WILKERSON ALLEGATION THAT TORTURE USED TO JUSTIFY IRAQ WAR MAKES HEARINGS A MUST.

Lawrence Wilkerson, former aide to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State dropped a bombshell, alleging that torture was used on Al-Qaeda suspects to try and get a "smoking gun" that would link Iraq to the 911 attacks to make the case for invading Iraq.

Wilkerson wrote on the The Washington Note that the Bush Administration's "principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda,"

In one documented case Wilkerson said Cheney's office was notified that one Al-Qaeda prisoner was now "compliant" meaning that he was giving information and the torture techniques should stop. According to Wilkerson, Cheney's office ordered the CIA to continue the harsh techniques. Up until then, even under torture, the suspect, Ibn al- Shaykh al-Libi didn't give any information linking Iraq with Al-Qaeda. But according to Wilkerson, under water boarding and torture by Egyptian intelligence at the direction of the CIA through Cheney, al-Libi told interrogators that Sadaam had trained Al-Qaeda in how to produce chemical and biological weapons.

Bush used this "information" which was clearly fabricated by al-Libi to get the torture to stop, in a speech to Congress in October of 2002 as part of the his pressure on Congress to authorize war against Iraq.

As we now know, there was never any collaboration between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and al-Libi later recanted the information saying it was made under torture by Egyptian intelligence.The truth of this is evident in that there was never any evidence found anywhere to substantiate the claim.

This bolsters the claim by interrogation professionals such as Ali Soufan, the top FBI Al-Qaeda interrogator, that torture was an unreliable method for gaining actionable intelligence since a subject would say anything to get the torture to stop.

These claims and allegations made by Wilkerson make Congressional hearings on Bush Administration torture a must. It is now not only a matter of the legality of torture and whether Bush, Cheney and others in his administration were guilty of breaking the law, but it goes to the heart of the Iraq war and whether these illegal techniques were used to get false information that Bush and Cheney used to justify the invasion of Iraq which was their goal from the beginning. As the Republicans are pointing out now in regards to Pelosi, lying to Congress is a crime and investigations into the Bush Adminstrations' pre-war claims about Iraq could make felons out of both Bush, Cheney and Rice, not to mention many more.

It has become clear that President Obama's moral ambivalence, wavering, indecisiveness and attempts at political appeasement must be brushed aside and that the Democratic Congress must take the lead and hold Congressional hearings, not just on the illegality of Bush Administration torture, but whether or not torture was used to gather information, as Wilkerson alleges, for the sole purpose of getting information, even false information as a justification to go to war in Iraq.

If any of that can be proved, it will be a scandal that will dwarf Watergate as the biggest scandal in the country's history and will turn many in the Bush Administration, including Bush himself into felons. So expect the Republicans to fight it tooth and nail.

WHAT DID PELOSI KNOW ABOUT TORTURE? WHO CARES?

Both the media and Republicans, who love to make something out of nothing ( except when Republicans govern and then turn something into nothing) seem to want to make a big issue out of what Nancy Pelosi knew about water boarding and torture and when she knew it . In yesterday's press conference the big question was who told her what when. The problem is it doesn't matter..

Pelosi was not making policy, Pelosi had no say in what Bush policy was going to be, and whether or not she was informed about water boarding in 2002 or whether or not she protested means absolutely nothing.

The only issues that matter regarding torture relates to the Bush White House and whether what they did was legal and did Bush Administration lawyers contrive a pseudo legal framework to justify torture. And if they did , the next question is, should they and other members of the Bush Administration who ordered the illegal torture be prosecuted.

Last night the breathless Lou Dobbs as well as other members of the press seemed to think that what Pelosi knew was somehow important.

It wouldn't matter if Pelosi lied through her teeth about everything she knew regarding torture. She didn't create the policy, didn't implement it and had no say or veto power over whether it was used or not. And as far as what we know so far, both Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee and Jay Rockefeller who was also on the Intelligence Committee say they were never informed by the CIA though the CIA now claims both were briefed.
If nothing else this tends to corrorborate Pelosi's version of events.

