Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to hide secret programme from Congress

[Cyn]

Should we get our slingshots and start marching in the streets?

[thestalkmore]

Secret programs in my CIA?

Color me really fucking apathetic.

[Ramor]

Secret programs in my CIA?

Color me really fucking apathetic.

qfmft

[Khamsin]

programme - Wiktionary

Programme is an alternative spelling for program in certain countries, as the link reinforces. But the CIA is the US, so program would have been the better choice!

But I will concede, on the grounds that the CIA also has a presence in countries that use the programme alternative of the word.

[*Shinzon*]

First bolded thing. In which universe do you live? The media has done nothing but NOT be critical of what the government does. If they had been, they wouldn't have lapped up the propaganda the government whipped for Iraq. Furthermore, your example was nothing but the media scoring some points by making issue of nothing; it was not an example of the media doing its job and being critical of what the government does.

Because let me inform you, a functional media is important in the existence of a seemingly democratic government, as people NEED to be informed of what their government is doing to hold it accountable, if not, it becomes no different than some form of autocratic state. So unlike your example, the media should be all over the government's face and forcing to prove and justify what it says and does. They need to justify their legitimacy to us, lest they become nothing more than autocrats.

Second bolded. You're not talking about this specific case which is what i wanted to know about, however, tell me, when does the CIA get to hide things from and and when can't they? Why was it wrong to hide this, but nothing something else? Furthermore, you are aware that this is an instance of one part of the government lying to another part of the government? And it is illegal right? The CIA is not supposed to hide what it does from the relevant committies in Congress; this is an aspect that keeps one "branch" or institution from acting on its own. And in this case, we have a vice president who has no bussiness telling the CIA what it should or should not do, telling the CIA to hide information from another branch of government whose CONSTITUTIONAL PURPOSE it is to also guard the executive branch.

That's how any psuedo democratic government functions; they must justify their actions to us, because we are the ones who vote for them. They can't decide on their own what gets hidden from us, because we have to know what they're doing. They have to argue, in a court, whether something is a danger to natural security. And in this court, only the judge has to see the material and decide whether it truly merits such censor. However, a government institution or a branch cannot unilaterally declare information "too dangerous" for the public without first proving that it is dangerous.

The government, which is not a monolithic institution, cannot be allowed to hide what it does under its own volition, because it will tend to hide things that are not a danger to national security, but may endanger their stay in power or diminish their legitimacy. I have argued this before. If your argument is allowed to pass, then the government can essentially hide anything it deems to be a threat to us when it may not be so at all. This is too dangerous and the proper channels must be established to do so, and they exist. And because the proper channels exist and they were not used in this case, then the law was broken and accountability must be restored.

But to end my point, you're talking about part of the scenario, while ignoring that in this case one branch of government lied to another which is illegal, and it inhibits the ability of the government to function properly. The argument of whether the government should be able to hide something from us cannot be left to the government alone. Because they will not always be honest.


The program was active, it was just not fully operational. Key word here is fully operational, and if it weren't a big deal in the first place, then it should have been revealed before. You know, in the 8 years that they could have done so.

I was referring to locally here in New York specifically. On several occasions I've watched ABC news and their "investigators" team do nothing but criticize how the government does not fully protect New York's water reservoirs and the Indian Point Nuclear power plant. I don't mean to fight with you, but really? If you live in NYC you wouldn't say they don't criticize the government because nearly every station has a team of investigative reporters like that.

I understand that the government has an obligation to report it's plans and reasoning for those plans to the public. However, I do not believe that normal people have any business having a say in what happens regarding the defense of this country. There is a reason why civilians do not run the military and government agencies. These people are trained to be able to deal with these situations and how best it needs to be relayed to the public.

For instance let me provide you with something for thought; the original scandal in Guantanamo bay was caused by a leak of photos of prisoners being tortured by the guards. These people are widely considered to be terrorists, linked to terrorism, or being held for interrogation by the CIA. Had these photos not been leaked, would there have been a need to close the base? Absolutely not. But, because of the political environment within the United States, politicians, and lawyers, both groups who have no business deciding how we protect our country, got involved and said the CIA had no right to conduct their interrogations the way they did. Now I'm not saying that anything they did was right but, could you have seen the base being closed in such a short amount of time without those photos?

