Washington Post: White House Endorsed Waterboarding

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos

Waterboarding Got White House Nod

Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency’s interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first — and, for years, the only — tangible expressions of the administration’s consent for the CIA’s use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for “policy approval.”

The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.

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Open Thread…

New ad from Move On-  Talk To Your Parents About John McCain

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William Timmons: McCain’s Transition Team Leader Aided Saddam Hussein

McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

Huffington Post- Murray Waas

October 14, 2008 02:49 PM

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein’s government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons’ activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.

John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq, and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace to the region who had “stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could.”

Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press. Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam’s regime while they collaborated.

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Palin Investigation Has Broadened Beyond Troopergate

Palin Probe Expanded Beyond Troopergate

Via Huffington Post- Anchorage Daily News |   October 14, 2008 08:38 AM

The state Personnel Board investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin’s firing of Walt Monegan has broadened to include other ethics complaints against the governor and examination of actions by other state employees, according to the independent counsel handling the case.

The investigator, Tim Petumenos, did not say who else is under scrutiny. But in two recent letters describing his inquiry, he cited the consolidation of complaints and the involvement of other officials as a reason for not going along with Palin’s request to make the examination of her activities more public.

Read the whole story here.

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Afternoon Jukebox… Bruce Springsteen- In Philadelphia (Oct. 4, 2008)

Bruce Springsteen- in Philadelphia  (Oct. 4, 2008)

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Frank Schaeffer: McCain Is “Deliberately Feeding The Most Unhinged Elements Of Our Society The Red Meat Of Hate”

Former McCain Supporter: McCain Is “Unleashing the Monster of American Prejudice”

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 13, 2008

Lifelong Republican Frank Schaeffer says McCain is “deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate.”

Amy Goodman: We turn now to the McCain campaign’s strategy of repeatedly invoking Senator Obama’s connection to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. It seems to very clearly have a serious effect of riling up crowds of McCain and Palin supporters, to a point that Senator McCain was booed at his own rally Friday when he attempted to defend his rival against character attacks.

Sen. John McCain: I want to be president of the United States, and obviously I do not want Senator Obama to be, but I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States.

Audience: [booing]

John McCain: Now, I just — now, I just — now, look, I — if I didn’t think I wouldn’t be one heck of a lot better president, I wouldn’t be running, OK? And that’s the point.

AG: The Republican presidential nominee was speaking to a crowd near Minneapolis Friday. His attempt to defend Senator Obama was met with jeers.

At a Palin rally earlier in the week, Governor Palin referred to Senator Obama as a man connected to “a former domestic terrorist.” She said she was “fearful” of his vision of America.

Gov. Sarah Palin: I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America, as the greatest source for good in this world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.

AG: While Governor Palin was speaking about Obama, an audience member, it’s believed, yelled out, “Kill him!” It’s unclear if Palin heard the remark, but she didn’t respond.

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Nine Major Banks: New Investment For Taxpayers

U.S. Forces Nine Major Banks To Accept Partial Nationalization

Dow Soars 11 Percent; Biggest Point Gain Ever

By David Cho, Neil Irwin and Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 14, 2008; Page A01

The U.S. government is dramatically escalating its response to the financial crisis by planning to invest $250 billion in the country’s banks, forcing nine of the largest to accept a Treasury stake in what amounts to a partial nationalization.

News that European governments also planned to take stakes in their banks and anticipation of new U.S. measures unleashed a tremendous surge in U.S. stock prices yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrial average soaring to the biggest percentage gain since the 1930s, up 11.1 percent. It ended 936.42 points higher, the largest point gain ever, just days after the Dow had its steepest weekly decline in history.

The Treasury Department‘s decision to take equity stakes in banks represents a significant reversal, coming just weeks after Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had opposed the idea. In a momentous meeting yesterday afternoon in Washington, Paulson, flanked by top financial regulators, told the executives of nine leading banks that they needed to participate in the program for the good of the national economy, two industry sources said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

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Suicide Numbers Climbing Due To Financial Crisis

Financial Crisis Suicide Numbers Mounting

KELLI KENNEDY | October 14, 2008 09:00 AM EST |

An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

In Massachusetts, a housewife who had hidden her family’s mounting financial crisis from her husband sends a note to the mortgage company warning: “By the time you foreclose on my house, I’ll be dead.”

