BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
“In retrospect, given all of the moving ways that this White House has paid tribute to Charlie Kirk,” a reporter asked Trump, “do you think it would’ve been fitting to lower the flags to half-staff when Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota House speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?”
The president replied, “I’m not familiar. The who?”
Reminded of an incident he ought to have been familiar with, Trump said of lowering the flags, “Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would’ve done that. But the governor of Minnesota didn’t ask me.”
22NOV1963, the day President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX. Many in our nation still believe in various conspiracy theories that resulted in the murder of our President. I have to admit, I still have my doubts about the the official government reports declaring lee harvey oswald acted alone and was the only gunman. This is an interesting piece from David Corn of Mother Jones on the controversy surrounding the murder of JFK, and not quite laying the conspiracies to rest.It is followed by another good article by Bob Cessca of HuffPost on what the Kennedy assassination stopped.....
For
50 years, the murder of President John F. Kennedy has prompted dark
suspicions about what led to those tragic moments in Dallas' Dealey
Plaza. Hidden-hand theories about the assassination fueled numerous
movies and books in the years that followed and shaped a national
culture of conspiracy. The Oswald-didn't-do-it (or didn't-do-it-alone)
theory is the granddaddy of conspiracy theories; it paved the way for
alternative (and sinister) explanations for a variety of events,
including the assassinations or RFK and MLK Jr. and the 9/11 attacks.
The JFK theorizing—which, in certain cases, posits that a cabal of
government evildoers schemed the most notorious crime of 20th-century
America—made The X Files possible.
Like many late-year boomers, I grew up fascinated by the speculation,
poring over the latest "revelations" and initially believing the
worst—at one point, when I was 13, my best friend and I called Parkland
Hospital in Dallas and asked to be connected to the wing where the
supposedly still-alive Kennedy was being housed—but I came to conclude
that much of the conspiracy-mongering was bunk. In Slate, Fred Kaplan does an excellent job
chronicling his own similar trajectory, so I won't detail my
conversion. But as I spent more time investigating and reporting
national security matters, I came to the realization that government
officials, spies, and operatives tend not to be sufficiently competent
to pull off the murder of a president (with a well-placed patsy as the
fall guy!) and then mount a subsequent and wildly effective cover-up.
Still, I've resisted getting drawn too far into the Kennedy conspiracy
debates—a true black hole. But if you're asking, I do believe that
Kennedy was likely killed as the result of underhanded alliances and
government misdeeds. It's just that what transpired was more nuanced
than a CIA-Mafia-Castro-Soviet-Lyndon-Johnson plot.
I assume that Oswald shot the president. That loses me many JFK truthers. But the story of
what brought this one man to the sixth floor of the Texas Book
Depository is what's important and probably indeed the tale of an actual
conspiracy—one that was in plain sight at the time.
Oswald was obsessed with Cuba and a public advocate for Fidel
Castro's regime. In the summer of 1963, he opened a New Orleans outpost
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization. He tried
to infiltrate a local anti-Castro group, and on August 9, 1963, he was
arrested on Canal Street, after scuffling with three anti-Castro Cuban
exiles. (More than a week later, he debated one of the Cuban exiles on
the radio.) He printed up leaflets proclaiming "Hands Off Cuba"—a
reference to Kennedy administration's campaign against the Castro
regime.
All sorts of wild plans were devised by
Cuban exiles and their handlers for fomenting rebellion on the island.
And, of course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
Kennedy's antipathy toward Castro was no secret. In the first months
of his presidency, the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs was an
embarrassing failure for Kennedy and the agency. The Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962 justifiably caused a public freak-out across the
United States. It was clear that Kennedy had a Cuban problem.
What wasn't as clear was how Kennedy and his brother Bobby were
prosecuting a secret war against Castro. In early 1962, the Kennedy
White House approved Operation Mongoose, a plan cooked up by Brigadier
Gen. Edward Lansdale that included economic warfare, psychological
operations, and paramilitary action aimed at toppling Castro. The CIA
station in Miami took the lead. (Years ago, I wrote a biography of
Ted Shackley, who was the station chief at the time.) All sorts of wild
plans were devised by Cuban exiles and their handlers for blowing up
things inside Cuba and fomenting rebellion on the island. And, of
course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
But not much was immediately achieved on the boom-and-bang front.
