gMelvin A Goodman | Truthout.org 

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.

With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA’s most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency’s chief apologist.

So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the “smartest man he had ever met.”

Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, “Don’t worry, it’s a slam dunk,” in response to the president’s demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam-dunk” briefing to the president in January 2003.

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Patrick Martin |wsws.org

In a ceremony Wednesday, US President Barack Obama signed legislation authorizing the largest ever military budget, a gargantuan $680 billion for the Pentagon, including $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thursday, he signed a spending bill funneling another $44 billion into the Department of Homeland Security, to strengthen the apparatus of state repression within the United States.

The back-to-back bill signings are a clear demonstration that Obama is extending and intensifying the program of militarism and attacks on democratic rights for which the Bush administration was deservedly hated, in the United States and worldwide.

Each of the bills contained provisions aimed at further restricting democratic rights. The Pentagon budget bill authorizes the use of military tribunals to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and others seized illegally, either overseas or within the US, as part of the “war on terror.” It also bars the release of Guantanamo prisoners—even those found completely innocent—into the United States. It prohibits bringing Guantanamo prisoners to trial on US soil without a 45-day advance notice to Congress.

The Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill effectively prohibits the release of photographs taken by US military personnel during torture sessions at US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. It exempts these photos from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, under which the American Civil Liberties Union and several media outlets have filed suit in federal court. The exemption would apply, not just to the photos sought by the ACLU, but to any photos taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 to which the Pentagon has objections.
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Editorial | NYTimes.com

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.
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GlobalResearch.ca

Dahr Jamil | GlobalResearch.ca 

On September 7 the Swedish aid agency Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that the previous week US soldiers raided one of its hospitals. According to the director of the aid agency, Anders Fange, troops stormed through both the men’s and women’s wards, where they frantically searched for wounded Taliban fighters.

Genghis Khan could not hold onto Afghanistan. Neither will the United States. Photo from Mongol: The Rise Of Genghis Khan.

Soldiers demanded that hospital administrators inform the military of any incoming patients who might be insurgents, after which the military would then decide if said patients would be admitted or not. Fange called the incident “not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict, but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement” between nongovernmental organizations and international forces.

Fange said that US troops broke down doors and tied up visitors and hospital staff.

Impeding operations at medical facilities in Afghanistan directly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids attacks on emergency vehicles and the obstruction of medical operations during wartime.

Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a public affairs officer for the US Navy, confirmed the raid, and told The Associated Press, “Complaints like this are rare.”

Despite Sidenstricker’s claim that “complaints like this” are rare in Afghanistan, they are, in fact, common. Just as they are in Iraq, the other occupation. A desperate conventional military, when losing a guerilla war, tends to toss international law out the window. Yet even more so when the entire occupation itself is a violation of international law.

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Joe Palazzolo | MainJustice.com 

The Obama administration has blessed three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that expand the government’s reach in counter-terrorism investigations.

In a Sept. 14 letter to lawmakers, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said the Justice Department supports the use of roving wiretaps, the authority to access business records and the ability to track so-called “lone-wolf” terrorists, or those without visible ties to a foreign terrorist organization. The provisions sunset at the end of the year.

The Justice Department’s position was expected. During his confirmation hearings, Attorney General Eric Holder told members Congress he would review the provisions but said he would likely endorse their re-authorization.

“The tools that we have been given by Congress in FISA are important ones, so I would look at all three and make the determination of whether I would be able to support them,” Holder told member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I expect that I will.”

Still, Weich’s letter is sure to embitter civil libertarians who have long opposed the measures. Weich said the administration is willing to consider changes that would increase privacy protections, as long as they preserve the effectiveness of the tools.

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Ellen Nakashima | WashingtonPost.com 

 The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.

“It’s a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people’s laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever.”

