Posted on 02/26/2005 9:32:00 PM PST by FairOpinion
We need to decide: are the rights of terrorists more important, than the right to live for thousands of innocent people? You can't coddle terrorists and still expect to be able to obtain vital info, that we need to foil attacks.
If they did, they should be in prison.
They didn't?
Then Ted Kennedy should be imprisoned and the CIA should be allowed to do its job.
And the leftwing media strikes another blow for the enemies of America.
The Liberal treason by the MSM continues unabated.
Sometimes you just gotta laugh at the sheer audacity of these P**cks.
the leftwing media can't prosecute anyone. only the DOJ can, and if they cave in and prosecute these agents, the blame falls squarely on the administration.
Who knows what's right anymore? Try being a border patrol officer - I hear they get peened for catching to many illegals crossing the (missing) border.
The liberal media is trying to turn the WoT into a "Vietnam": prevent us from fighting the terrorists, with the only methods that work, then wait for a terrorist strike, and blame it all on Bush, for not fighting the war effectively.
Yet again, the liberals will do everything, including help the enemy, to advance their political agenda.
but of course - what was I thinking
Note how quickly BTK Rader is represented by a hot defense attorney.
The CIA has been the whipping boy of the left since it was created in 1947.
JFK sabotaged the invasion of Cuba by refusing permission to take out the three T-33s of Castro's air force, then changed the LZ from 15 miles from Havana to the southern swamp.
He then whined he would smash the CIA into a thousand pieces, a fair description of the sorry fate of his head.
The pendulum has swung far enough in favor of unscrupulous attorneys, leftist judges and socialist America-hating legislators.
Bush can correct this now or his successor will be She Who Must Be Oyveyyed.
Here is the longer version of the article, as it appeared in the NYT.
February 27, 2005
Within C.I.A., Growing Worry of Prosecution
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that "several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."
Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility that C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the government ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might now be punished, or even prosecuted, for their actions in the line of duty.
The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but the government officials said other cases under review have never been publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of all the cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the reviews were limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where C.I.A. officers have been particularly active, or whether they might extend to cases from other countries, possibly including secret sites around the world where three dozen senior leaders of Al Qaeda are being held by the agency.
The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in Baghdad, Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A. employees.
The reason for the station chief's removal has not been previously disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials say the action occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The removal was ordered by senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in Washington within several weeks of their learning about the deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in separate incidents.
In response to the reviews, the C.I.A. has already made a number of significant changes to its rules on interrogation and detention as a new safeguard against problems, the officials said.
Asked about the inspector general's reviews, an intelligence official described them as a robust effort on the part of the C.I.A. to ensure that its conduct had been proper. "The inspector general is working collaboratively with counterparts in the military services in all investigations," the official said.
The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions. Justice Department officials said that prosecutors working in a special unit in Alexandria, Va., were conducting criminal inquiries into the possible mistreatment of detainees by nonmilitary personnel, but that they would not discuss what cases were being reviewing or whether they would charge anyone with crimes.
Justice Department officials would say only that several cases involving civilian employees of the government had been referred to the department. They would not discuss which cases were under scrutiny or what agencies had sought the department's review. But they said such reviews would seek to determine whether the facts in the cases warrant prosecution under several federal statutes, among them the civil rights laws, which bar government employees from using excessive force, and the federal torture law, which forbids the use of extreme interrogation techniques on detainees.
In one of the cases that contributed to the removal of the station chief, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi died under C.I.A. interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003. It is probable that he died of wounds inflicted by commandos of the Navy Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts after they and C.I.A. officers captured him. But former intelligence officials said there were still questions about the role played by a C.I.A. officer and contract interrogator who had taken custody of Mr. Jamadi and were questioning him at Abu Ghraib at the time of his death.
Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician at the time he was brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had circumvented procedures in which he was to have been registered with the military.
The death was among the most notorious to emerge from the incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public last spring, in part because the man's body was photographed wrapped in plastic and packed in ice.
In another widely publicized incident, an Iraqi commander, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died after he was shoved head-first into a sleeping bag by Army interrogators, after several days of questioning that also involved at least one C.I.A. officer. An autopsy showed that General Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" showing "evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs," according to Army officials.
In both those cases, American military personnel are facing disciplinary proceedings, including hearings in Colorado in which several Army soldiers are being tried on murder charges. The death at Abu Ghraib is still being investigated by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, and has been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the current and former intelligence officials said.
None of the reviews at the C.I.A. have been completed, but they include a broad assessment of detention and interrogation procedures in Iraq, the officials said. Already, they said, senior officials at the C.I.A. have ordered broad changes as a result of the review, including some that would impose strict limits on the use of coercive techniques used to extract information from suspected terrorists, the officials said.
Intelligence officials had previously described the shakeup of the C.I.A.'s Baghdad operations as related to concerns about the officer's capacity to manage the agency's large and fast-growing station in Iraq. But in recent interviews, current and former intelligence officials said that while those accounts were partly accurate, the action was also prompted by concerns that the Baghdad station chief had not paid enough attention to issues surrounding the detention and interrogation of prisoners.
