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Senate Report: Torture Started With Bush Denying That Geneva Convention Applies To al-Quaida And Taliban

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Mike Bock

A Senate Report, the result of a two year study, says that President Bush got the torture ball rolling on Feb, 7, 2002, with his memorandum stating that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The report says that after this memorandum, “Senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive (interrogation) techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Excerpts from an article in Salon by Mark Benjamin:

On Thursday, as the incoming Obama administration is mulling whether or not it even should investigate torture under the Bush administration, the Senate Armed Services Committee released the executive summary of its own investigation of the treatment of U.S. detainees. (The full report is still being declassified.)
In the spring of 2002 former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asked then-CIA Director George Tenet to brief members of the National Security Council on the harsh interrogation program under development by the CIA, a program that has utilized waterboarding. Meetings ensued. “Members of the president’s cabinet and other senior officials attended meetings at the White House where specific interrogation techniques were discussed,” the report states. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was there.
Rice also asked former Attorney General John Ashcroft to provide his stamp of approval, and he did. On Aug. 1, 2002, … after input from former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and former counsel to the Vice President David Addington.
The CIA … spirited prisoners off the streets of Pakistan and into its network of secret prisons, or “black sites,” for interrogation. On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld joined the party, issuing a memo authorizing the use of tough techniques for detainees in military custody at Guantánamo, including stress positions, forced nudity, use of dogs and sensory deprivation. Legal memos from all three military branches had previously warned that the tactics might be illegal, but the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, put the kibosh on any further study.

Mayor McClin’s DDN Response To Cal Thomas’ Dayton Bashing Is Disappointing

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Mike Bock

Interesting exchange in today’s Dayton Daily News. Evidently, the DDN alerted Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin about a Cal Thomas column that ridicules Dayton’s leadership, and, so, on the editorial page is the Thomas article along with McClin’s response.

Thomas claims that Dayton contributed to a wish list sent to congress by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and that among its possible requests was for funding for a program to help rehabilitate Dayton prostitutes.

Thomas writes, “Here’s one proposal I especially like: $1.5 million for an initiative in Dayton, Ohio, for the ‘Reduce Prostitution — Off the Streets Program.’ The proposed spending would ‘connect individuals involved in prostitution with resources to leave a life of prostitution.’”

The headline of the article — Cities like Dayton are singing ‘Here comes Santa Claus’ — captures the contempt communicated in Thomas’ writing.

Mayor McLin’s response was headlined “Cal Thomas misses point of city survey,” and starts, “Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas uses a survey distributed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to suggest that cities are irresponsibly seeking assistance from the federal government to help with a variety of community challenges.”

McClin writes that Dayton responded to a survey: “The survey responses do lay out the host of challenges we face, the efforts we have initiated on our own to deal with those issues, and the associated costs of those efforts. The point of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ survey, and the corresponding response from cities, is to clearly illustrate the vast problems confronting local communities.”

McLin’s words in her response are so generalized that she fails to enlighten. McClin never deals directly with Thomas’ charge — that on Dayton’s wish list is a wish to find $1.5 million in funding that would help rehabilitate Dayton’s prostitutes — so the end result is that a reader must assume that Thomas’ charge is true.

McClin’s concludes: “We do not apologize for identifying the challenges we are up against to provide a high quality of life for residents, businesses and visitors. We only wish there weren’t so many. Sadly, without an economic stimulus package targeted specifically to help cities, more will be added to the list.”

This is all very good. Rah Rah Rah, but it doesn’t really say anything. I read McClin’s response before I read Thomas’s article and I really couldn’t understand by reading McClin what she was writing about.

If Dayton’s leadership has created a list of challenges — and possible price tags for dealing with those challenges — I would like to see the list. McClin had an opportunity in today’s DDN to share that list and the thinking of Dayton leadership in making that list. Her failure to use her opportunity to make an effective response is disappointing. She should have dealt with Thomas’ sarcasm and accusations head on. Her non-response undermines her leadership because it makes her appear to lack courage to communicate truthfully and completely.

If there is a $1.5 million prostitution rehabilitation project of the list, as Thomas charges, then, when given the opportunity, McClin should have responded, specifically. I’m thinking there is probably a strong defense for promoting such a project.

Mayor McClin should reconsider her weak response to the contemptuous Cal Thomas article, and, the mayor should try again.

Posted in M Bock, Opinion | Tagged $1.5 million for prostitution rehabilitation, cal thomas, Dayton, mayor rhine mcclin | Leave a comment

Paul Krugman Says Financial Sector Yearly Has $400 Billion In Waste And Fraud

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Mike Bock

Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times today, “The Madoff Economy,” uses the $50 billion ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff to slam the whole investment industry. Krugman says that it appears that every year there is at least $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse in the financial sector and that this slosh of money has corrupted our whole economic and political system.

Krugman asks: “How different, really, is Mr. Madoff’s tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole? The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it’s not just a matter of money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other people’s money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.”

Excerpts:

Last year, the average salary of employees in “securities, commodity contracts, and investments” was more than four times the average salary in the rest of the economy. Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20 million or more were fairly common. … The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.
Consider the hypothetical example of a money manager who leverages up his clients’ money with lots of debt, then invests the bulked-up total in high-yielding but risky assets … Then, when the bubble bursts and his investments turn into toxic waste, his investors will lose big — but he’ll keep those bonuses.
In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America’s G.D.P., up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier. If that extra 3 percent was money for nothing — and it probably was — we’re talking about $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse.
Wall Street’s ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven’t closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked.
There’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing. After all, that’s why so many people trusted Mr. Madoff.
Now, as we survey the wreckage and try to understand how things can have gone so wrong, so fast, the answer is actually quite simple: What we’re looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff.