again, obama could simply START with those at home who did NOT act in GOOD FAITH. there’s already been plenty of work done on the timelines for the torture memos that strongly suggest plenty of domestic actors (in the OLC and other places) DID NOT act in good faith–isn’t that the obama’s criteria for investigation in the yardstick you indicated, in the quotation you thought relevant enough to emphasize?

who says we aren’t doing the heavy lifting? and who says we’re not fighting for a working democracy?

as i mentioned before, and if you’ve been following this blog, then you know there’s already been a great deal of explication of the torture/rendition documents. what we do hope, however, is that “one man,” as you say, would not oppose/block the prosecution of cia officers who tortured.

see video confirmation by obama, rahm e, gibbs, etc under the maddow video. IN THEIR WORDS:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html

i’m sorry, but if you can’t see that these indicate an apprehension to pursue investigation/prosecution, then maybe you should try to pull your own thinking cap up over your eyes.

The White House will offer predictable responses; IT HAS TO. In case you haven’t been paying attention, torture is tightly bound up with rendition, and both topics if investigated and prosecuted as fully as it should be will open up new cans of worms.

The way you are carrying on, I’ll bet you forgot Poland.

And Ireland.

And a few other countries, and the political challenges a U.S. president takes on when he goes after members or leaders within the CIA.

Don’t you think all those issues are going to get cracked wide open?

Put your thinking cap on; maybe you’ll eventually realize WE have to do the heavy lifting here. You would like it to be as easy as Obama’s AG simply launching investigations and beginning prosecution, but it’s not going to be. The challenge is proportional to the complexity, and if we want a working democracy, we’re going to have to fight for it. A democracy does not survive on the actions of one man alone.

http://blogues.cyberpresse.ca/hetu/?p=70423690

An attack on the El Al ticket counter at LAX

2) The anthrax attacks

3) The D.C. area snipers

4) The copycat of the D.C. area snipers who shot people on Ohio highways

And lets not forget anthrax attacks are still unsolved and the lead suspect died suspiciously without ever being found guilty.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25961053/

Can you explain why our government was performing military exercises with remote control planes on 9/11/2001???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…..r_11,_2001

Doing the math makes me almost feel complicit. But I suppose someone had to do the calculations of what occurred at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen at the Nuremburg Trials.

I understand your point. My comment was not meant in the context of offending. My great grandfather and my grandmother were part of Nazi resistance and fought against Hitler. My “math” would never be about offending their work to oppose Hitler or to offend any victim through history.

My point: for years, we have been sickened by the fact we tortured. Further sickened by the depth of torture and justifications made. Then. I. Read. 183. On. Friday.

No words could capture how much further sickening it was to read one person alone was waterboarded 183 times. My wondering of the frequency (the math in this case) was to show further evidence (depth of evidence) that this was not about “good” intel in any fashion (which many will argue is the point), but about sick actions of individuals and a failure of justice beyond words, beyond comprehension.

Marcy found out what no one from the Bush admin would ever reveal. Marcy figuring this out, does not make her complicit. It is unfortunate that throughout the history of humanity, someone has to put atrocities into perspective, and that it often and tragically, includes numbers to clarify the depth of failure.

So the “frequency” in this case begs a larger point. If the torture was “legal” why did the tapes need to be destroyed? The torture was never legal. The frequency Marcy has determined allows for no BS or hairsplitting on this point.

What are your sources?
“Bin Laden is happy about his plans to slowly bankrupt the US like he helped do the USSR. Especially since Bush dwelt of Iraq which is far less important to him then Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Why dont u check the FBI website and see what bin laden is wanted for. GUESS WHAT NOT 911!

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terr…..nladen.htm

This is a fact, THERE IS NOO EVIDENCE that bin laden was behind 911. In fact bin laden released at statement on 9/17/2001 that he had nothing to with it.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/U…..en.denial/

Several bloggers mentioned “How is it possible that the US stopped a terrorist attack for eight years.

Cliches like this get repeated because people have such short memories.
Terrorist attacks in America since 9/11 include:

1) An attack on the El Al ticket counter at LAX

2) The anthrax attacks

3) The D.C. area snipers

4) The copycat of the D.C. area snipers who shot people on Ohio highways

5) Maybe it’s a stretch, but there’s Richard Reid’s shoebomb attack that fizzled when he failed to ignite his shoe, not because of Bush administration torture or other policies.

Regarding Abu Zubaydeh

“I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,”

In other words, Abu Zubaydah had not YET given any important or actionable intelligence. If he had Bush would not have “lost face”…only if the information obtained subsequently to his order to move to “extreme interrogation methods” were proving useless would this have been an issue.

So to whom did Bush assert that Abu Zubatydah was a higher ranking al Qaida member and why? Was it to members of Congress? This seems likely to relate to some sort of notification authority made to key members of Congress who signed off after Bush falsely stated that torturing Zubaydah was critical because it was a “24 Scenario”. Yet there was nothing. He was about to “lose face”.

The American people.
On April 9, President Bush spoke at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut. He said, in reference to Zubaida:

“The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He’s one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He’s not plotting and planning anymore. He’s where he belongs……
…… History has called us into action, and this nation is responding. You’ve got to understand my mind-set and what we think. We’ve got to act on behalf of the little ones. We’ve got to secure the world and this civilization as we know it from these evil people. We just have to do this. And that includes making sure that some of the world’s worst leaders who desire to possess the world’s worst weapons don’t team up with faceless, al Qaeda-type killer organizations. We owe it to the future of this country to lead a coalition against nations that are so evil and, at the same time, desire incredibly evil weapons.”

What may have caused Bush to lose face was finding out from Tenet that Zubaida was not the #3 al Qaeda honcho he was portrayed to be….