I'm not at all saying that we should allow these agencies to operate outside the scope of our government and be allowed to run themselves anyway they see fit as I said before but; I find it very difficult to justify letting your neighborhood baker know that so and so was transferred to a secure location to be interrogated or announcing where military personal are stationed, something ABC news did when they had a reporter tagging along with a military unit when the war started.(Sorry if im picking on ABC but my mother watches it so I happen to hear some of the things they report.)

I also don't agree with the war in Iraq and I believe it was a war to fortify oil for the states, and I wasn't saying all the bullshit the gov't spewed was justified but again, where do you draw the line. Where do you say enough is enough? When is it ok to withhold valuable information to protect citizens from a panic and potentially harming themselves with this information?

I wasn't referring to anything about accountability of the government to the people. I was talking about the military and government needs to sometimes withhold information to protect the country and citizens who, if they discover this information, may harm themselves and others. While the government is accountable to us, it is not required to compromise itself or potentially sensitive material by relaying that information to just anyone.

I also realize that while the CIA may have concealed this information from another branch of government please, do not forget that not every politician who participates in this country's government has military experience. Involving the bureaucracy in the military has always produced negative results for our defense agency field operatives and our military personnel. If you remember when congress decided to cut the funding for the war in Iraq, many soldiers were left without gear or the proper weapons to protect themselves while they were stationed there. It's one thing to have the bureaucracy step in and criticize the war, it's another thing to step in and cripple the efforts of our soldiers and agents of the CIA and FBI. Often times that is what I believe the result is of involving unnecessary people in these kinds of things.

Edit: Sorry for the late response I kinda had it typed and then it got erased so I had to type it again.

[Beckwin]

where do you draw the line. Where do you say enough is enough?

if there's a line, I'd say torture is on the other side of it.

there's a point where certain details are needed to be kept secret, but that's more in the territory of troop movements, technical defense capabilities, location of certain logistical/communications stuff, etc.

and then there's the distinction of details where yes, Joe Schmoe doesn't really need to know or care to know on a daily basis, but his ELECTED OFFICIAL ought to be informed in order to serve Joe's general interests. If you can't inform elected officials of what goes on in the government, you weaken any notions of democracy and drift towards autocracy.

[Olo401]

Atleast tell the other story too...

Hayden Says He Informed Congress of Surveillance Program - Political News - FOXNews.com

What other story? Hayden is part of the damn coverup.

[Dimmauk]

Those photos were leaked because someone with a fucking conscience felt that it was wrong to torture and kill people. It's one of the things that supposedly separated us from the evil-doers.

[*Shinzon*]

Those photos were leaked because someone with a fucking conscience felt that it was wrong to torture and kill people. It's one of the things that supposedly separated us from the evil-doers.

You see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't mean to attack you in anyway but I'll say this: How exactly do you suppose the CIA gathers intelligence aside from buying people off? Why do you think the agency was even created? Again I didn't say torture was good or ethical at all, but that's the reason you don't need to know what the CIA does. War is ugly. Some countries try to play by the rules. When your opponents don't play by the rules you adjust. No offense but the CIA doesn't recruit or tries not to recruit people with a conscience to avoid things of that sort.

and then there's the distinction of details where yes, Joe Schmoe doesn't really need to know or care to know on a daily basis, but his ELECTED OFFICIAL ought to be informed in order to serve Joe's general interests. If you can't inform elected officials of what goes on in the government, you weaken any notions of democracy and drift towards autocracy.

I absolutely agree. I also agree that the elected officials should be informed. I agree that torture to simply torture is wrong, however; I DO NOT believe that the ENTIRE bureaucracy needs to become involved with issues that they are not trained to deal with.

Listen, I'm not saying that we should allow our defense agencies and military personnel to be left completely unchecked but; the realm of war and intelligence gather is something that needs to be left to professionally trained individuals. When politicians get involved things like this they usually tend to use this kind of situation just to forward political goals. That's not to say that our elected officials can't handle or be informed about these kinds of issues but why is there always some huge political scandal that has to go along with it? Politicians and average citizens need to be a little more sensitive to these kinds of things. The world isn't black and white as much as we want to be. We live in a gray area where things aren't always clear. We cannot assume that we as a country, are impervious to making mistakes. There are certain ways that things need to be handled. I think lately we've done a poor job at actually handling these kinds of things trying to make examples out of people rather than correcting the issue.

