bamage said:

We had a system in place, that, while flawed, worked pretty well most of the time. The Bushies, w/ malice aforethought, threw that system out the window.

for the link, bamage.

One of bebop's letters that got through yesterday, but now is not there, said that he had attended the birth of a child in his family. The child's name used either one or both of bebop's names. He wrote [beautifully] about the experience and how it affected him.

I'm not criticizing, Glenn. I think you handled things as well as possible. And I'm sorry for being OT. I'll get back to reading.

I just thought people might like to know.

And bebop-o, if you're reading, Hello!

finds the heart of the matter. IMO

I second that coinography.

"These are not mere word games, but some of the most powerful tools used by this criminal administration to accomplish their goals."

In my opinion, this can not be stated often enough...so I'll repeat myself:

H. Dumpty said it best:

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’”

We could have Guantanamo ready for new guests within three months according to lawyers for the detainees still housed there:

January 12, 2009-Center for Constitutional Rights releases: “Closing Guantanamo and Restoring the Rule of Law”

http://ccrjustice.org/files/12.01.09_CCR%20Report_Closing%20Guantanamo.pdf

“The reality is that the restoration of the rule of law to [Guantanamo]—and this country—should be significantly less complicated than the dismantling of the law has been. The time to close Guantánamo is long overdue—and it can be done in three months. […]”

"Letter of the law and high morality aside, we know that prosecutions in this direction are going to play into the hands of the Republicans and imperialists, allowing them to trot out their usual tropes, and empowering them even more to oppose policy progress [...]"

January 11, 2008-“One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. […] And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.” –Bush

In a filing for a military tribunal in March of 2007, besides confessing to being the mastermind behind 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohommed confessed to the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, the 2001 "Shoe Bomb" Plot, a plot to attack American landmarks, including the Empire State Building and the Sears Tower and plots to assassinate former Presidents Carter, Clinton and Pope John Paul II.

Is this part of the actionable intelligence Scarborough is touting in that video clip in the Update?

“[…] What’s more, a former Pentagon intelligence analyst told Vanity Fair that “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence“; another former CIA official, who read all the reports from KSM’s interrogation, said, “90 percent of it was total f*cking bullsh*t.” […]”

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/11/bush-authorized-torture/

“It is incredible what people say under the compulsion of torture, and how many lies they will tell about themselves and about others; in the end, whatever the torturers want to be true, is true.”-German Jesuit Friedrich von Spee, 1631

Early October, 2003- Marine Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch, a veteran military prosecutor, is assigned as the lead attorney to present the case against Mohamedou Slahi, visits Guantanamo.

May 2004- Colonel Stuart Couch determines that Mohamedou Slahi's treatment under interrogation has been "morally repugnant" and refuses to file charges in the case.

November 8, 2007-Colonel Stuart Couch, having previously refused to participate in the prosecution of Mohamedou Slahi, is asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Just prior to his scheduled testimony, Couch is informed that Pentagon General Counsel Jim Haynes, “has determined that as a sitting judge and former prosecutor, it is improper for you to testify about matters still pending in the military court system, and you are not to appear before the Committee to testify."

Couch was suppossed to be a prosecutor, not defense.

This is one MO the elite: they desire to control language and speech, and the media which disperse it.

I got a great lesson in blockquotes the other day...it's fun and rewarding to see how the post looks! And about the preview button...just today I saw for the first time the little box where you can add a link to your name. I'm serious...the first time I saw it! I always wondered how people did that. DUH!

There was such a JAG consensus issued of Feb. 5, 2003:

Final Report and Recommendations of the Working Group to Assess the Legal, Policy and Operational Issues Relating to Interrogation of Detainees held by the US Armed Forces in the War on Terrorism.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/documents/20030205.pdf

And in

April 2003-“JAGs made a final effort [to fight the change in DOD policy]. They went to see Scott Horton, a specialist in international human-rights law […] The JAGs told Horton they could only talk obliquely about practices that were classified. But they said the U.S. military's 50-year history of observing the demands of the Geneva Conventions was now being overturned. "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" about how the conventions should be interpreted and applied” […] the prime movers in this effort […] were DOD Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith and DOD general counsel William Haynes. There was, they warned, "a real risk of a disaster" for U.S. interests. […] Ultimately what was developed at Gitmo was a "72-point matrix for stress and duress" (RR) http://www.webdsi.com/jebbie/timeline.html

Thanks for the discussion on this. Ondellete, Frakt's closing statement was quite moving. I appreciate that you posted it.