Toward the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy
ordered Lansdale to cease all planning for sabotage and paramilitary
operations. He didn't want any "crackpot" individuals taking actions
that could cause bigger problems. In early 1963, Operation Mongoose was
terminated. Though Kennedy, as part of the resolution of the missile
crisis, had pledged the United States would not invade Cuba, the CIA was
ordered to keep devising paramilitary operations against Castro, and it
continued working with its favorite exile groups. (One CIA official
asked if an exploding seashell could be deposited in a spot where Castro
went skin-diving.) On June 19, 1963, President Kennedy approved a
program of major sabotage with the goal of encouraging resistance to
Castro within Cuba. The CIA drafted a list of targets: power plants, oil
refineries, railroad tracks, highways, and factories. The Miami station
revved up its operations—with results. CIA-backed commando groups
composed of exiles attacked an oil facility in Casildo Harbor and then
assaulted a large sawmill on the coast of Oriente province.
This sabotage campaign was not acknowledged by the White House or
widely known by the American public. But the Cuban leader routinely
accused the aggressive imperialists of the north of mounting assaults on
his island nation. His charges were occasionally reported in the US
media, but generally dismissed as commie propaganda. Yet his accusations
were often dead-on accurate. In one long tirade, Castro claimed that
the CIA was using a 150-foot-long ship called the Rex in
attacks against Cuba and that it was berthed in Palm Beach. He was
correct. But this charge never became big news. (The CIA responded by
drawing up plans to sell the vessel to another cut-out corporation and
rename it.) The US media did not report that Cuba was indeed under
assault by CIA-backed raiders.
But anyone paying close attention—and listening to Castro—knew what
was going on. If not aware of all the details, he or she would have the
sense that a secret war was being waged by Kennedy against Castro.
Oswald presumably was such a person. There was a real reason for him to
proclaim, "Hands Off Cuba"—and, thus, reason for him to feel enmity
toward the president of the United States. (On November 22, near the
moment Kennedy was shot, a CIA officer was meeting a Cuban agent in
Paris and presenting him with a ballpoint pen rigged to contain poison
for an attempted assassination of Castro.)
There are those who postulate that Oswald's pro-Castro street
activism was designed as a cover to hide his true motivation. Perhaps
anti-Castro Cubans pissed off with Kennedy plotted a presidential
assassination that they could pin on a pro-Castro operative to rally
support for more direct US action against Castro. (At the time, however,
Kennedy and his aides were approving sabotage action against Cuba.) Yet
given Oswald's assorted (and mind-bending) actual and possible
interactions—with KGB officials, with pro- and anti-Castro Cubans, with
FBI officials, with a businessman who was interviewed by the CIA, with
folks connected to the New Orleans mob—it's possible to imagine almost
any conspiracy and find a possible Oswald link to back it up. After all,
he was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and un-defected
and returned to the United States—and then two months before the
assassination tried to return to Russia via Cuba. In early 1963, he
attempted to assassinate a retired right-wing general who was famous for
his screeds against communism.
Oswald was something of a Zelig. His past offers plenty of data
points for anyone peddling an unofficial account of the Kennedy
assassination. But in the swirl of supposition, there are hard and fast
facts. The Kennedy conspiracy to undo Castro—via internal rebellion,
paramilitary action, or assassination—did exist. It wasn't a secret to
Castro and his devotees. And in the last months of his life, Oswald at
times was fixated on the Cuban issue. His public actions were those of a
passionate and committed fan of Castro and the revolution. (The CIA,
not surprisingly, would not reveal Kennedy's get-Castro campaign to the
Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination;
consequently, the American public would not be able to fully evaluate
Oswald's actions.)
Five decades later, it's doubtful that the mysteries of the Kennedy
assassination—including Oswald's motivation or motivations—will be fully
resolved. The assassin was an odd and unstable fellow who never found a
comfortable place in the Cold War world. He might not have fully
understood all that drove him to shoot a president and shock a nation.