I really can't convey what I feel but I think that says as closely to what I feel as I can.

[Kuya]

I was referring to locally here in New York specifically. On several occasions I've watched ABC news and their "investigators" team do nothing but criticize how the government does not fully protect New York's water reservoirs and the Indian Point Nuclear power plant. I don't mean to fight with you, but really? If you live in NYC you wouldn't say they don't criticize the government because nearly every station has a team of investigative reporters like that.

I understand that the government has an obligation to report it's plans and reasoning for those plans to the public. However, I do not believe that normal people have any business having a say in what happens regarding the defense of this country. There is a reason why civilians do not run the military and government agencies. These people are trained to be able to deal with these situations and how best it needs to be relayed to the public.

For instance let me provide you with something for thought; the original scandal in Guantanamo bay was caused by a leak of photos of prisoners being tortured by the guards. These people are widely considered to be terrorists, linked to terrorism, or being held for interrogation by the CIA. Had these photos not been leaked, would there have been a need to close the base? Absolutely not. But, because of the political environment within the United States, politicians, and lawyers, both groups who have no business deciding how we protect our country, got involved and said the CIA had no right to conduct their interrogations the way they did. Now I'm not saying that anything they did was right but, could you have seen the base being closed in such a short amount of time without those photos?

I'm not at all saying that we should allow these agencies to operate outside the scope of our government and be allowed to run themselves anyway they see fit as I said before but; I find it very difficult to justify letting your neighborhood baker know that so and so was transferred to a secure location to be interrogated or announcing where military personal are stationed, something ABC news did when they had a reporter tagging along with a military unit when the war started.(Sorry if im picking on ABC but my mother watches it so I happen to hear some of the things they report.)

I also don't agree with the war in Iraq and I believe it was a war to fortify oil for the states, and I wasn't saying all the bullshit the gov't spewed was justified but again, where do you draw the line. Where do you say enough is enough? When is it ok to withhold valuable information to protect citizens from a panic and potentially harming themselves with this information?

I wasn't referring to anything about accountability of the government to the people. I was talking about the military and government needs to sometimes withhold information to protect the country and citizens who, if they discover this information, may harm themselves and others. While the government is accountable to us, it is not required to compromise itself or potentially sensitive material by relaying that information to just anyone.

I also realize that while the CIA may have concealed this information from another branch of government please, do not forget that not every politician who participates in this country's government has military experience. Involving the bureaucracy in the military has always produced negative results for our defense agency field operatives and our military personnel. If you remember when congress decided to cut the funding for the war in Iraq, many soldiers were left without gear or the proper weapons to protect themselves while they were stationed there. It's one thing to have the bureaucracy step in and criticize the war, it's another thing to step in and cripple the efforts of our soldiers and agents of the CIA and FBI. Often times that is what I believe the result is of involving unnecessary people in these kinds of things.

Edit: Sorry for the late response I kinda had it typed and then it got erased so I had to type it again.

First bolded. Why exactly is that wrong? Am i to understand that you don't like it when the government is criticized? You have no established any valid reason why that is a wrong thing to do. If these things are vunerable to attack, then they should report on it so the government is forced to act, it doesn't matter if the omnipotent terrorists see it. You can't have a weakpoint and just ignore it and hope the enemy does too. Furthermore, even if the investigations and reports are frivolous, the media's purpose is fundamentally to criticize the government. If you don't want that, then you are arguing for the ban on media.

Second bolded. Absolutely wrong. The citizens have every right to have a say in the defense of their country. You don't have to be a professional to know when there are frivolous reasons being used to go to war or take action that are done under the guise of "national security". If the government starts a war and claims that it is for the good of the country, the citizens have every right to criticize the government and find out if it's being truthful. How can you possibly argue the opposite in the face of a war that took place under false pretenses? You have a recent real life example where the government claimed what it was doing was for the defense of the nation but in reality was nothing more than geopolitics. Normal people need to have a say in what is needed to defend the country, because those who are in charge of the defense of the country are also self interested individuals that need to be kept under watch.