After hearing Pelosi's admittedly stammering press conference, in the end she made it clear (even if Dobbs and other journalists couldnt grasp it through the stammering,) that she was NOT told by the CIA in any briefing that water boarding was being used. Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. But what the breathless Lou Dobbs didn't seem to grasp was that she was not admitting anything she hadn't said before even though she was clearly flustered in the way she was trying to say it. And now she is saying that the CIA misled her.

What the resolution of all this back and forth will be no one knows. But underneath all this chaos over torture, torture memos and reversal of policies regarding abuse photos is the Undecider himself, Barrack Obama who seems like he never had a thought he didn't want to change and whose constant reversals have been torturing the country over torture as I pointed out weeks ago.

Obama has reversed himself on so many decisions related to Bush era torture that its clear he has no moral position himself, no legal position himself, and maybe no clue himself as to what it all means, and we are seeing very clearly the admonitions we heard during the Democratic primaries that Obama was the least qualified of all the candidates to be President and its starting to show.

Given that the Republicans cant be trusted to do anything right, and Obama seems to have no idea about what is right regarding the whole issue of torture, its going to be left to Congress to have to straighten it all out.

For now Obama has a public mess on his hands of his own making mostly for not being consistent and not having any personal convictions regarding the entire issue of torture in the first place.

If the Republicans and the press want to make an issue of what Pelosi knew that's fine. Let the Congress and Pelosi use that as a good reason to have hearings and get to the bottom of everything. This is actually an opportunity for Pelosi and those Democrats who want hearings into Bush Administration torture to use Republican allegations against her to get them to support the idea of hearings. Which will not only get to the bottom of everything, it will take it out of Obama's hands which somebody needs to do.

WHY OBAMA'S 1.5% CUT IN INCREASES IN HEALTHCARE COSTS IS LIKE THE DECODER RING IN "A CHRISTMAS STORY".

After much talk about how now is the time for health care reform, the first announcement regarding this long awaited and necessary change came when President Obama announced that the health care industry has voluntarily agreed to reduce increases in health care costs by 1.5% a year for the next ten years so that instead of costs continuing to rise by 6% a year they will now only rise by 4.5% a year.

To coin a phrase, this is not what we've been waiting for.

Obama trumpeted that it will save $2 trillion over the next ten years. What is bothersome is that the annoucement was made with the CEO's of the major health insurance companies standing behind him, and it would only save $2 trillion over the next 10 years if nothing else changes.

This gives every indication that Obama is not serious about universal health care which is the only thing that represents real health care reform.

The 1.5% decrease in increases is about as genuine as the Ovaltine commerical disgused as a secret message from Little Orphan Annie in A Christmas Story.

If the dramatic overhaul that's been promised comes about and universal health care becomes a reality, that $2 trillion in savings as a result of a decrease in increases in costs will be to the benefit of the health industry, the big business entities like insurance companies who are the real culprits in the outrageous cost of health care.

A decrease in increases is just the kind of Washinton double speak that Obama promised to change but when push comes to shove he is as guilty of an any garden variety politician.

Again, it signals that Obama may not be serious about real universal health care because if he was, a voluntary 1.5% cut in increases wouldn't and shouldn't matter to patients who,under universal health care wouldnt have to worry about costs.

Obama said that this is only the opening salvo in health care reform. But it's hardly a salvo. It;s not even a bb shot. And unless there is a real change in direction and philosophy, the idea of universal health care is going to be memory just like Ovaltine.

MEDIA GROSSLY MISSTATES AND EXAGGERATES U.S. DEATH AS RELATED TO SWINE FLU

A story now being circulated on the net and accredited to the AP, written by Christopher Sherman, is grabbing attention with the headline "First US Resident with swine flu dies". When one reads the rest of the story it becomes apparent that this is just another attempt by media to exploit peoples fears and create more worry and concern when there is none.