So how can we? But if we're compelled to make sense of this
history-changing and heinous act, then an obvious starting place is the
not-too-secret secret war on Cuba. It may well be that John Kennedy, the
charismatic leader who embodied a new era and a changing time, did die
as the result of a conspiracy—a conspiracy that involved the most
powerful men in the world and that originated in his own office in the
White House. And if this is the closest we can get to the truth so many
years down the road, it still offers an important—and painful—lesson
that deserves attention: Once the dogs of war (or secret war) are
unleashed, there's no telling where they will run.
The
first deep-water rig off Cuba appears to be drilling on the edge of the
Florida Straits—a swift-water connector between the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic Ocean.
The Kennedy Assassination and Pursuing 'What It Stopped'
Posted: 11/22/2013 7:39 pm
It's impossible to know for sure whether the Warren Commission
Report was correct, or whether the House Select Committee on
Assassinations was correct. We'll never know precisely what happened 50
years ago today in Dallas, conspiracy or not, as President Kennedy's
motorcade traveled down Elm Street toward the triple underpass.
That said, there's nothing wrong with speculating -- with having a hunch
about how and why it happened; whether the plot might've been one lone
nut or many conspirators working in tandem. But anyone who says they
know for sure should be greeted with incredulity.
In his book, titled Kennedy, Ted Sorensen, speechwriter and
special counsel to President Kennedy, wrote, "I must ask to be excused
from repeating the details of that tragedy. How and why it happened are
of little consequence compared to what it stopped."
Too often in these past 50 years, our all-too-human impulse is to
pursue the murder mystery. The "how and why" almost always takes
precedent over "what it stopped."
Nevertheless, like so many others, I spent time looking into the
details of the assassination. Eventually, I thought I had attained a
modest sense of what happened. I thought maybe that it was the Mafia
seeking to regain a financial stake in Cuba, and so, fueled by a sense
of pre-RICO invincibility, it targeted President Kennedy who stood in
the way of liberating the island from Fidel Castro and returning it back
to the unfettered cash geyser it had been under the Batista regime.
Oswald, who had almost certainly been recruited into the anti-Castro
movement, had been sent to the Soviet Union as a defector purely for
show to make it appear as if he was a communist in order to later
infiltrate Cuba and become part of the arsenal of assassination
possibilities against Castro. Instead, the plot against Castro was
redeployed to target the chief executive of the United States.
Whatever.
In the process of reading too many volumes about the assassination, I
stumbled onto some of the more crackpot theories, several of which
you've probably heard about.
There was the book by Dan Robertson, Definitive Proof: The Secret Service Murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, claiming that Secret Service Agent William Greer accidentally shot the president. Definitive proof? Hooey.
There was The Last Investigation, by the late Gaeton Fonzi,
in which the author, a former staffer on the House Select Committee,
ghoulishly determined that the slain president's head was being held
together with a mysterious metal clamp for some reason after the
president's body had been secretly absconded from Air Force One and
replaced with a lookalike. Also hooey.
There was the dum-dum bullet theory, claiming the president was shot
in the head with a rubber bullet, there was the doctored Zapruder film
theory, there was the Kennedy-is-still-alive theory and, of course, the
space aliens killed the president theory.
And there was the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink conspiracy theory dramatized by Oliver Stone in JFK.
While, as a movie, it remains one of my all-time favorites, the
metatheory presented in the movie was as ridiculously vast as it was
totally implausible, involving a cast of hundreds of conspirators, and,
in many places, outright falsehoods about Jim Garrison's investigation
and prosecution of Clay Shaw.
But what compelled me to learn more about what might've happened in
Dallas was no different than so many others. How could a lone, mixed up
weirdo with a bizarre past do this to the President of the United States
-- and to us? There were so many unexplained loose ends and unanswered
questions. Something wasn't adding up. It was like a real-life murder
mystery with the highest imaginable stakes. It was irresistible.
However, what ultimately changed my perception of both the Kennedy
presidency and his assassination was chance meeting with Ted Sorensen.
While he refused to take public credit for his speechwriting, Mr.