Furthermore, when the actions of the CIA are done for geopolitical reasons instead of defense of the country, and when said geopolitical reasons lead to actions that further lead to consequences where Americans die as a consequence, then what we have is an absolute failure of the CIA to do what it meant for, and proof that it needs to be watched to make sure what they do is for defense and not simply nation building/toppling. I give you Chalmers on thislong/read bolded for the point/s)

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, yes. Militarism is the—what the social side has called the “intervening variable,” the causative connection. That is to say, to maintain an empire requires a very large standing army, huge expenditures on arms that leads to a military-industrial complex, and generally speaking, a vicious cycle sets up of interests that lead to perpetual series of wars.

It goes back to probably the earliest warning ever delivered to us by our first president, George Washington, in his famous farewell address. It’s read at the opening of every new session of Congress. Washington said that the great enemy of the republic is standing armies; it is a particular enemy of republican liberty. What he meant by it is that it breaks down the separation of powers into an executive, legislative, and judicial branches that are intended to check each other—this is our most fundamental bulwark against dictatorship and tyranny—it causes it to break down, because standing armies, militarism, military establishment, military-industrial complex all draw power away from the rest of the country to Washington, including taxes, that within Washington they draw it to the presidency, and they begin to create an imperial presidency, who then implements the military’s desire for secrecy, making oversight of the government almost impossible for a member of Congress, even, much less for a citizen.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Chalmers Johnson. Now, Chalmers Johnson, you were a consultant for the CIA for a period through Richard Nixon, starting with Johnson in 1967, right through 1973. And I’m wondering how you see its use has changed. You talk about, and you write in your book about the Central Intelligence Agency, the president’s private army.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: I say, at one point, we will never know peace until we abolish it, or, at any rate, restrict what is the monster that it’s grown into. The National Security Act of 1947 lists five functions. It creates the Central Intelligence Agency. It lists five functions for it. The purpose, above all, was to prevent surprise attack, to prevent a recurrence of the attack, such as the one at Pearl Harbor. Of these five functions, four are various forms of information-gathering through open sources, espionage, signals intelligence, things of this sort. The fifth is simply a catchall, that the CIA will do anything that the National Security Council, namely the foreign affairs bureaucracy in the White House attached directly to the president orders it to do.

That’s turned out to be the tail that wags the dog. Intelligence is not taken all that seriously. It’s not that good. My function inside the agency in the late ‘60s, early ’70s was in the Office of National Estimates. My wife used to ask me at times, “Why are they so highly classified?” And I said, "Well, probably and mostly, simply because they’re the very best we can do, and they read like a sort of lowbrow foreign affairs article." They’re not full of great technical detail and certainty nothing on sources of intelligence.

But as the agency developed over time, and as it was made clear to the president, every president since Truman, made clear to them shortly after they were inaugurated, you have at your disposal a private army. It is totally secret. There is no form of oversight. There was no form of congressional oversight until the late 1970s, and it proved to be incompetent in the face of Iran-Contra and things like that. He can do anything you want to with it. You could order assassinations. You could order governments overthrown. You could order economies subverted that seemed to get in our way. You could instruct Latin American military officers in state terrorism. You can carry out extraordinary renditions and order the torture of people, despite the fact that it is a clear violation of American law and carries the death penalty if the torture victim should die, and they commonly do in the case of renditions to places like Egypt.

No president since Truman, once told that he has this power, has ever failed to use it. That became the route of rapid advancement within the CIA, dirty tricks, clandestine activities, the carrying out of the president’s orders to overthrow somebody, starting—the first one was the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. It’s from that, the After Action Report, which has only recently been declassified, that the word “blowback” that I used in the first of my three books on American foreign policy, that’s where the word “blowback” comes from. It means retaliation for clandestine activities carried out abroad.

But these clandestine activities also have one other caveat on them: they are kept totally secret from the American public, so that when the retaliation does come, they’re unable ever to put it in context, to see it in cause-and-effect terms. They usually lash out against the alleged perpetrators, usually simply inaugurating another cycle of blowback. The best example is easily 9/11 in 2001, which was clearly blowback for the largest clandestine operation we ever carried out, namely the recruiting, arming and sending into battle of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the 1980s. But this is the way the CIA has evolved.