The ridiculously misleading headline says "First US Resident With Swine Flu Dies". But notice it says it was a resident "with" swine flu, not that the swine flu caused the death. And In fact when you read the article you learn that doctors are NOT ascribing the woman's death to swine flu, only pointing out that she was already ill with something else and the flu could have complicated the condition. She had it when she died but she did not die from it and Texas health officials have refused to ascribe her death to swine flu.

Which didn't stop the AP from going with the grossly misleading headline. Or CNN from running a crawl that said "First U.S. death linked to swine flu".

In the body of the AP article, Carrie Williams a spokeswoman for The Texas State Department health said, the woman had "chronic underlying health conditions" but wouldn't elaborate. The article also quoted Lionel Lopez, the Cameron County epidemiologist who said the flu exacerbated the woman's condition. "The swine flu is very benign by itself," Lopez is quoted in the article as saying. But "by the time she came to see us it was already too late." The woman was hospitalized on April 19 for other reasons but according to Lopez by the time she came to the hospital her condition had become irreversible from the underlying illness.

In other words a woman in Texas has tragically died of something other than swine flu but because she also had swine flu at the same time, in spite of the statements from officials that the flu did not cause her death, the media believed it has license to write headlines like "First US Resident With Swine Flu Dies" even though the flu didn't cause her death. Yet in the highlights of the article it clearly states, "33 year old Texas School Teacher Dies of swine flu". This, even after Janet Napolitano head of Homeland Security came out yesterday and said H1N1 was no worse than any other kind of flu

This is another example as I have pointed out in earlier articles, where the media is more interested in exploiting the swine flu for their own benefit rather than actually giving people helpful information. It is probably safe to say that the media is making more people sick with what I have called an epidemic of stupidity, than H1N1.

SWINE FLU UPDATE: AN EPIDEMIC OF STUPIDITY.

It's becoming more and more apparent that the fear mongering over the swine flu by major media outlets and to a lesser extent the White House, has had more to do with an epidemic of stupidity.

There is now a growing chorus coming to the realization that the danger swine flu represents has been grossly overblown, over hyped and over-exaggerated. And in Mexico where it all started they have lowered the alerts even though the number of cases have risen.

There is no evidence, nor has there ever been, that swine flu poses any real danger, that anyone is more likely to get it than any other kind of flu, is hard to treat, causes any lasting damage, or is any more a cause for concern than any other flu. In fact all the evidence is that so far it is less a worry than all currently known flu strains.

And Time Magazine on it's web site is reporting this:

"As a global network of flu experts began to take a good look at the genetic structure of the new H1N1 virus, there were also indications that the bug might turn out to be little more dangerous than an average flu. "

And added,"...Still, a little more than a week after the WHO first swung into high alert, it's easy to wonder whether H1N1 might turn out to be much ado about not that much"

Most people have no idea what the word "pandemic" really means. They hear it and it scares them. Which is just what the media wants so why bother to inform them of what the word really means? A pandemic simply means a disease, any disease that has gone from one country to another. As soon as cases of H1N1 showed up in the Unites States as well as Mexico, it was a pandemic. It has nothing to do with how many people have it, it has nothing to do with how many people health officials think can get it, it has nothing to do with how dangerous it is or isnt. it just means that there are cases in more than one country.

The needless hysteria, hype and worry surrounding swine flu has been created by politicians and a news media and their exaggerated hyperventilated news coverage, which obviously is to their own benefit since fear and worry drives people to news organizations for information. But it is clearly a needless exploitation of something that is not, as far as the current known facts make apparent, even a realistic concern. Which of course doesn't keep people from going nuts, or, like in the case of Egypt, killing all of the country's pigs.

Just to put it in perpsective, last year 36,000 Americans died from conventional, known strains of flu or complications related to known strains of flu. Think of it -- 36,000 in the US alone. Compare that with 900 cases (according to the latest figures) of swine flu world wide. That is an epidemic?