Sorensen was responsible for President Kennedy's most memorable
speeches, including the inspirational American University commencement
address, a personal favorite of mine. He co-wrote the president's
immortal 1961 inaugural, which included the "Ask not what your country
can do for you..." line. He also wrote the president's televised remarks
informing the nation about the quarantine of Cuba in response to the
installation of Soviet missiles there. As the story goes, he was simply
unable to author a back-up speech calling for air-strikes.
As a writer myself, I naturally jumped at the chance to visit with him and his wife at his Manhattan apartment.
Ted Sorensen in the Oval Office with President Kennedy.
We talked business for most of the meeting. But then, as the serious
conversation began to wind down for the afternoon, the topic of
Washington, DC came up and I mentioned that my Dad was once the acting
inspector general of the Treasury Department; his office looked out over
the east lawn of the White House. Matter-of-factly, I noted that after I
was born, I lived with my parents at the River House, an apartment
complex across the highway from the Pentagon.
Mr. Sorensen's face lit up and he smiled, "That's where I lived when I worked for the president."
My mind raced, "The president... Kennedy. He's talking about John F.
Kennedy. Of course he is. He worked for President Kennedy." For some
reason, until that moment, it hadn't really sunk in.
Not only was the meeting with Mr. Sorensen a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for which I will always be grateful, but there I was,
sitting in the living room of perhaps the closest adviser to President
Kennedy, second only to Bobby. If that wasn't enough, this brief stanza
in our conversation added a previously absent dimension of tangibility,
of human reality to the Kennedy era and the assassination. I shared
something in common, in a non-professional sense, with a man who was one
of Kennedy's most prominent voices -- a man who, more than nearly
anyone else, possessed a deep understanding of the president's mind,
motivations and goals -- a man who was one of the chief architects of
the Kennedy vision that had inspired so many Americans.
And he was in the White House on that terrible day. He had endured
the sudden death of his president and the agenda they, together, had
crafted.
Since that day in New York City, I really haven't cared about who
killed President Kennedy. Instead, I tend to think about what the
Kennedy administration might've achieved had it been able to fully
pursue its agenda.
Because I wasn't born until eight years after the assassination, I
never really had the personal connection and insight of older Americans
who lived through it. Now, having spent time with Mr. Sorensen, I almost
exclusively contemplate what he and others in the president's inner
circle must've felt on this day and the days that followed 50 years ago
and how utterly soul-crushing it must have been, not only because of the
death of this man they knew, but for the death of what they could have
achieved under his leadership.
If nothing else, the very continuity and steadiness of the presidency
was lost. In its wake, 11 years of comparative darkness ensued. From
1963 through 1974, America was dragged through a war, corruption and
more senseless assassinations, culminating in a crisis within the White
House itself. As a nation we still haven't quite overcome the cynicism
that bled out of that dark ride.
It's cold comfort to think that had Kennedy lived, we might've
sidestepped much of the darkness and death, as well as the subsequent
cynicism, since after all the promise of the too-brief Kennedy
presidency represented the opposite of what ended up happening:
inspirational leadership with the idealism of "peace for all time" as
its primary aim. We lost the opportunity to see it through to its
logical conclusion. November 22, 1963 disrupted and indeed cut down the
natural order of things.
But perhaps now, 50 years later, we can begin to set aside the often
morbid obsession with the "how and why" of the assassination and instead
share a renewed pursuit of "what it stopped." Cross-posted at The Daily Banter. Click here to listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast. BobCesca.com Blog with special thanks to Colleen Kirby.
john brennan reflects the sorry state of affairs in the Obama administration concerning civil liberties, the US Constitution, torture, extraordinary rendition, war powers, international law, human rights, gitmo, drones and the cia. Unfortunately he will be approved by the Senate because there aren't enough of them with the morality to challenge the President on brennan. A very good read from AlterNet follwed by a PBS NewsHour report on brennan's confirmation hearings on 7FEB13. You may also be interested in On Civil Liberties, A Tale Of Two Obamas 6FEB13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/on-civil-liberties-tale-of-two-obamas.html and Exploring Technology, Effectiveness, Consequences of Drone Warfare & VIDEO: RISE OF THE DRONES 23JAN13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/exploring-technology-effectiveness.html
The Senate Intelligence Committee completely skirted the questions that the American people need answered.
