what do you think ?
Godfather.
Posts: 12,504
> As President George W. Bush's top speech writer, Marc Thiessen was provided
> unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda
> terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh
> Mohammad (KSM).
>
> Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster", How the CIA Kept America
> Safe (
), has been published. Here is an excerpt from "Courting
> Disaster":
>
> "Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani
> tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi . A
> few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside
> the house. It read: "I am with KSM."
>
> Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,
> Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the
> safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones
> and other valuable "pocket litter."
>
> Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions,informing
> his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and
> sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer Instead he
> is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location.
>
> Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He
> does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will
> be. Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt
> at his interrogators, telling them Americans are weak, lack resilience, and
> are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from
> succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation.
>
> When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his
> questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."
>
> It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional
> interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced
> interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value
> detainees. The techniques include water-boarding.
>
> He begins telling his CIA debriefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch
> attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds
> classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al
> Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He
> identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence
> officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist
> raids.
>
> He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials
> understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides
> information that helps our intelligence community capture other
> high-ranking terrorists.
>
> KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more
> than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence
> community, as well as with our allies across the world.
>
> In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to
> his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen
> airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean .
>
> Years later, an observant CIA officer notices the activities of a cell
> being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of
> his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.
>
> In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation
> between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot.
>
> On the night of Aug. 9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast
> London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist
> suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with
> security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven Trans
> -Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each
> other:
>
> * United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 PM
> * Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 PM
> * Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 PM
> * United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 PM
> * United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 PM
> * American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 PM
> * American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 PM
>
> They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid
> explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers
> had prepared.
>
> Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about
> the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few
> Americans are aware of the fact al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth
> anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude. And
> still fewer realize the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were
> uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation
> of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
>
> This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA
> interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of
> the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
>
> In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots,
> CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled
> body of information about al Qaeda Until the program was temporarily
> suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the
> information our government had about al Qaeda; how it operates, how it
> moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks
> targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation
> of terrorists in CIA custody.
>
> Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know this program has
> saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is
> worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
> National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
0
Comments
continued.
> Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that
> the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It
> really did work."
> Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has
> acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which
> those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda
> organization that was attacking this country."
> Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was
> gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."
>
> John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview
> if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe,
> replied: "Would the U. S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able
> to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities, I would
> say yes."
>
> On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the
> CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U. S.
> personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
>
> The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA
> Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly:
> "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially non-concurring". The
> president went ahead anyway, over ruling the objections of the agency.
>
> A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release
> of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques
> used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not
> just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors-including Obama's
> own director, Leon Panetta objected. George Tenet called to urge against
> the memos' release. So did Porter Goss.
>
> So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous
> unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying,'Don't do this.'"
>
> In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective
> 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert
> field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight
> top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President.
>
> It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval
> Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing
> the memos would put agency operatives at risk.
>
> The President reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their
> advice.
>
> With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America 's
> national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in
> American history.
>
> But how many people know this? ... Only the few that read this email from
> beginning to end!
What you cut and pasted was an excerpt from a book published 6 years ago. January of 2010 to be exact. That was written by a bush lackey to discredit President Obama and his banning of torture. A lot of what was written was proved wrong or misleading.
Look at how easy it is..
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/29/counterfactual
Thiessen’s book, whose subtitle is “How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” offers a relentless defense of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, which, according to many critics, sanctioned torture and yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit. In addition, Thiessen attacks the Obama Administration for having banned techniques such as waterboarding. “Americans could die as a result,” he writes.
Yet Thiessen is better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts. His account of the foiled Heathrow plot, for example, is “completely and utterly wrong,” according to Peter Clarke, who was the head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch in 2006. “The deduction that what was being planned was an attack against airliners was entirely based upon intelligence gathered in the U.K.,” Clarke said, adding that Thiessen’s “version of events is simply not recognized by those who were intimately involved in the airlines investigation in 2006.” Nor did Scotland Yard need to be told about the perils of terrorists using liquid explosives. The bombers who attacked London’s public-transportation system in 2005, Clarke pointed out, “used exactly the same materials.”
Thiessen’s claim about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed looks equally shaky. The Bush interrogation program hardly discovered the Philippine airlines plot: in 1995, police in Manila stopped it from proceeding and, later, confiscated a computer filled with incriminating details. By 2003, when Mohammed was detained, hundreds of news reports about the plot had been published. If Mohammed provided the C.I.A. with critical new clues—details unknown to the Philippine police, or anyone else—Thiessen doesn’t supply the evidence.
Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert who is writing a history of the Bush Administration’s “war on terror,” told me that the Heathrow plot “was disrupted by a combination of British intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, and Scotland Yard.” He noted that authorities in London had “literally wired the suspects’ bomb factory for sound and video.” It was “a classic law-enforcement and intelligence success,” Bergen said, and “had nothing to do with waterboarding or with Guantánamo detainees.”
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Nothing more to see here.
Godfather.
www.headstonesband.com
Godfather.
www.headstonesband.com
it was obvious by omission what your position is. you believe what GF shared as the truth, which has been pointed out very clearly is not, but you choose to ignore what is not consistent with your views.
www.headstonesband.com
www.headstonesband.com
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/18/obama-seeks-hike-in-post-presidency-payments.html?intcmp=hpbt1
if I read it right past presidents and spouses already make pretty good money.
how much money does an ex-president need to be comfortable ?
Godfather.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/229537/jane-mayers-disaster-marc-thiessen
It is a long article but well worth the read.
Puuuuhhhhhhlllllleeeeaaaaasssssseeee
lol
sincerely,
the logical argument police
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
The plum tree in the garden.
Sincerely,
A guy who pays attention
www.headstonesband.com