Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (474010)	4/21/2009 10:04:56 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575596

I'd definitely move away from major metropolitan areas. Buy a big spread in flyover country for $4k a month...

To: i-node who wrote (474010)	4/21/2009 10:15:34 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575596

""The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

To: i-node who wrote (474010)	4/22/2009 1:10:31 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575596

We could have used thumbscrews, or amputated digits, one by one. If it yielded "high value information", I think Dave would have been FOR it. Which tells you who DAVE is.. Thankfully, it's not who WE are. (anymore)

To: i-node who wrote (474010)	4/22/2009 1:26:59 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1575596

Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques By BRIAN KNOWLTON nytimes.com ( Let's have Rummy die in prison! Why should Lyndie do ALL the time? ) WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration. The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities. The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as “unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation.” The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in “stress positions” or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations. According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques. The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.” Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said. “The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

To: i-node who wrote (474010)	4/22/2009 2:46:18 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575596

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder notes some polling data today suggesting the Republican Party is now less popular among Americans than countries like Venezuela and China. He concluded: My Republican friends keep asking me when I'll take the GOP seriously again and why I've stopped writing about ticky-tak political gamesmanship and GOP consultant tricks. When they're a serious party with serious ideas, then we can talk. Ouch. On this, of course, Ambinder is obviously right. The political world has been waiting for a while to see the GOP become "a serious party with serious ideas," but Republicans have not only failed to get their act together, there's no evidence they'll be able to turn things around anytime soon. Indeed, they're stuck with Cheney, Rove, and Gingrich as their leading voices. How's that working out? Strategists privately stress the GOP needs to move past old faces, and one veteran Republican said the attacks could be effective. "The conservatism of the 21st century should be divorced from personality politics and simply be about ideas," said Craig Shirley, a biographer of former President Ronald Reagan. "But since the GOP appears to be bankrupt of ideas, this line of attack will be effective from the standpoint of putting them on the defensive again." "Bankrupt of ideas"? But what about the proposed five-year spending freeze? And more enormous tax breaks for the wealthy? You see the problem. washingtonmonthly.com