February 8, 2013 |
During John Brennan’s confirmation hearing for CIA director, the architect of Obama’s drone program unapologetically defended targeted assassinations—even of American citizens. Given his adamant defense of the program, there’s still a lot the America people deserve to know.
But the Senate Intelligence Committee failed us. Rather than asking the tough questions, senators battled Code Pink protestors, kissed a lot of ass, and even told a waterboarding joke.
Severaljournalistsandbloggers listed important questions for Mr. Brennan prior to his hearing. Most went unasked and unanswered. Here are some questions for Brennan that we still don’t have answers to:
1. Will You Please Recite the Fifth Amendment?
Brennan and Sen. Diane Feinstein engaged in a lengthy exchange over Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who was killed by way of drone strike in 2011. The U.S. citizen, accused of aiding and abetting Al Qaeda, did not get a chance to stand trial before the Obama administration pulled the trigger. Yet, Feinstein fed Brennan everything he needed to defend the administration’s complete disregard for due process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. If al-Awkali was such a “bad guy,” as Feinstein repeated over and over, why couldn’t we indict him? Writer Jeremy Scahill put it best in a tweet: “The faux trial that Feinstein & Brennan gave Anwar Awlaki today (with no evidence) was the only trial they gave him--and it was posthumous.”
2. Why Did the President Kill an American Teenager?
While we heard Anwar al-Awlaki’s name numerous times through the hearing, another drone target of the Obama administration didn’t get a single mention: al-Awlaki’s son, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. The Denver-born teenager waskilled in an airstrike two weeks after his father died. We know hardly anything about his death, and the administration has not been eager to give answers.
3. Are there ANY Qualifications for Authorizing Death Sentences?
Mr. Brennan described waterboarding as “reprehensible” and “something that should not be done,” but refused on multiple occasions to call it torture. Why? Because, as Brennan reminded us over and over, he is “not a lawyer.” While Senator Carl Levin, pressed him on torture, no one took the opportunity to question the drone architect on the broad language used to justify targeting U.S. citizens, as revealed by a leaked DOJ white paper this week. The memo made headlines. In particular, civil liberties advocates took issue with a section detailing how “informed, high-level officials” get to decide if a target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.”
Blogger Marcy Wheeler notes the absurdity of Brennan appealing to legal ignorance to deflect on torture, while claiming the authority to give out death sentences: “In other words, according to the guy who has been acting as judge and jury for the last four years, the guy who has been acting as judge and jury is completely incompetent to act as judge and jury.”
4. Why did the Obama administration wait until election season to codify rules for assassinating people?
The New York Review of Books’ David Cole raised this excellent question before Brennan’s hearing took place. While committee members did grill Brennan on transparency with the drone program, we didn’t get a clear picture on why “Terror Tuesdays” went on for so long without some set rules. As Cole put it, “Don’t you think there should have been clear rules and fair procedures in place before the Obama administration ordered the killing of hundreds of human beings?” Furthermore, Cole adds that any rules that are adopted won’t apply to Pakistan.
5. Don't you see a problem with “signature strikes?”
Committee members failed to ask why the Obama administration should have the power to kill people under the doctrine of “signature strikes.” As the New York Times puts it:
Originally that term was used to suggest the specific ‘signature’ of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups.
In other words, Obama can order drone strikes on people who look suspicious in the wrong place at the wrong time. As The Nation’s George Zornick points out, the “vast majority” of drone targets aren’t senior-ranking Al Qaeda terrorists, but “low-level militants.”
Of course, this list could go on. As Brennan gets inevitably sworn in, Americans should keep these questions on their minds, and lawmakers need to make sure the new CIA Director is at least held accountable to the few answers they got from him yesterday.
Steven Hsieh is an editorial assistant at AlterNet and writer based in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @stevenjhsieh.
Protesters hold signs as John Brennan arrives to testify at his confirmation hearing Thursday. Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.