To date there have been two reported deaths from swine flu ( and I emphasize the word reported), compared to the 36,000 deaths in the US alone from conventional or known strains of flu and there has been no reporting as to whether those deaths were directly related to the swine flu. Even if they were, in terms of numbers they are beyond infinitesimal compared to known strains of flu.

Politically and as a matter of public health and information, Obama has not helped. In his own way he has helped feed the hysteria by doing what he thinks should be done politically but he is making the fears unnecessarily worse. This is something Obama has done too often in his political career -- pander to momentary sentiment or do what he thinks is the most politically expedient thing to do or say regardless of what's real or what's needed.

On Sunday Obama put out a statement in his name that said,"The White House is acting aggressively to combat H1N1".

The courageous thing to do in this situation, the honest thing and the most helpful thing, would be to stand up and tell the truth -- that while this form of flu is nothing anyone wants to spend a weekend with, this is not more dangerous than any other kind of flu, and so far it looks a lot less dangerous than conventional flu or other illnesses. And the outbreak in terms of numbers both in the U.S. and world wide are microscopic compared to other illnesses. Contracting it is rare and even if you do the consequences are generally minor. It is not fatal. It is not dangerous. It will not make your eyeballs fall out. It has no lasting consequences and people who have gotten it were treated conventionally and are recovering nicely with no lasting effects. And every available statistic backs that up.

Instead we get Obama using words like "combat", the CDC using the words "war against" and the news media milking it for all its worth to get ratings and anything else that will make a buck.
It has gotten so utterly stupid, CNN did a major news piece on Sunday called "Inside the H1N1 War Room". War Room? Are they kidding? No, their PR department isn't kidding.

While it makes sense for the government to be prepared, to always error on the side of caution, and to be sure there are enough stockpiles of tamiflu to handle any need, the news media and the White House has turned this into an epidemic of stupidity and fear mongering, worrying people for no good reason.

When Obama said it was "cause for concern but not panic" that was an incredibly unhelpful statement because it was not true. The correct statement should have been, "It is not now a cause for concern, but if it becomes one we will certainly let you know".

Swine flu is hardly an epidemic as the numbers show, and its hardly serious even if someone contracted it based on all the presently known medical evidence. There are many, many times more people dying every day from malaria ( thousands) than people who have even contracted swine flu and yet not a word about that from the news media.

Only yesterday Napolitano, head of Homeland Security made the statement that H1N1 is "no worse than ordinary flu". She could have said that more than a week ago.

Six months from now, if nothing dramatically changes, people will look back at the actions by the media and by government leaders and shake their heads. The big danger in all this overheated hype is that one of these days something truly dangerous to public health might come along and people might shrug off warnings as being nothing more than another case of media hyped swine flu.

TOP FBI AL-QAEDA INTERROGATOR SAYS TORTURE WAS UNNECESSARY.

The release by the Obama Administration of the Bush era White House torture memos has sparked a spitting match between former Bush Adminstration officials, most notably Dick Cheney, and those who opposed torture as a technique as to whether it worked and resulted in information that in Cheney's words "saved lives".

Now Ali Soufan (pictured here in Afghanistan) a former FBI agent and who has been described as America's most successful Al-Qaeda interrogator, has come out and said the use of torture was unneccesary.

Time magazine has reported:

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including waterboarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from [Abu Zubaydah], and we would have continued to get material from him. The rough tactics were not necessary."

There is little doubt that the torture techniques were not neccessary. Perhaps it was because Bush and Cheney ignored eight months worth of warnings leading up to the 911 attacks and were responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans because of their negligence that they went overboard in trying to prevent another attack.

Soufan stated unequivocally that torture doesn't work. He told Time magazine:

"When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them," he says. "That means the information you're getting is useless."

Defenders of waterboarding and the Bush decision to use it have tried to claim that waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammad in 2005 led to information that prevented an attack on the Library Buidling in Los Angeles. But other documents show that plot was discovered and broken up in 2002 using conventional interrogation techniques.