Then Carlene Balderrama shot herself to death, leaving an insurance policy and a suicide note on a table.

Across the country, authorities are becoming concerned that the nation’s financial woes could turn increasingly violent, and they are urging people to get help. In some places, mental-health hot lines are jammed, counseling services are in high demand and domestic-violence shelters are full.

“I’ve had a number of people say that this is the thing most reminiscent of 9/11 that’s happened here since then,” said the Rev. Canon Ann Malonee, vicar at Trinity Church in the heart of New York’s financial district. “It’s that sense of having the rug pulled out from under them.”

With nowhere else to turn, many people are calling suicide-prevention hot lines. The Samaritans of New York have seen calls rise more than 16 percent in the past year, many of them money-related. The Switchboard of Miami has recorded more than 500 foreclosure-related calls this year.

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Buchanan: Liquidating the Empire

Sudhan @12:02 CET

by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar, Oct 14, 2008

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers.”

So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in the Great Crash of ‘29.

Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him – and the Republicans.

In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has vanished, almost $9 trillion. Some $5 trillion in real estate value has disappeared. A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging, and social welfare benefits soaring.

America’s first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.

In fiscal year 2008 the deficit was $438 billion.

With tax revenue sinking, we will add to this year’s deficit the $200 to $300 billion needed to wipe the rotten paper off the books of Fannie and Freddie, the $700 billion (plus the $100 billion in add-ons and pork) for the Wall Street bailout, the $85 billion to bail out AIG, and $37 billion more now needed, the $25 billion for GM, Chrysler, and Ford, and the hundreds of billions Hank Paulson will need to buy corporate paper and bail out banks to stop the panic.

As Americans save nothing, where are the Feds going to get the money? Is the Fed going to print it and destroy the dollar and credit rating of the United States? Because the nations whose vaults are full of dollars and U.S. debt – China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arabs – are reluctant to lend us more. Sovereign wealth funds that plunged billions into U.S. banks have already been burned.

Uncle Sam’s Visa card is about to be stamped “Canceled.”

The budget is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut?

Social Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors have already taken a huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are crafting another $150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and middle class, Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the debt cannot be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment benefits, welfare, education, student loans, veterans benefits – in a recession?

No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget – except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid. And this is where the ax will eventually fall.

It is the American Empire that is going to be liquidated.

Retrenchment has begun with Bush’s backing away from confrontations with Axis-of-Evil charter members Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs, and will likely continue with a negotiated peace in Afghanistan. Gen. Petraeus and Secretary Gates are already talking “reconciliation” with the Taliban.

We no longer live in Eisenhower or Reagan’s America. Even the post-Cold War world of George H. W. Bush, where America was a global hegemon, is history. In both relative and real terms, the U.S.A. is a diminished power.

Where Ike spent 9 percent of GDP on defense, Reagan 6 percent, we spend 4 percent. Yet we have two wars bleeding us and many more nations to defend, with commitments in the Baltic, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans we did not have in the Cold War. As U.S. weapons systems are many times more expensive today, we have fewer strategic aircraft and Navy ships than Ike or Reagan commanded. Our active-duty Army and Marine Corps consist of 700,000 troops, 15 percent women, and a far higher percentage of them support rather than combat troops.

With so few legions, we cannot police the world, and we cannot afford more. Yet, we have a host of newly hostile nations we did not have in 1989.

U.S. interests in Latin America are being challenged not only by Cuba, but Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile go their own way. Russia is reasserting hegemony in the Caucasus, testing new ICBMs, running bomber probes up to U.S. air space. China, growing at 10 percent as we head into recession, is bristling over U.S. military sales to Taiwan. Iran remains defiant. Pakistan is rife with anti-Americanism and al-Qaeda sentiment.