It’s been responsible for the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and bringing to power probably the most odious dictator on either side in the Cold War, namely General Augusto Pinochet; the installation of the Greek colonels in the late ’60s and early ’70s in Greece; the coups, one after another, in numerous Latin American countries, all under the cover of avoiding Soviet imperialism carried out by Fidel Castro, when the real purpose was to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company, and continued to exploit the extremely poor and essentially defenseless people of Central America.

The list is endless. The overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia, the bringing to power of General Suharto, then the elimination of General Suharto when he got on our nerves. It has a distinctly Roman quality to it. And this is why I—moreover, there is no effective oversight. There are a few, often crooked congressmen, like Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who are charged with oversight. When Charlie Wilson, the congressman, long-sitting congressman from the Second District of Texas, was named chairman of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee during the Afghan period, he wrote at once to his pals in the CIA, “The fox is in the henhouse. Gentlemen, do anything you want to.”

Third bolded. Are you saying that revealing the photos was wrong? Are you honestly arguing that revealing that the government was breaking the law, and committing hideous acts is wrong? And as for your claim that they were all 'widely" considered terrorists is wrong. Lots of innocent people, without trials to ever prove their innocense were held there and elsewhere. This is exactly what secret actions by government institutions lead to without having their secret nature justified. They can't have carte blanche to decide what is secret. Because of their actions, they've ruined lives:

Deaths caused by torture:

A simple fact is being overlooked in the Bush-era torture scandal: the number of cases in which detainees have been tortured to death. Abuse did not only involve the high-profile cases of smashing detainees into plywood barriers (“walling”), confinement in coffin-like boxes with insects, sleep deprivation, cold, and waterboarding. To date approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during U.S. interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death.

A review of homicide cases, however, shows that few detainee deaths have been properly investigated. Many were not investigated at all. And no official investigation has looked into the connection between detainee deaths and the interrogation policies promulgated by the Bush administration.

Autopsies of dead detainees some revealing death due to torture.


Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent man held for 8 years and tortured. You still want to call him a terrorist? The constantly passed around idea that Guantanamo was full of terrorists is a flat out lie.

Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6vcsTyfqg

Binyam Mohamed, who had his genitals slashed while held by the US even though he was innocent.

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.

Five Algerian detainees who were also innocent:

A federal district judge, Richard Leon, today ordered the Bush administration "forthwith" to release five Algerian detainees who have been held in Guantanamo without charges since January, 2002 -- almost seven full years. The decision was based on the court's finding that there was no credible evidence that the 5 detainees intended to take up arms against the U.S. The court found sufficient evidence to justify the ongoing detention of a sixth Algerian detainee.

A tribal leader and ally of the US detained as a terrorist.

Wakil traces his detention to an August 2002 meeting he had with an American commander after U.S. troops shot a resident at a bazaar. Wakil said he went to the U.S. base in hopes of defusing tensions.

"'Don't take any direct action here. Coordinate your actions with the local forces. You don't understand the local security.' This is what I advised him," Wakil said. "I talked to the Americans as an elder of the area. 'If there is anything I can do, please let me know.'"

At the gate, as he was leaving the meeting, he and nearly a dozen others were detained and taken to Bagram air field. Within days, only he and Sabar Lal, his military commander, remained in custody. After seven months, he and Lal were transferred to Guantanamo, where for the next six years the tribal leader was known as detainee 798. Lal was released in October 2007, Wakil in April 2008.

"I told them I am a supporter of this government. Why am I detained?" Wakil said. "I said everyone in my province will fight for my release all the way up to the president. They told me no one will fight for you because you are a bad person."

Here is a nice list of people who were innocent, yet detained with no trial and tortured, some were even minors. Here are the goary details for you, just in case you're not convinced that the government can't be allowed to act in secret:

Walid is a 28-year-old Palestinian. Reportedly sold to the United States by the Pakistani security forces, Walid was among the first arrivals to GuantanamoBay in early 2002. As of February 2008, he was "approved to leave" yet he continues to be housed in high-security Camp 5, where he has been held since early 2007.[63]

Since his arrest, Walid has had very little contact with his family, who thought he was dead until, several years after his initial detention, he was able to send them a postcard. He has not, to his lawyer's knowledge, been able to speak with any of his family members. Since learning of his whereabouts in 2005, his family has been writ

In 2001 a group of 18 Uighurs, an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province in western China, was living together in a camp in Afghanistan when the coalition bombing started. They claim that they fled to the Afghan mountains, were led across the border to Pakistan by some other travelers, and were sold to the United States for a bounty. Another five Uighurs also ended up in Guantanamo, possibly sold to the US as well.