Soufan said his main objection to the techniques was moral. "To use violence against detainees," he says, "is [al-Qaeda's] way, not the American way."

Soufan said that when the harsh techniques were introduced he protested and his bosses at the FBI backed him up. He was removed from his assignment as an interrogator.

As of now it appears that against Obama's wishes, Senator Leahy is going to hold hearings into whether anyone in the Bush Administration violated any laws. Those hearings alone could do more good to re-establish the credibility of the United States than any speech made by Obama.

And the contention that somehow knowing the limits of US interrogators will make Al-Qaeda prisoners stronger and more apt to withold information doesn't hold, pardon the pun, any water.

OBAMA TORTURES THE COUNTRY PLAYING POLITICS WITH TORTURE MEMOS.

Barack Obama has thrown his own Administration, half the Democratic party, and the entire Congress into chaos over the issue of torture memos and prosecutions.

As he has done most of his political life, Obama tried to play both sides of the fence when it came to the release of the torture memos trying to placate both sides by releasing the memos which documented Bush White House authorization for torture and at the same time placate the right by saying no one would be prosecuted.

But when stiff opposition arose within his own party to letting those in the Bush White House who approved and formulated the rationale for the illegal methods dodge any accountability, Obama reversed himself by saying that while no one in the CIA would be prosecuted, higher ups in the Bush Administration might. When that caused a firestorm among Republicans, Obama changed again, this time passing the buck to the Attorney General and putting the decision to prosecute in his hands.

Both Senators Feinstein and Feingold were just two of the Democrats who made it clear they opposed any decision by Obama to simply "go forward" without an investigation to see if prosecutions were warranted.

There are now new revelations that both Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney knew of and approved the illegal interrogation techniques while Rice had made public statements at the time to the contrary. Muddying the waters even more, the Washington Post has reported that Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller were both briefed on the torture methods in 2002 and neither voiced any objection. Pelosi has emphatically denied she was briefed that the torture methods were being used.

Another problem for Obama is the fact that a number of US soldiers from Abu Ghraib have been sent to prison for carrying out techniques memos show were encouraged and approved of by Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush.

How Obama can let those soldiers stay in prison and not prosecute those who formulated and gave the orders will be another difficult problem.

The revelations ratchets up the pressure on the Democrats to prosecute those in the Bush Administration who authorized and helped implement torture while the Republicans have launched an offensive against Obama for even releasing the memos.

Obama's political blundering and lack of a clear moral stand, reversing himself every time there has been an objection to something, has created a firestorm that threatens to overshadow anything else coming out of the White House at the moment.

Clearly releasing the memos was the right thing to do. And prosecuting those in the White House who broke the law is also the right thing to do. But it's possible some Democrats, if they had knowledge of the torture and didn't object, will have to go down as well and that could include Pelosi and possibly Jay Rockefeller though there is a distinction between knowing about it and being in a position to authorize it or stop it. But If prosecutions are not forthcoming in order to protect Democrats who might be embarrassed, Obama's credibility would be irreparably damaged even among those who supported him.

As to whether or not the techniques resulted in any valuable information, aside from Cheney's assertions which cannot be believed, we have Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and the most successful US interrogator of Al-Qaeda operatives. Time magazine reports:

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including waterboarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from [Abu Zubaydah], and we would have continued to get material from him," Soufan told TIME. "The rough tactics were not necessary."

There is little doubt that the torture techniques were not neccessary. Perhaps it was because Bush and Cheney ignored all the warnings leading up to the 911 attacks and were responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans because of their negligence that they went overboard in trying to prevent another attack.

But as for Obama, because he has tried to straddle both sides of the fence without taking any firm moral stand, as Ed Rollins, Republican strategist who supported the release of the memos said, he now has everyone mad at him. So Obama's own moral ambiguity, part of a pattern he has shown his entire political career is now coming back to haunt him. As Obama is finding out, you can't play politics with morality.