As President Obama's choice to be the next director of the CIA, John Brennan faced tough questions Thursday at his confirmation hearing from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee frustrated with the administration's approach to fighting terrorism.
And lawmakers weren't the only ones troubled by aspects of the administration's terror-fighting strategy. Brennan was repeatedly interrupted during his opening statement by protesters voicing their displeasure with the administration's targeted killing of American citizens abroad suspected of joining al-Qaida.
Brennan said he supported "public discussion" of the administration's efforts, but at the same time he gave a staunch defense of the use of drone strikes.
"We only take such actions as a last resort to save lives when there is no other alternative to taking an action that's going to mitigate that threat," Brennan said. "So we need to make sure that there's an understanding. And the people that were standing up here today, I think they really have a misunderstanding of what we do as a government and the care that we take and the agony that we go through to make sure that we do not have any collateral injuries or deaths."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., asked Brennan to square comments he made in 2007 that harsh interrogation methods had "saved lives" with other statements that the CIA should not be in the "detention business."
"I clearly had the impression, as you said, when I was quoted in 2007 that there was valuable intelligence that came out from those interrogation sessions. That's why I did say that they saved lives," Brennan responded.
But Brennan added that a recently completed intelligence committee report that found enhanced interrogation techniques were not effective "raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time and the impression I had at that time."
"Now I have to determine what -- based on that information as well as what CIA says what the truth is. And at this point, senator, I do not know what the truth is," Brennan said.
Senators also pressed Brennan on issues such as waterboarding and national security leaks. NewsHour congressional correspondent Kwame Holman reported on the hearing Thursday. You can watch the segment here or below:
As of Thursday Brennan's confirmation appeared likely, despite the close examination of his record and administration policies. If installed as director, the tough questions will most certainly continue for Brennan, as lawmakers continue their push for greater oversight of the administration's terror-fighting practices.
JEFFREY BROWN: The man picked by President Obama to lead the Central Intelligence Agency was called today to defend his positions in the war on terror.
John Brennan's Senate confirmation hearing revolved around several hotly debated policies.
NewsHour congressional correspondent Kwame Holman has our report.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, D-Calif.: It will stop again.
KWAME HOLMAN: Even before the hearing got truly under way, protesters from CODEPINK disrupted John Brennan's opening statement, signaling that passions were running high on the targeted killing of terror suspects.
WOMAN: They won't even tell Congress what countries we are killing children.
Read Margaret Warner's recent post, "Brennan Beyond Drones" here.
KWAME HOLMAN: The interruptions continued, and the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, ordered the room temporarily cleared.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN: We're going to halt the hearing. I am going to ask that the room be cleared and that the CODEPINK associates not be permitted to come back in.
KWAME HOLMAN: Once the hearing resumed, Brennan defended U.S. actions in the war on terror, but he acknowledged the CIA is not immune from scrutiny.
JOHN BRENNAN, CIA Director Nominee: I have publicly acknowledged that our fight against al-Qaida and associated forces has sometimes involved the use of lethal force outside the hot battlefield of Afghanistan.
Accordingly, it is understandable that there is great interest in the legal basis, as well as the thresholds, criteria, processes, procedures, approvals and reviews of such actions. I have strongly promoted such public discussion with the Congress and with the American people, as I believe that our system of government and our commitment to transparency demand nothing less.
KWAME HOLMAN: Late Wednesday, Mr. Obama directed that members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees be shown a classified memo on drone strikes abroad.
It lays out the legal rationale for targeting American terror suspects. Mr. Brennan helped manage the program. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden had pressed for release of the memo. He went directly to the issue during his first pass at questioning Brennan.
SEN. RON WYDEN, D-Ore.: What should be done next to ensure that public conversation about drones, so that the American people are brought into debate and have a full understanding of what rules the government is going to observe when it conducts targeted killings?
JOHN BRENNAN: I think there is a misimpression on part of some American people who believe that we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions. Nothing could be further from the truth. We only take such actions as a last resort to save lives when there is no other alternative to taking an action that's going to mitigate that threat.
So we need to make sure that there's an understanding. And the people that were standing up here today, I think they really have a misunderstanding of what we do as a government and the care that we take and the agony that we go through to make sure that we do not have any collateral injuries or deaths.