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Prof. Peter Dale Scott | GlobalResearch.ca 

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Dwight David Eisenhower, “Military-Industrial Complex Speech,” 1961,[1]

“My observation is that the impact of national elections on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases. SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership in Washington.” Former SAIC manager, quoted in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, “Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow.” Vanity Fair, March 2007[2]

“We make American military doctrine” Ed Soyster, MPRI[3]

The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial Folie de Grandeur

	The post-Afghanistan Brzezinski has become more moderate in his expectations from U.S. power

In the Road to 9/11 I summarized the dialectic of open societies: how from their energy they expand, leading to a higher level of more secretive corporations and agencies, which eventually weaken the home country through needless and crushing wars.[4] I am not alone in seeing America in the final stages of this process, which since the Renaissance has brought down Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

Much of what I wrote summarized the thoughts of writers before me like Paul Kennedy and Kevin Phillips. But there is one aspect of the curse of expansion that I underemphasized: how dominance creates megalomanic illusions of insuperable control, and how this illusion in turn is crystallized into a prevailing ideology of dominance. I am surprised that so few, heretofore, have pointed out that from a public point of view these ideologies are delusional, indeed perhaps insane. In this essay I will argue however that what looks demented from a public viewpoint makes sense from the narrower perspective of those profiting from the provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence.

The ideology of dominance was expressed for British rulers by Sir Halford Mackinder in 1919: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.”[5] This sentence, though expressed after the power of Britain had already begun to decline, accurately articulated the anxieties of imperial planners who saw themselves playing “the Great Game,” and who thus in 1809 sacrificed an entire British army of twelve thousand men in the wilderness of Afghanistan.

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Kori Schake | ForeginPolicy.com 

Assistant to the President John Brennan gave a speech yesterday, ostensibly a landmark address. He assured listeners that “the fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining — indeed, distorting-our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies.”

It is tempting to lampoon Brennan’s remarks for the risible and solipsistic rhetoric (e.g., “like the world itself, [Obama’s] views are nuanced, not simplistic; practical, not ideological.”) – or to once again express my concern that the administration might actually believe the refrain that the president “rejects the false choice between ensuring our national security and upholding civil liberties.” This seems to be mistaking slogans for solutions, as Edward R. Murrow cautioned against.

But the standard for measuring Brennan’s remarks is what they contain that is new policy. With the exception of Guantanamo, which the president has declared he’ll close but six months later has not yet provided a program to achieve, the program sounds remarkably like Bush administration practices. Defeat al Qaeda, check. Hold Afghanistan, check. Partnership with Pakistan, check. Sharing intelligence and training militaries in East Africa, check. Going after terrorist financing, check. Disrupting terrorist operations, check. Prevent terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, check. Ensure our military has the troops and the tools it needs, check. Strengthen the intelligence community, check. Defend the homeland, check.

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Bob Egelko | SFGate.com

President Obama is adamant about maintaining the secrecy of a wiretapping program authorized by George W. Bush, an administration lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Obama “does not intend to use the state-secrets privilege to cover up illegal activities,” said Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino. But in exceptional circumstances, he said, the president will invoke secrecy to protect “the sources and methods of detecting terrorist attacks … the crown jewel of the United States national security administration.”

Coppolino said the administration will cite national security in seeking dismissal of a lawsuit by telephone customers accusing the government of illegally intercepting phone calls and obtaining phone company records.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker heard about 90 minutes of arguments and said he would rule later.

The suit is similar to claims filed against AT&T and other telecommunications firms in 2006, following Bush’s acknowledgement that he had authorized eavesdropping on Americans’ communications with suspected foreign terrorists without seeking court approval.
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Kim Zetter | Wired.com 

Just a week after the Defense Department announced plans to put the National Security Agency in charge of military cyber defense and attack, the agency’s reach has already expanded to include monitoring of government civilian networks.

The Obama administration has decided to proceed with a classified Bush administration plan to let the NSA monitor traffic going to and from government civilian networks to protect the networks from malicious code and activity, according to a Washington Post story on Friday.

Given the NSA’s involvement in the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, critics are concerned that the monitoring of government traffic on private-sector telecommunication networks that are used by the general public would allow the agency to once again spy on large swaths of non-government traffic without a warrant.

AT&T, which was scheduled to launch a pilot project last February to test the monitoring program, has insisted on government assurances that its cooperation is legal. The company, along with other U.S. telecoms, were sued in 2006 for their involvement in the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping scheme before being given retroactive immunity by Congress last year.