Most of these men have been cleared for release since 2003, yet remain in Guantanamo because they cannot be returned to China, and neither the United States nor any other country has been willing to take them in

Feghoul, an Algerian reportedly handed over to the US by Pakistani security forces and sent to Guantanamo in 2002, was informed over a year ago that he was cleared to leave Guantanamo. Yet he remains in Camp 6, having been moved there in December 2006.

Lahmar, a 39-year-old Bosnian-Algerian, is a university-educated father of two who once taught at the Islamic Cultural Center in Bosnia. In 2001 the Bosnian government arrested Lahmar and detained him for three months on charges that he was part of an al-Qaeda cell that was plotting to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital city. Although the Bosnian Supreme Court eventually ordered his release due to lack of evidence, he was immediately picked up by Bosnian police and transferred to US custody. By early 2002, the United States brought Lahmar to GuantanamoBay, and he has been imprisoned there ever since. [76]

He has never seen-or ever even spoken with-his second child, who was born after he was initially detained in Bosnia. [77]

Jabbarov is a 30-year-old Uzbek national who has been cleared for release since at least February 22, 2007. Reportedly sold to the United States by Afghan soldiers, Jabbarov has been in US custody since October 2001 and held at Guantanamo since June 2002.

Jabbarov told his lawyers that, shortly after he arrived at Guantanamo, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent informed him that US authorities knew his capture had been a mistake and that he would be freed very soon. [79] In February 2007 Jabbarov received official notice that he was approved to leave Guantanamo.

However, Uzbekistan is a country with a known record of torture, and Jabbarov, who was reportedly visited by Uzbek officials in September 2002 and threatened with torture, has a credible fear of return, which the United States has recognized. [80] But neither the US nor any third-party country is yet willing to take him, and Jabbarov remains at Guantanamo. Even though he has been approved to leave Guantanamo, his conditions of confinement have worsened. [81]

Belbacha is a 39-year-old Algerian who fled to Britain in 1999 after his life was reportedly threatened by Islamist extremists. Belbacha states that he went to Pakistan in 2001 to study religion. In December 2001 he was reportedly apprehended by villagers near Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, and sold to the United States for a bounty. He was flown to Guantanamo in March 2002.

Belbacha received official notice that he was "approved to leave" Guantanamo in February 2007. But he is so fearful of returning to Algeria-a country with a known record of torture-that he has asked US federal courts to block his return. In March 2008 a federal appellate court reversed a lower court's refusal to do so, and sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration. [86]

In the meantime, Belbacha remains housed in Camp 6, where he has been since it opened in December 2006.

In December 2007 Belbacha reportedly tried to commit suicide and was temporarily moved to the mental health unit, where he was held for two months.

Truly the forgotten child in Guantanamo, El Gharani, a now-21-year-old Chadian who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan and eventually brought to Guantanamo in early 2002. Although he was just 15 upon arrival, he was wrongly classified as 25 and held as an adult.

El Gharani has been in Camp 5 and Camp 6 for the best part of two years.

He has tried to commit suicide at least seven times. He has slit his wrist, run repeatedly headfirst into the sides of his cell, and tried to hang himself.

Fourth bolded. That question was directed at you. Since you are the one saying that information needs to be hidden from the populace, you tell us when it is right to hide information and when it is wrong, but while you're doing so, let me recall to you that we already have the mechanisms to decide what gets to be kept secret and what is revealved, so your complaining is baseless. Citizens can litigate to have the government reveal information, in such a court the government must prove that the information is too sensitive for national security to be revealed, and this will be decided by a judge. If the judge decides that the government is right, then the information is kept secret, but only if justified. Do you have a problem with this system?

Fifth bolded. It is absolutely the Congress' CONSTITUTIONAL right to hold power over the purse and decide whether an institution or the military gets funding. It is the only reliable power of Congress to control the excesses of the presidency. It is not Congress' problem if the military is without funding if they were ordered to go in a war without any justification. No. It is the fault of the president and the military leaders if they decide to sacrifice the life of the military for their frivolous and unjust wars. Congress should have used its power of the purse in the Iraq war and ended the quagmire years ago. You're attacking of the few safety meassures the Constitution allocates for Congress, and for same unknown and insane reason, displacing blame towards the Congress, when the one who engaged in war in the first place was the presidency, not the Congress.

