Take Action: Ask President-elect Obama to Ban Torture and Close the School of the Americas
Yesterday the US Senate released a report confirming that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior US officials are responsible for authorizing torture at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. Similarly, the torture manuals used at the School of the Americas/WHINSEC – made public in 1996 – were also authorized by the highest levels of the Pentagon in the early 1980s. Read the Reuters article here: www.soaw.org/rumsfeld
TAKE ACTION: Please Call the Obama transition team and share the below message at 202-540-3000 – after instructions, press “2” to speak with the transition team.
“President- elect Obama, as a member of the School of the Americas Watch – I ask that after you are inaugurated President that you issue executive orders to ban torture – no exceptions, close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC and close Guantanamo Bay.”
Please also take a moment to Contact President-elect Obama via his website to paste in the above message at: http://change.gov/page/content/contact
I think Bush himself authorized this too. Didn’t he torture frogs as a young lad?
It’s quite cold here in Brooklyn. I can tell because it’s cold in this drafty old house.
As for Bush, I believe he tortured his siblings as well.
It’s 4 degrees here right now. A bit on the chilly side. The ice storm stayed to the east of us; we got about six inches of very heavy to shovel snow, with a little but of sleet and freezing rain to make the commute yesterday morning more interesting.
On a side note, if I didn’t like Joe Biden before, I sure do now.
What sweet puppy pictures. Minnie, my german shepherd, had loads of curls as a pup. She was gorgeous…still is.
At the moment Minnie seems to be holding her own. She’s a bit less active but doesn’t seem to be in any distress. I am grateful for each day with her.
PJ, is your avatar dog Fritz?
Oh good, it worked. I know, it’s a lame-o copy and paste mostly but I will make them better in the future. In the mean time, this was at the bottom of the story that PJ posted.
Crap! I gotta go to defensive driving school. 😡 :doh:
Yep, that’s Fritz, back when he was just a little guy. Not that he’s all that big now (55-60 pounds, I think, but short legs). He loves to watch TV. Especially if there are critters on.
we had a couple German Shepherd dogs when I was growing up. They are wonderful dogs. That’s why I love herding dogs. The breed I have doesn’t shed, however. I love how the German Shepherd’s ears naturally stand erect. They are so cute as they grow up with one ear up and one ear down.
glad someone else noticed. I’ve been really surprised at the rhetoric over Blagojevich by Fitzchristmas. Bet his lawyer clips this little article out of the newspaper. Fitzie should know better. :no:
The Prosecution Should Give It a Rest
The Justice Department has evaded a request from President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team for documents about the secret programs of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The team asked to “review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs,” but the inquiry has been denied.
Among the information requested are official documents about the “legal rationale” for the secret wiretapping and torture programs conducted by the two agencies.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/DoJ_blocking_Obama_team_from_docs_1212.html
:smack:
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aGvwttDayiiM&refer=home
It seems the privacy we’ve lost under Bush isn’t lost at all, it’s been transfered to the executive branch.
I’m gonna go see Jeff and his wife, Tammy Patrick and the Merkin Wranglers, over at Modified Arts tonight. I can ride my bike there and it’s $5 donation which I think I can handle.
Comment by Kristapea — December 12, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
Crap! I gotta go to defensive driving school.
Comment by Kristapea — December 13, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Wow, you must really be dangerous on that bike! 😀
Well, if I’m riding the bike I’m probably drunk, so yeah, I am dangerous. :jason:
Drunk and dangerous. Oooooh baby. :hubba:
Didn’t you see the chainsaw??
An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.
In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ â€
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all