There is no indication that the former station chief, who has since left the C.I.A., is under any kind of criminal scrutiny, the officials said.
To date, the C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged possible wrongdoing in a case of prisoner abuse in only one case, involving David Passaro, a civilian who had been working under contract for the C.I.A in Iraq. Mr. Passaro is awaiting trial in federal court in North Carolina in connection with the June 21, 2003, death of a prisoner in Afghanistan a day after being beaten during an interrogation.
The reviews come after the Justice Department's repudiation of an August 2002 legal opinion that had served as the foundation for rules that guided the C.I.A. in how far its officers and contractors could go in using coercive techniques to extract information for prisoners during interrogations. Some current and former intelligence officials have expressed concern that the repudiation undermined some of the legal authority that the Bush administration had provided for the agency's role in detention and interrogation.
In public testimony last week, Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, declined to say how many C.I.A. reviews of possible misconduct involving prisoners were under way or when they might be completed. But he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that while the North Carolina case was the only one to have been made public, "a bunch of other cases" were now under review by the inspector general.
"What I can't tell you is how many more might come in the door," Mr. Goss added. Mr. Goss, who took over in September, said that a report ordered by one of his predecessors had produced "10 recommendations or so" involving interrogation and detention, and that "about, I think, eight of those have been done."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/27intel.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
CPAC proved that.
that's to be expected, its a given.
the administration had never made the case to defend these activities - they were spooked by the Abu Ghraib photos and allowed "torture" to be used to falsely characterize every method used. they made a big mistake, most americans don't care about the "rights" of terrorists - this could have been a slam dunk issue for the white house.
Isn't that what used to be called treason. Didn't the Rosenbergs get killed for that?
Add it up. A young soldier prosecuted for firing on a suspect 'wounded' terrorist. A marine LT facing, of all
things, premedited murder in an encounter with cleaning out a nest of bomb-makers. Add that to our CIA interrogators and border guard, and it's not a pretty sum.
What ever in the world is going on!
Now it's "moral high ground" to defend and protect terrorists, and accuse and attack our troops, questioning their actions, even under life threatening conditions (see all the accusations of our troops for killing terrorists in Iraq.
Liberals used to be "useful idiots" for the communists, when they were our enemy, now, they are doing the same favors for the terrorists.
Either the CIA and we win, or the terrorists. Pick one.
part of it comes from the fact that there is an entrenched beauracracy in these agencies that is allied with the left. what the politicos we've elected and sent to DC need to understand is that they are there to rip this entrenched shadow government apart. to be fair, Goss has done some of that. he should do more, and so should the Pentagon.
IS THE MARINE CORPS P.C.?
Second Lt. Ilario Pantano was making a six- figure income as an energy trader with Goldman Sachs in New York when the World Trade Center was attacked. Pantano had friends who worked in the twin towers and friends among the firefighters who perished trying to save them.
This Marine veteran, who had already served his country in the first Gulf War, set aside his career (which also included work in film and television), kissed his wife and two children goodbye, and headed to Quantico, Va., for officer training school.
A Marine Corps colleague asked, "How many guys do you know (who) would drop 100 grand a year to go sleep in fighting holes in the nasty mud and dust for -- what -- 25 grand a year?"
The Washington Times reports that on April 15, 2004, "commanders dispatched Lt. Pantano's men to a house believed to hold insurgents and weapons. The Marines found bomb-making equipment and were removing it when two Iraqis tried to speed away in a sport utility vehicle, according to Lt. Pantano's account. The Marines stopped the SUV by shooting out the tires, apprehended the two (Iraqis) and placed them in flexible handcuffs. After setting up a security perimeter, Lt. Pantano took off the cuffs and had the two search the vehicle as he supervised." (Presumably so that any booby traps would not kill U.S. Marines.)
After a few minutes, the two suspected insurgents stopped searching and began to move quickly toward Lt. Pantano. Pantano's lawyer explained that "they started talking in Arabic and turned toward him as if they were going to rush him." Pantano shouted at them in Arabic to stop. They did not. He shot and killed both of them. He then placed a sign on the SUV repeating the slogan of Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, "No better friend; No worse Enemy."
...he now waits in Camp Lejeune, N.C., while the Marine Corps considers whether to indict him for murder in the case of those Iraqi SUV drivers -- charges that could carry a sentence of death. He has also been advised that he may face charges of "desecration" for placing the sign on the SUV. A Marine Corps spokesman estimated that a decision on whether Pantano faces a general court martial will be forthcoming in late March or early April.
Pantano's parents have created a Web site for those who would like to help their son and others like him. "DefendtheDefenders.org stands behind the man who puts his life on the line again and again, who makes life or death decisions in the blazing heat, exhaustion, fear and confusion of war while conducting combat operations ... (and later) becomes the subject ... of formal charges."
MONA CHAREN writes for Creators Syndicate.
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2005/02/26/opinions/columnists/charen/doc42206db83f043601859432.txt
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