[*Shinzon*]

Second bolded. Absolutely wrong. The citizens have every right to have a say in the defense of their country. You don't have to be a professional to know when there are frivolous reasons being used to go to war or take action that are done under the guise of "national security". If the government starts a war and claims that it is for the good of the country, the citizens have every right to criticize the government and find out if it's being truthful. How can you possibly argue the opposite in the face of a war that took place under false pretenses? You have a recent real life example where the government claimed what it was doing was for the defense of the nation but in reality was nothing more than geopolitics. Normal people need to have a say in what is needed to defend the country, because those who are in charge of the defense of the country are also self interested individuals that need to be kept under watch.

---------------

Fourth bolded. That question was directed at you. Since you are the one saying that information needs to be hidden from the populace, you tell us when it is right to hide information and when it is wrong, but while you're doing so, let me recall to you that we already have the mechanisms to decide what gets to be kept secret and what is revealved, so your complaining baseless. Citizens can litigate to have the government reveal information, in such a court the government must prove that the information is too sensitive for national security to be revealed, and this will be decided by a judge. If the judge decides that the government is right, then the information is kept secret, but only if justified. Do you have a problem with this system?

----------

Fifth bolded. It is absolutely the Congress's CONSTITUTIONAL right to hold power over the purse and decide whether an institution or the military gets funding. It is the only reliable power of Congress to control the excesses of the presidency. It is not Congress's problem if the military is without funding if they were ordered to go in a war without any justification. No. It is the fault of the presiden and the military leaders if they decide to sacrifice the life of the military for their frivolous and unjust wars. Congress should have used its power of the purse in the Iraq war and ended the quagmire years ago. You're attackine of the few safety meassures the Constitution allocates for Congress, and for same unknown and insane reason, displacing blame towards the Congress, when the one who engaged in war in the first place was the presidency, not the Congress.

I'll try to address these things as quickly as I can because I have to step out and I know you didn't get a chance to check my other post just now.

To address your first point I again, was not saying that we are to allow our military and defensive agencies to run rampant and free of check from the citizens or the government. I do believe that these people need to understand that there are some boundaries which cannot be crossed to protect our idea of democracy and the foundation of our government. However, situations similar to these, regarding specific programs or teams established to be run secretly, are not new. Politicians and average citizens need to understand that again, not everything is black and white. There is a line drawn but that line becomes clouded in a war. Again I'll also reiterate I don't agree with the war in Iraq and I agree with you on much of the evidence you provided to support the claims of falsified evidence that catapulted us into the war. But may I ask you this: As a normal citizen of the United States can you, with all your life experience and no military training be confident in providing a guideline for the CIA to follow, and can you, assuming the CIA goes ahead publishing all it's potential projects and operational planning conclusively analyze data on potential terrorist attacks, arms sales, drug sales and determine what the best course of action is? I know I can't and I don't pretend that I can.

As for your second point. I absolutely do not. I actually rather enjoy the way our court system can regulate the laws that put into effect in this country. I think that even though the judicial branch is in fact a rather weak branch of government they do a very good job at what they do and I aspire to one day be a member of that branch after law school.

When I said what I said before, I was referring to involving the bureaucratic process in matters of national security and intelligence gathering. These kinds of situations need to on average, be decided quickly and swiftly to often provide and effect defense for our country. The problem is that the bureaucratic process is slow and often times is drawn out with many different steps. This creates a situation where too many people get involved and a situation can get MUCH WORSE as it moves through the bureaucratic process. While our elected officials should absolutely be involved, they too must also be considerate to the sensitivity of military situations and that not everything can be used to further their political goals.

With that said; the situation that brought about the Iraq war was a combination of an opportunity to fortify and oil supply from the middle east and to be able to exact revenge on a group of individuals that could be blamed for having connections with terrorism. I absolutely believe that our government did a terrible of job in investigating claims of WMDs in Iraq and all the other propaganda that was forged to bring was to war. However, when stuff like this, designed to attack one of our defense agencies, is brought into public light, politicians attempt to abuse the situation and often times further their own interests rather than the interests of the nation, and I hope that you'll agree with me and say that that is a fair claim to make.