KWAME HOLMAN: Brennan is a 25-year veteran of the CIA, and now the president's counterterror adviser. His name first surfaced as a candidate for director in 2008, but he withdrew amid questions about his past statements on enhanced interrogation, especially water-boarding.
Michigan Democrat Carl Levin took up that issue today.
SEN. CARL LEVIN, D-Mich.: My question is this. In your opinion, does water-boarding constitute torture?
JOHN BRENNAN: The attorney general has referred to water-boarding as torture. Many people have referred to it as torture.
And, as you well know and as we have had the discussion, Senator, the term torture has a lot of legal and political implications. It is something that should have been banned long ago. It never should have taken place, in my view. And, therefore, if I were to go to CIA, it would never in fact be brought back.
KWAME HOLMAN: But Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia wanted to know if Brennan stood by previous comments he had made asserting harsh interrogation methods produced results.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, R-Ga.: In a Nov. 2007 interview, you said that info from the interrogation techniques -- quote -- "saved lives" -- close quote. But you also say that CIA should be out of the detention business.
Your view seems to be that even if we could save American lives by detaining more terrorists using only traditional techniques, it would be better to kill them with a drone or let them go free, rather than detain them. Can you explain the logic in that argument?
JOHN BRENNAN: I respectfully disagree with, Senator. I never believe it's better to kill a terrorist than to detain him. We want to detain as many terrorists as possible so we can elicit the intelligence from them in the appropriate manner so that we can disrupt follow-on terrorist attacks.
I clearly had the impression, as you said, when I was quoted in 2007 that there was valuable intelligence that came out from those interrogation sessions. That's why I did say that they saved lives.
I must tell you, Senator, that reading this report from the committee raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time and the impression I had at that time. Now I have to determine what -- based on that information as well as what CIA says what the truth is. And at this point, Senator, I do not know what the truth is.
KWAME HOLMAN: North Carolina Republican Richard Burr zeroed in on CIA leaks, pressing Brennan for his position on publicly sharing covert operations.
SEN. RICHARD BURR, R-N.C.: Do you think that there is any situation where it's legal to disclose to the media or the public these tales of covert action programs?
JOHN BRENNAN: I do not think it is ever appropriate to improperly disclose classified information to anybody who doesn't have legitimate access to it and has the clearances for it.
RICHARD BURR: Could you provide to the committee any times that you were given the authority to release classified information?
JOHN BRENNAN: I have never provided classified information to reporters. I engage in discussions with reporters about classified issues that they might have had access to because of unfortunate leaks of classified information.
And I frequently work with reporters, if not editors of newspapers to keep out of the public domain some of this country's most important secrets. And so I engage with them on those issues. But after working in the intelligence profession for 30 years and being at CIA for 25 years, I know the importance of keeping those secrets secret.
KWAME HOLMAN: There was no indication that the security of administration policies has hurt Brennan's chances. He's still expected to win confirmation by the Intelligence panel and the full Senate.
RAY SUAREZ: Online, find Margaret Warner's blog post about the impact Brennan has had on the nation's counterterrorism policy.
THE violent and hate filled rhetoric from fox "news / "news" corp is disturbing, but what is even more disturbing is that so many Christians listen to this every single day, and do not object, do not speak out against it. It is completely acceptable for these people to search for and follow public personalities and media outlets that express their opinions, opinions that may be in complete opposition to current and proposed government policy, but those opinions should be expressed without images of violence, without the language of hate and prejudice. If these public personalities can't present their opinions and attitudes without threats of violence, without hatred and prejudice and fear mongering, then one has to wonder just how fact based, how honest their positions on the issues are. If violence and hate aren't enough to make Christians reconsider who they read, watch and listen to maybe possible dishonesty should be.....This from AlterNet......
The Fox News culture permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against deemed enemies.
Note: This is a re-post of a November 10, 2010 piece from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) which is particularly relevant to the conversation about the shooting spree in Arizona on Saturday. Bill O'Reilly's "joke" in November about decapitating Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was only the latest example of a demented Fox News culture that permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against those deemed enemies of the station, its personalities or their worldview.