In the monitoring program, called Einstein 3, telecommunication companies would route data going to and from government networks through an NSA monitoring box, which would examine the traffic for malicious code or suspicious activity suggestive of a network attack.

But critics are concerned that proper oversight is in place to prevent non-government traffic from being vacuumed into the system.

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 Ken Dilanian | GlobalResearch.ca

Global Research Editor’s Note

This report published in USA Today confirms unequivocally that Washington has directly financed dissident groups in Iran. 

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is moving forward with plans to fund groups that support Iranian dissidents, records and interviews show, continuing a program that became controversial when it was expanded by President Bush.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which reports to the secretary of state, has for the last year been soliciting applications for $20 million in grants to “promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Iran,” according to documents on the agency’s website. The final deadline for grant applications is June 30.

MORE: USAID report on support to Iranian dissidents

U.S. efforts to support Iranian opposition groups have been criticized in recent years as veiled attempts to promote “regime change,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian-American advocacy group. The grants enable Iran’s rulers to paint opponents as tools of the United States, he said.

Although the Obama administration has not sought to continue the Iran-specific grants in its 2010 budget, it wants a $15 million boost for the Near Eastern Regional Democracy Initiative, which has similar aims but does not specify the nations involved. Some of that money will be targeted at Iran, said David Carle, a spokesman for the appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign affairs.

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Eric Lichtblau | NYTimes.com 

Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.  

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

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Jamie Doward, Gaby Hinsliff and Mark Townsend  | Guardian.co.uk 

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK’s role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan “to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover”. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be “brought out” to give a public presentation on Saddam’s WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was “solidly with the president”.

The five-page document, written by Blair’s foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

Paraphrasing Bush’s comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: “The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin.”

Last night an expert on international law who is familar with the memo’s contents said it provided vital evidence into the two men’s frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Iraq war.

Philippe Sands, QC, a professor of law at University College London who is expected to give evidence to the inquiry, said confidential material such as the memo was of national importance, making it vital that the inquiry is not held in private, as Brown originally envisioned.

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PressTV.ir

As Washington gets updates on Israeli plans to strike Iran, US President Barack Obama orders the Pentagon to rejuvenate contingency plans for the use of military in Iran.

Despite the prospects of diplomatic engagement with Tehran over its nuclear program, Defense Secretary and Pentagon chief Robert Gates said Friday that the White House has not ruled out the possibility of a military strike if diplomacy was to fail.

“Presidents always ask their military to have a range of contingency plans available to them,” Gates told NBC television. “And all I would say is that, as a result of our dialogue with the president, we’ve refreshed our plans and all options are on the table.”

In a turnabout from the policies of the Bush administration, President Obama says he seeks to diplomatically engage Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Iran, which favors diplomacy to resolve the nuclear differences with the West, says the program is directed at the civilian applications of the technology.

The US and Israel, however, accuse the country of seeking military objectives in its pursuit.

The defense secretary’s remarks come shortly after a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington.

Netanyahu’s visit exposed deep differences between the two administrations over issues such as the stalled peace talks with the Palestinians and the US approach to deal with Iran.

According to the Israeli Radio, Netanyahu told Obama that Israel reserves the right to take unilateral military action against Iran, refusing to make a promise to follow the US lead.

The nuclear issue aside, President Obama’s decision to engage Tehran in direct talks has raised concern in Israel that rapprochement between the two rivals — which have not had diplomatic ties for nearly three decades — would ultimately cool Tel Aviv’s relations with its main ally.

Netanyahu’s visit to the US has raised fears that the US president may have failed to avert an impending war in the volatile Middle East.

Israel, the possessor of Middle East’s sole nuclear arsenal, has long strived to portray Iran as a regime hell-bent on an imminent nuclear war.

Iran says it has no plans to attack any country but continues to beef up its military capabilities to deter threats such as those originating from Israel.

James Petras | AlterNet.org

“The Deltas are psychos…You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance. McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects.

McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country.

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Stephen C Webster | RawStory.com 

Breaking a key promise from his campaign, President Barack Obama is expected to announce Friday the return of military commission trials for a small number of terrorism suspects. Obama had previously promised to abolish them.