Finally, I absolutely agree with the right of congress to control the purse of the nation and control what our military does. I simply said that I did not agree with the way it was done. Without being sensitive to the situation, and with political uproar regarding all the claims that were found to be baseless regarding the war we were in; I felt that congress and the average citizen was attempting to punish our soldiers rather than the upper echelons of our intelligence and military organizations. You can't simply put a timetable on a war, and expect everything to go as planned. We're actually still sending more troops over to Iraq and Afghanistan than we need to be because of some of the decisions made by congress regarding these wars. Even if we do not support a war it is ABSOLUTELY critical to support our service men REGARDLESS of the situation. These men and women sacrifice their lives for us every day and the least we can do is ensure that they have the funding to properly survive and carry out their duty effectively.

To end, I'd just like to reiterate that I don't agree with torture, and that much of the torture in Guantanamo done to some of these individuals was terrible and absolutely wrong. But to assume that torture need not ever be used to extract information, whether through psychological torture or physical, is a foolish perception to have. Unless you are training in the methods of gathering intelligence there is no way that you can ever tell someone who is trained in these methods how it is that they can conduct their jobs. That is what I mean about excluding the average citizen from these kinds of discussions. We have plenty of citizens and scholars who can skillfully and effectively debate these issues. Sorry again if I nitpicked at your post but again I have to step out and I hope it doesn't seem like I'm just fighting with you as I rather enjoy this discussion.

[bigrougabagel]

^
holy fucking christx2

[Bingbong]

Not for nothing, but you got Congress doing investigations for when they were not told of counter terrorism progams, yet, when it came to water boarding, where they were told of counter terrorism programs, they still ran investigations to breaking the law.

Seems to me a concise case of "damned-if-you, damned-if-you-don't" when dealing with Congress.

[Khamsin]

smashing detainees into plywood barriers (“walling”)

Shouldn't this be called dryboarding?

[Senoska]

Not for nothing, but you got Congress doing investigations for when they were not told of counter terrorism progams, yet, when it came to water boarding, where they were told of counter terrorism programs, they still ran investigations to breaking the law.

Seems to me a concise case of "damned-if-you, damned-if-you-don't" when dealing with Congress.

Damn all if you break the law and the correct people investigate you for it. Sure is a concise case. Oh, wait, you could just not break the law.

[Neosutra]

Im not even sure how Shinzon can respond with anything beyond "im sorry" after Kuya's last response.

In blows me away the people responsible for this arent in prison.

[guartz]

This is ridiculous. It just takes a moment's thought that CIA and other secret agencies need to be shattered, the best way to do that is to expose them to the light of day.

The articles kuya links, the warnings we received, somewhat openly, by officials, journalists and presidents past, there is no doubt as to the existence of a shadowy government. No longer an agency that simply collects and analyzes information. It now encompasses the society as a whole, our industry, our economy, our military and our politics. It doesn't just observe, it interferes. It doesn't advise, it directs.

It's a monster, and unless killed, it will bring ruin to us all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sstDwKTCpM

[bigrougabagel]

It's a monster, and unless killed, it will bring ruin to us all.
]

Im getting my tin foil hat too.

[guartz]

Im getting my tin foil hat too.

It's a common reaction. This truth is so horrible and freighting that majority of people want dismiss it. Bury their heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening.

[*Shinzon*]

Im not even sure how Shinzon can respond with anything beyond "im sorry" after Kuya's last response.

In blows me away the people responsible for this arent in prison.

His post was incredibly well thought out and very detailed. He clearly has a position to defend on the issue and I absolutely appreciate that. I just do not agree completely and was trying, albeit poorly, to explain why and I accept that my argument appears weak.

As for dismantling the CIA do you have any idea the implication of what you're suggesting Guartz? You talk about people burying their heads in the sand, that's exactly what we'd do by dismantling our most efficient intelligence gathering agency. You talk about the CIA being evil? What the fuck do you think would happen when they're gone? I mean I don't mean to attack you either but really man? The world doesn't always play nice yet we have to? I think that's an incredibly foolish idea to even entertain. Maybe we should get rid of the FBI and all our other covert operatives along with it that.

I mean I dunno how to take that statement seriously.