The American Empire has become a vast extravagance.

With U.S. markets crashing and wealth vanishing, what are we doing with 750 bases and troops in over 100 countries?

With a recession of unknown depth and duration looming, why keep borrowing billions from rich Arabs to defend rich Europeans, or billions from China and Japan to hand out in Millennium Challenge Grants to Tanzania and Burkina Faso?

America needs a bottom-up review of all strategic commitments dating to a Cold War now over for 20 years.

Is it essential to keep 30,000 troops in a South Korea with twice the population and 40 times the wealth of the North? Why are McCain and Obama offering NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees against Russia, to a Georgia run by a hothead like Mikheil Saakashvili, and a Ukraine, millions of whose people prefer their kinship to Russia to an alliance with us?

We must put “country first,” says John McCain.

Right you are, Senator. Time to look out for America first.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Nobel Honours Man Who Told Bush to “Please Go Away”

Sudhan @12:00 CET

By Wolfgang Kerler |Inter-Press Service

Paul Krugman Credit:Princeton University

NEW YORK, Oct 13 – Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University who is best known for his New York Times columns — frequently involving scathing assaults on the policies of the George W. Bush administration — was awarded the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on international trade and economic geography.

“To be absolutely, totally honest I thought this day might come someday, but I was absolutely convinced it wasn’t going to be this day,” Krugman, a 55-year-old U.S. national, said in an interview with The Times Monday.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the award, said it was bestowed on Krugman “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity”.

“This was definitely a ‘real world’ pick and a nod in the direction of economists who are engaged in policy analysis and writing for the broader public,” Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, commented on his weblog “Marginal Revolution”.

Krugman found new ways to explain what goods are produced where, and how capital and labour are distributed over countries and regions.

Most of the discussion going on on the Internet after the announcement of the prize commitee, however, was not about Krugman’s scientific achievement, but about the strong positions he took as a columnist, author and blogger.

Krugman served as an advisor to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, and for a short time was a consultant to former president Ronald Reagan.

Back in 2000, a year after he joined The New York Times, Krugman spent a great deal of effort “trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security”, as he wrote in a column this year.

A stauch critic of the Iraq war, he has repeatedly cautioned against a potential victory for John McCain, the Republican contender in the Nov. 4 U.S. elections.

Just recently, Krugman stressed that “the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.” Many observers are now wondering if the decision of the Swedish prize commitee is sending a political message as well.

With recent publications, Krugman has influenced the arrangement of the federal plan to spend 700 billion dollars to cushion U.S. credit markets — a topic he is long familiar with as his dissertation was on international finance.

Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. He went on to teach at Yale, MIT and Stanford, and is now a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he gives a course on international monetary policy and theory.

Starting with a short article published in the Journal of International Economics in 1979, Krugman has lifted the theory of international trade to a new level. His theory explained the increasing trade between countries that produce the same kind of goods — a phenomenom that has grown since World War II.

While traditional theories were based on differences among countries that make them specialise and trade with other countries, Krugman found an explanation why, for example, a car-producing country is not only exporting cars but also importing them.

First, it is about economies of scale: Because mass production diminishes the per unit price of production, it is lucrative for companies to produce many units of a specific good — and therefore develop their own brand.

Second, it is about consumers’ lust for diversity, especially in highly industrialised rich countries: They simply want to chose between a large number of brands.

So while one country may produce luxury cars, another one may build smaller vehicles. And due to lower prices and greater product diversity, wealth and prosperity are increasing for people in both countries.

With his “new economic geography”, Krugman later showed that the distribution of work and capital across regions depends on the trade-off between utilising economies of scale and saving on transport costs. Today’s process of urbanisation can be explained with Krugman’s theory.

The domination of already successful, large countries can also be explained through his findings as economics of scale, lower prices and diversity of products are easier to achieve there.

Krugman is the ninth U.S. laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in a row — a prize that does not date back to Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896, but was created by the Swedish central bank in 1968.

He is also among a number of Nobel laureates who received the John Bates Clark medal, a renowned prize for young economists under age 40, which he won in 1991.

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