During the cable channel's 2008 election coverage, in what she later called an attempt at humor, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta linked Osama bin Laden to Barack Obama as people who both should be assassinated:
And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could.
A week before Trotta's "joke," Republican primary candidate Mike Huckabee was apologizing for his own Obama assassination quip. Addressing a gathering of the National Rifle Association, Huckabee joked that a loud thud heard backstage during his address was Barack Obama diving to the floor to avoid gun shots. Months later, Huckabee was given his own Fox News show.
With its biggest new star, Glenn Beck, Fox News hired a host well-known for on-air death fantasies--for instance, chattering about killing filmmaker Michael Moore with his bare hands and hoping out loud that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) would burn to death. In a Fox News skit in September 2009, Beck portrayed himself poisoning Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It's a culture that apparently filters down to Fox News viewers and supporters. Over the years Fox Nation, the Fox News "owned and operated" fan website, has regularly featured comments expressing the desire to see Barack Obama's assassinated. News Hounds (11/8/10) published a collection of such quotes, some of which can still be read at on the Fox site. Fox Nation purports to be self-policing, to depend on readers to report inappropriate and irresponsible remarks for removal. Apparently presidential assassination fantasies fall short of Fox Nation's standards for inappropriate or irresponsible commentary.
Recent examples of these assassination fantasies on Fox Nation include comments calling for President Obama to "get what Kennedy got," for the CIA to "take this pres down" and a warning to the president that the Koran "ain't thick enough to stop a .308 round."
There is some evidence that Fox's murder fantasy culture has already helped to spark violent action. Reporting for Media Matters, journalist John Hamilton tells the story of Byron Williams, a Beck devotee who engaged in a shootout that injured two California Highway Patrol officers in July. After his apprehension, Williams told police he'd intended to travel Oakland California to kill people at the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.
In a jailhouse interview in which he described the right-wing media sources that informed his views, Williams returned again and again to Glenn Beck:
I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.
Among the things Beck did, according to Hamilton, was attack the Tides Foundation in 29 separate Fox News shows in the 18 months leading up to Williams' foiled mission to Oakland.
Moreover, as the ADL reports, Pittsburgh's Richard Poplawski was so inspired by Beck's anti-government conspiracy theories, he reposted to a neo-Nazi website tape of Beck suggesting the government was building concentration camps for dissidents--before he was arrested after a shootout with police that left three officers dead.
If this all wasn't so deadly serious it would be seriously funny, because O'Reilly has spent years accusing liberal and progressive websites of fomenting hate speech. O'Reilly's crusade largely targets the comment and open forum sections of such websites, highlighting comments that generally pale in comparison to those broadcast on Fox and posted on Fox Nation. To add to the irony, when O'Reilly is called out for failing to make distinctions between the editorial content and comment sections of these websites, he argues that the groups are responsible for everything on their websites:
Open forum is bull.... You can regulate what’s on your website.
When it comes to hypocrisy and Fox News, you really can't make this stuff up.
The hostility behind O'Reilly's creepy Milbank beheading joke was on display when the host appeared to make a veiled threat toward Milbank's boss in an appearance on another Fox show. Apparently angered that Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt permitted Milbank to publish columns critical of Fox News, O'Reilly had Fox host Megyn Kelly put a picture of Hiatt up on the screen, and told her audience:
This is the editor, Milbank's editor, Fred Hiatt. And Fred won't do anything about Milbank lying in his column. I just want everybody in America to know what the Washington Post has come to. All right, you can take Fred's picture off. Fred, have a nice weekend, buddy.
(Later in the same appearance, O'Reilly suggested that the host join him in physically assaulting Milbank: "I think you and I should go and beat him up.")
O'Reilly's veiled threat toward Hiatt recalls one made in a recent interview with an Australian paper by Fox boss Rupert Murdoch (Australian Financial Review, 11/5/10):
People love Fox News.... We said to the cable operators when we put the price up, we said, do you want a monument to yourself.... Cancel us, you might get your house burnt down.
Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.
- Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor and marginalized, was assassinated thirty years ago today while giving Mass in El Salvador.
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