The tribunals, often criticized as overly protective of state secrets and willing to accept evidence obtained while defendants were allegedly tortured, were suspended mere hours after Obama took office.

Many organizations expected the move to be a death knell for the system, launched by the Bush administration.

But, it was not.

Unnamed administration officials told the Associated Press on Thursday that the revived commissions will afford greater legal rights to prisoners by barring evidence obtained under coercion or torture and restricting how hearsay evidence is applied.

“The military commissions established under the Bush administration allow the use of evidence, such as that gathered from other detainees, which would be disallowed in civilian courts,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “Critics of the commissions say regular courts are adequate to handle terrorism trials.

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Ray McGovern | InfoWars.com 

Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role that two controversial psychologists played in devising the Bush administration’s torture policies. Guess we should be thankful for small favors.

Apparently, a NYTimes“exposé” requires a 21-month gestation period; just by way of pointing out that the substance of the Times“exposé” appeared in an article the July 2007 issue ofVanity Fair.

Katherine Eban, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes about public health, authored that article and titled it “Rorschach and Awe.” It was the result of a careful effort to understand the role of psychologists in the torture of detainees in Guantánamo.

She identified the two psychologists as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who she reported were inexperienced in interrogations and “had no proof of their tactics’ effectiveness” but nevertheless sold the Bush administration on a plan to subject captives to “psychic demolition,” essentially severing them from their personalities and scaring them “almost to death.”

In Wednesday’s New York Times, reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti plow much the same ground. But please do not misunderstand. They deserve praise for finally pushing their own article past the Times‘ censors, but let’s not pretend the startling revelations are new.

The Times ought to allow the likes of Shane and Mazzetti to publish these stories when they are fresh. Alternatively, the “newspaper of record” might at least report the findings of the likes of Eban, rather than ignoring them for nearly two years.

It’s pretty much all out there now, isn’t it? Not only the Times‘ better-late-than-never “exposé,” but also:

–The (leaked) text of the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the torture of “high-value” detainees;

–The too-slick-by-half “legal opinions” under Department of Justice letterhead;

–The findings of the 18-month investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee highlighting that it was President George W. Bush’s dismissal of Geneva (in his executive order of Feb. 7, 2002) that “opened the door” to abuse of detainees.

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Paul Joseph Watson |PrisonPlanet.com 

The Obama administration is resisting an independent inquiry into the Bush torture program because top Democrats like Pelosi were complicit in approving illegal methods.

We now know why top Democrats are protecting Bush administration officials from facing an inquiry into the illegal torture program - because several of them were actually complicit in giving their approval for such methods to be used.

The White House stressed again yesterday that it would not be pursuing an investigation of key Bush administration officials, despite the manifestly provable fact that the order to torture came from the very top, which was re-affirmed with the recent release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated yesterday, “I think the last few days might well be evidence of why something like this would likely just become a political back and forth.”

“By (definition), an independent commission would probably not be something that I would weigh in on if Congress were to create one of those,” he told reporters, according to AFP.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said he opposed an independent torture probe, stating, “I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are.”

In addition, upon the recent release of the torture memos, Obama’s right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, told ABC News that top Bush administration officials “should not be prosecuted either and that’s not the place that we go.” Obama’s statement that accompanied the release of the torture memos stated, “In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

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Steve Watson | InfoWars.net

A newly released Senate Armed Services Committee report is garnering much media attention today, however it only confirms what we first reported in 2005 - that high-ranking Bush officials were responsible for torture of detainees and tried to shift the blame to low-ranking army officers.

The report is “a condemnation of both the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse — such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan — to low ranking soldiers,” said Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who led the investigation.

It names former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as approving an initial December 2002 memo that was taken as an approval for torture methods in U.S. run prisons worldwide.

Procedures approved in the memo were adopted in Iraq in a memo issued almost one year later in September 2003 by the Iraq war commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

The report (PDF), which has been described by some media sources as “explosive“, reveals nothing new, however, and confirms what we’ve already known for over three and a half years.

In October 2005 former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski appeared on the Alex Jones Show to make these very revelations. We subsequently produced an article detailing her claims and also the fact that she was deliberately kept out of the loop and scapegoated to protect higher ups.

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