCo suffer the way they have made our counrty suffer.

[petgoat]

32. every direction on everything.

For five years now we've been scattered because there is so much
evil to attack. Now it's time for the tables to turn.

We need to be working together--the DSM people, the P&J people,
the impeachment people, Code Pink, Vets for Peace, 9/11, election
fraud, WorldCan'tWait.

[Eurobabe]

22. WOOT!!

:applause:

[fooj]

2. Game on.

Let the light shine on TRUTH for all to see!

[tanyev]

5. Bring it on!

:woohoo:

[babylonsister]

6. Yeah, baby, bring it ON! nt

[w4rma]

7. captured alleged terrorists (nt)

[juno jones]

10. We can handle the truth....

...even all the way back to 1963. We must have it so we can purge ourselves of what truly is our 'long, national nightmare'. Nothing less will do. Otherwise we'll just be pulling up a couple of scabs again, like we did with watergate and iran-contra, leaving this suppurating fascist infection to continue to ravage the body politic.

[Hekate]

11. "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over" Jefferson, quoted by ElizabethE

Someone in another thread referenced her brave letter to DU after the 2004 election. It's a magnificent quote from Thomas Jefferson, writing to a friend about the Sedition Act in 1798, when times were very dark and perilous:

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

My response to this and other news out of the Democratic Congress is Thank God, thank God, thank God. We may yet get our contry back.

Hekate

[Raksha]

17. I made a reference to it, although I didn't quote it.

Thank you for posting that wonderful quotation. It always gives me hope when I need it the most.

[SpiralHawk]

12. "What, me order torture? Smirk, Smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL

"Why that's the kind of behavior you would only expect from a
spoiled connecticut preppy who belonged
to a darkside occult cabal."

- Commander AWOL, Skull & Boner Brigade of National Guard Deserters

[Hepburn]

13. I need a spreadsheet to keep track of how...

...many irons the Dems have sizzling in the fire!

:kick:

[solara]

15. ..And the walls come tumbling down...

INVESTIGATE IMPEACH INDICT INCARCERATE :patriot:

:kick:

[Generator]

16. GOD we are all waiting for all the shoes to drop

We've been waiting so long, the outrages are so awful, and will it ever end? How long do those that have suffered have to wait for justice? Please let's move on with it congress. This admin has shamed me to be an American.

And THIS is something of the highest morality that those that have authorized this need to pay for. I will never forgive them for what they have done to this country.

[Hekate]

21. As many shoes as a poisonous centipede.... nt

[Blue_In_AK]

18. I'm so glad to hear this.

As troubling as the whole U.S. Attorney issue is, this torture thing is the one that really gets me fired up. I weep for what's become of our country, which used to stand for human rights and dignity.

[leftchick]

19. hold it just a second here: "rough treatment of captured terrorists"???

excuse me? It has been known for a very long time that the vast majority held have NEVER BEEN CHARGED so how the fuck are they terrorists? Amnesty has said most of these folks held are guilty of being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, having committed NO CRIMES!

That is a terrible way to start an article. :(

Here is one example....

http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=20018

Aljazeera Guantanamo inmate 'abused'
By Roshan Muhammed Salih

An Aljazeera cameraman who has been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay since 2001 has suffered extreme physical, sexual and religious abuse, his lawyer says.
Amnesty International says Guantanamo Bay is a gulag

Clive Stafford-Smith, who visited clients in the US detention camp in Cuba a few weeks ago, told Aljazeera.net that Sami al-Hajj had been beaten by his interrogators.

Al-Hajj, a Sudanese national, was arrested in late 2001 while working for Aljazeera in Afghanistan.

"Sami has endured horrendous abuse - sexual abuse and religious persecution," said Stafford-Smith, who is on a visit to Qatar, on Tuesday.

"He has been beaten. He had a huge scar on his face when I saw him."

[loudsue]

20. Not even half of the other shoes have begun to drop.

The mafia that has been running and RUINING our government for the past 13 years (yep...especially back to the takeover of congress by Newt & the boyz) has spread their evil into every corner of our country and the world.

IT IS TIME NOW for everything....EVERY STINKIN' THING...to be exposed to the light of day.

It's also high time to take on the media, and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. I can no longer stomach what the media is doing on these issues. They're NOT REPORTING, they're making a spectacle. And it needs to STOP! Americans have a RIGHT to know, ON OUR AIR WAVES, what is going on... THE TRUTH about what is going on, not some spin. The ownership and management of the media is another thing that needs to have the light of truth made shine down on it. The media has just become one other tentacle of the beast that has tried to destroy our country. Don't let them hide behind the "we're doing it for the ratings" meme. Their motives are far darker than that.

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

[kath]

24. Well, as someone mentioned above, there's the last 13 years, and then there's the last

FORTY-FOUR or more.

Yes, the BFEE reaches VERY far back.

[in_cog_ni_to]

23. GOOD! Leave NO DOUBT about these evil, corrupt SOBs and whether or not they

should be IMPEACHED, INDICTED, TRIED AT THE HAGUE and IMPRISONED!

[OneGrassRoot]

25. What you said . . .

Sadly, I'm starting to believe that the 30%-ers won't open their eyes to the truth. Ever. Bush and Cheney would have to have gay sex live on-air while one of them simultaneously shreds the Bible and the other performs an abortion. They'd still find a way to blame Clinton.

[in_cog_ni_to]

27. Isn't that sad? People in this country use to have standards and ethics.

The religious RWers have truly lost their way. I hear it every morning on C-SPAN'S Washington Journal. They are so pathetic.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

26. I'm really loving the power of committee

And the subsequent investigations that power is making possible.

[Disturbed]

28. What hapened to that FBI Memo pointing to direct

involvement of Busholini signing off to Torture?

[Solly Mack]

29. I would love to help them in their investigations

I really, really would

[Disturbed]

30. Here it is.

FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay ...
One FBI agent wrote a memo referring to a presidential order that approved ... the incidents described in the documents "can only be described as torture. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14936-2004Dec20.html

[Solly Mack]

31. I've seen that before

I've read a good portion of the ACLU documents

I meant actually work on the investigations

[grizmaster]

33. too bad the so-called "military commissions act" practically gives them a get out of jail card free

I for one will never forgive any of the Congressmen that supported the decriminalizing of war crimes and the flushing of the Geneva Convention. May they all rot forever in some eternal Gitmo wshen they pass from this life.

Under the War Crimes Act, most of bush's inner circle would have been eligible for the death penalty.

[texpatriot2004]

34. Excellent! nm

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Hold it, Dems doing anything and not rolling over?

:sarcasm:

Yep, that is what we keep hearing...

On a serious note... damn the popcorn will be fun

[mike_c]

37. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant. --Louis Brandeis"

Shine a BRIGHT light on the scum.

[sellitman]

38. This is why the last election was the most important election of our lives.

And why the next one will be won.

[The Count]

39. A cat in every tree we barked up....

[mmonk]

40. One key ingredient. An emphasis should be on the fact

there were some who indeed were not terrorists, but were tortured. Many Americans all detainees are terrorists or have taken up arms against the US.

[GliderGuider]

41. I'm watching from up here with my mouth hanging open.

I followed both Watergate and Iran-Contra, and I've never seen anything like this! It has such a cleansing feel. congratulations, America. You're a great nation after all.