Profound Quotes

"Neither is it that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It's that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers - (let alone American soldiers - do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to." From 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower' by William Blum

From "9-11, Six Years Later": "If one looks at the credentials of skeptics compared to the credentials of defenders of the official line, it is impossible to dismiss skeptics as kooks. There are many people with strong imaginations on the Internet, but serious skeptics stick to known facts, known violations of standard procedures and the laws of physics. The vast majority of the people who call skeptics "kooks" are themselves ignorant of physics and have little comprehension of the improbability that such an attack could succeed without either the complicity or complete failure of government agencies. " Paul Craig Roberts

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular? But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Categories

Dana Milbank - Jimmy Carter on Energy Security

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Calling Jimmy Carter to testify about energy security, it might seem, is a bit like calling Michael Vick to testify about pet care.
But John Kerry is a gambler, and the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee invited the 39th president to talk to his panel about his cardigan-wearing [...]

OpEdNews » For the Last Time - ALL OF IT - was Torture!

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/For-the-Last-Time–ALL-OF-by-F-Vyan-Walton-090509-384.html
May 9, 2009
For the Last Time - ALL OF IT - was Torture!
By F. Vyan Walton
It’s well past time we put a final punctuation mark on this entire “Enhanced Interrogations are not Torture” nonsense - Once and For All.
It doesn’t matter what the Polling Data says (Karl), what matters is what the [...]

A Timeline of CIA Atrocities

A Timeline of CIA Atrocities
By Steve Kangas
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities.

CIA Says It Briefed Congressional Leaders - WSJ.com

By SIOBHAN GORMAN
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders were briefed in detail about techniques used in the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program, according to a new intelligence document.
The document appears to conflict with recent statements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Ms. Pelosi has said she hadn’t [...]

Capitol Briefing - CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’

CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’
By Paul Kane
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that [...]

OpEdNews » Will the Bad Guys Really Get Away With It?

It was predictable.
Going back in history about 65 years, we find a different picture. The Second World War had come of a bloody, wasteful end and, when the mask was stripped away, we saw the hideousness of Nazism. Photos and film of the death camps, of the ghettos (only just more “humane” than [...]

Washington’s Blog

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Is Everyone In Washington Being Blackmailed?
Obama’s Attorney General - Eric Holder - approved “extraordinary renditions” during the Clinton presidency.
And so now Republicans are blackmailing Holder, saying they will focus the spotlight on his role in approving renditions if Holder pulls back the cover too far on torture under the Bush administration.
This ties [...]

Can the Neocons Jump to the Dems?

Just a few years ago, the acolytes of George W. Bush were dreaming about transforming the United States into essentially a one-party state with the Republicans as the permanent majority, the neoconservatives as the party’s intellectual core, and the Democrats kept around for show.
However, a series of policy disasters – many caused by the neocons, [...]