From News Hounds:

Bill O’Reilly Endorses Waterboarding As Safe and Reliable

Bill O’Reilly will not rest until he proves that harsh interrogation, never call it torture, really gets results. Tonight he had Brian Ross, ABC News, on The Factor to reinforce his claims that the CIA use of “alternative” interrogation methods like waterboarding are not only safe but very effective breaking down 14 terror suspects.Then Carol Bogart, Human Rights Watch, appeared so BOR could feel personally vindicated but his plan fell short. .

O’Reilly was really setting the stage questioning Ross about his sources making sure that the viewers saw him as a reputable source. Ross claimed that 14 detainees with very important information about future terror plots broke down and talked after waterboarding.

O’Reilly tried to be low key about waterboarding but Ross was very clear about it’s horrors.He claimed that the toughest suspect broke down in 21/2 minutes but most only lasted for 30 seconds.Ross hesitated but admitted that it probably could kill someone but it definitely makes you feel like you’re dying because it causes an uncontrollable gag reflex.

I don’t know what to believe.. Yet.

When I heard about the recent terror threats thwarted by the British government it was on the car radio as I got back from a few days away in the sticks. The circus was in full swing with the tabloid news bigging things up almost to the level of an American TV news station. Comparisons with nine eleven were batted about as easy as delivering a weather report and still nothing was really known.

I thought I would reserve judgement for a few days and see what surfaced. Instead of watching the endless news reports say the same nothings, I looked around at how the British public were reacting.

Down my local shop people weren’t talking about it any more than the weather. The most concerned person I came into contact with was a member of the family that was due to fly to Spain and wanted the airports to get back to normal as they had been desperately looking forward to this break abroad.

Have we really gotten so use to all of this? Perhaps it only affects our subconscious now? The fear.. The feeling of a threat always lurking in the shadows..

I am hoping it’s that we just have retained a little perspective. There is some serious suffering going on in the middle east at the moment and maybe even the British public can see through the frantically scrawled sensationalism fed to us by our gutter press.

Yesterday I found myself momentarily thanking the powers that be for reading every electronic information transmission in the ‘civilised’ world. Thanking them for intercepting this threat and therefore keeping us safe.

But only for a moment.

Then I realised how convenient this all is. That we are to be reminded of another victory for the powers-that-be over the evil that lurks in our everyday lives. Just when our ‘war on terror’ was flagging and the common man joined together in condemnation of the atrocities occurring in the middle east.

A few small crumb like facts are slowly coming to light and things are once again beginning to look a little sinister.

Could this plot descovery be another well timed public release..?

Take a proper-gander at the news and decide for yourselves.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2006/130806liquidbomb.htm

President Bush’s approval rating has “dropped to 33, matching his low in May,” according to an AP-Ipsos poll. Most of the people who voted for Bush in 2004 (57%) disapprove of the job he is doing. Obviously, we need to all walk around with shirts that say, “Pay Attention!” What are the other 43% thinking? Bush, Cheney and Lieberman all wasted no time in blaming Democrats for terrorism and using yesterday’s foiled plot to justify all war that ever occurred anywhere. But in fact, this terror plot is clearly an offshoot of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy, according to no less than the former 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer.

According to Think Progress, Dick Cheney has already used the terror plot for political reasons. As have Tony Snow, Bush, and even Joe Lieberman, fresh off his huge and humiliating Connecticut primary loss. Cheney said the Democrats were encouraging “the Al Qaeda types.” . . . and the vice president added, “there’s a significant body of opinion that wants to go back — I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in.” (Why do the media continue to quote this? He says it at least once a month. Boooooring!) From the Center for American Progress:

President Bush seized on the foiled London airline bomb plot yesterday “to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” [He also said, “The London conspiracy is “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation,” the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.
“It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America,” he said. He’s right - his administration is a HUGE threat to the United States.] His remarks came “one day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign” to tar opponents of the Iraq war as “weak on terrorism.” Publicly, Bush aides “fought the notion that they had exploited their knowledge of the coming British raid” for political advantage. Privately, they expressed a different sentiment. “Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” one unnamed White House official said, expressing hope that the foiled plot “would yield political gains.” Another Iraq war supporter, Sen. Joe Lieberman, said yesterday as he kicked off his “Lonely Joe” campaign, that setting a timeline for U.S. troop redeployment (backed by 57% of Americans) “will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.” Previously, Lieberman has called using national security issues for political purposes “just unacceptable and in my opinion un-American.”

I guess that means Lieberman just called himself and most of the Bush administration un-American.

Submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies

THERE’S A PATTERN HERE
Here we go again.
With the latest revelation by the NY Times of a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, DICK Cheney once again says shoot the messenger. And if he had his way, we think, he’d pull the trigger. But would he?
“What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,” Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. “That offends me.”

Well, it’s the onslaught on our privacy in the name of the so-called “war on terror” that offends me and everyone else who fears for the survival of our U.S. Constitution as a meaningful document. But is there something else going on here as well?

There seems to be a recurring pattern associated with these spying revelations.

As with all the other disclosures by the press, Cheney routinely reassures us that it is all perfectly legal and necessary for our protection. “The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid, sound programs,” the vice president said. “They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land. They’re carried out in a manner that is fully consistent with the constitutional authority of the president of the United States. They are absolutely essential in terms of protecting us against attacks.”

When he evokes, as he always does, “the constitutional authority of the president” to justify the spying, he is really evoking the theory of the unitary executive. The theory argues that the power of Congress to divest the President of control of the executive branch is limited.

Then, of course,the next piece of the pattern is to make a show of this latest controversy in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John Snow and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation. “Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?” the senator asked. “That’s a big, important point.”

Yeah, a big important point that will, like all the other spying revelations, be briefly questioned then forgotten by Congress. Remember the other hearings held by the Judiciary Committee? Remember Alberto Gonzales telling them that Congress actually
gave the President the authority by passing the Iraq war resolution?

The pattern continues on the cable news shows with the media basically getting behind the Bush administration. In the end we will have lost another battle to protect our Constitution in the name of “the war on terror”.
But wait a minute. If this story hadn’t been revealed the surveillance of our bank records would still be going on. We just wouldn’t know about it. But now we do know about it. And that, my friends, is by design. Why have a secret program when you can go public? The purpose of this recurring spectacle is to in the end have us embrace our own loss of rights in the name of security and await the next startling revelation.

But we don’t embrace it. Everyone I talk to sees what is going on. The truth is these guys aren’t really very good at what they are trying to do. Their own sense of superiority prevents them from seeing how transparent their real agenda is.
These smug traitors, so pleased with themselves, who orchestrate this charade don’t even know that we are on to them.

Brian
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George Lakoff, linguist at UC Berkeley, wrote a book a few years ago called “Don’t think of an elephant. Know your values and frame the debate.” You can download the book highlights pdf here. Do you ever wonder why Republicans repeat themselves so much? Lately, you’ve probably heard “cut and run” about 50 times a day. They do this for a reason - it embeds this in the mind of the public. Then, when Democrats and others dispute this and repeat the phrase, it further embeds the accusation in the minds of the public. In that respect, by repeating anything Republicans say, we are doing their work for them. That is covered in the beginning of Lakoff’s book. He goes on to talk about further examples of framing and how Republicans use language to change how we talk and what we talk about. Defense of Marriage Act is another example. No one’s marriage really needs defending, but the public now thinks there is a threat to marriage that doesn’t exist - because the Republicans keep repeating it. Some Democrats are on that train too, unfortunately. Check out the book, it’s only 36 pages long.