A Spanish Inquisition
 

Only recently have the leaks about corruption in highest levels of government started flowing everywhere. Just another example of a story that could not be documented do to lack of information.
http://www.borkowski.co.uk/archives/mark/1212196.jpg He was imprisioned for six months - tortured - because, as neighborhood mayor, We only know of his story because Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are slowly getting to a truth that George Jr hopes you forget. Clearly enlistedmen planned to torture prisoners. They brought dog collars and knowledge of how to shock people without killing them. George Jr had absolutely no relationship to Major General Miller who was transfered by the administration from Guantanamo to not teach torture in Abu Ghraid. General Miller is seeking early retirement from the military - maybe to get out and get his pension before more leaks document his relationship to both torture and the George Jr administration?

The story of Ali Shalal is in 11 Mar 2006 NY Times as Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare Also look at his business card.

Or lessons on how to win a Crusade
 

I am often struck by fringe extremists who cite Al Jazeera as anti-American. You could not be - by definition - more patriotic American if doing what Al Jazeera does. And example from the NY Times of 11 Mar 2006: Is it an accident that Al Jazeera facitlities both in Iraq and in Afghanistan were attacked by American planes? One missile striking that building only on the floor where Al Jazeera was located.

A historical question, or my own bullshit you decide. in April '79 why didnt The peaceful Moslems take over the Soviet Embassy in stead of ours. The Soviet Union had a history of persicuiting Moslems. They didn't take over that embassy because the peaceful moslem extreemists would be looking at Red Army Tanks within 48 hours.

As far as I'm concerned Moslem Extreemists are a bunch of murdering asslickers, and need to be fed thier own cocks, if you can find them.

Read a book, fargon.

We knocked off their elected government in 1953.

So

From the NY Times story.

What's ironic is that when Americans try to do this they get killed.

In one of his many visits to the region, maybe President Bush should tour the prisons. They are after all, his responsibility and legacy, just as they were for Saddam Hussein.

Lest we forget that these wonderful and peaceful people cut the heads off people they kidnap.

Its alright, though, because God wants them to do it. It helps bring people closer to divine enlightenment, or some bullshit like that. :headshake

They were making a run at building a modern liberal state, not an ideal government but better than they had. We thwarted their attempt, empowering the nut job Islamists. In their minds we represent oppression not freedom. I can't get over you radical interventionists and your fantasies about our virtuous foreign policy. Are the radical Islamists evil? Of course. Is a policy that empowers them evil? Absolutely.

Fargon? A radical interventionist? I thought he was just a dirty old man, like me. :D

I suspect that Fargon, like most of the American public (me included) really don't have a handle on all the shit the US has had a hand in, beyond the evening news on TV. You know the networks weren't very good at giving background or tying different events together in a easily understood pattern.

It wasn't even until Nixon, that we knew what scumbags most of them are.
Sure we knew they were washing each others backs and those of major contributors, but that was internal.....family business.
But we didn't really understand how badly they were fucking with the neighbors, since school days, if then.

Yah, I gotta watch my tone. sorry

I am sorry if I come off as a right wing jerk, thats cuz I am.

Back in the 80' I had the pleasure of meeting, and working with some Iranins that came here after the fall of the Shaw. All of them with one exeption said that the Shaw and the US where the best thing ever to happen to Iran, we prevented a civil war and allowed the country and people to prosper without violance. The Shaws secret police prevented what is happining in Iraq rite now.

The Islamic uprising was started by Kohminie and his ilk by subverting the collage kids and rabble rousing amoung the welfare class.

Sorry Fargon. I didn't mean to speak for you. Well, I did but I shouldn't have.

No problema Bruce, I am such an un educated boob that I can use all hulp I kin get.

We did, eh? Well, we DID help with Iran's nuclear program back then, but we won't talk about THAT. The Shah was just the bit of a tyrant and the human rights abuses under his regime would have made even Saddam slightly jealous. Remember SARVAK? Nah, why would you?

And the "welfare class" was comprised mostly of displaced agricultural workers who had the audacity to demand jobs that paid enough to provide them and their families with housing and food, but I guess you and your buddies were busy gambling with the Shah's sister and living the high life in Monte Carlo, so you missed reading the fine print.

HOOrah! :headshake

Fargon, don't forget the Iranians you spoke to, came here, so I would expect them to be pro Shaw. The ones that weren't, stayed there.;)

That's true. We of course prefer 'waterboarding' and attaching electrodes to testicles, which is the 'compassionate conservative' approach.

Still, by some reports, we have only killed about 100 prisoners in 4 years, so I guess we're the good guys by comparison.

And up to 5% of our prisoners are even terrorists, too! Very few of their prisoners are terrorists.

And by torturing, we look more and more like them. The difference between torturing and muder is only degree.

Yeah, we only do cool stuff like zip people up into sleeping bags and strangle them with electrical cord. :eyebrow:

Absolutely - makes it a lot harder to continue to fight the "barbarians and heathens" when we can't tell the difference between "them and us".:headshake

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/in...=1&oref=slogin

Cited as Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/in...tors.note.html

I thought the original story was, they hooked wires to whoever was on the box, told them they would be zapped if they didn't stay on the box, but the wires were a ruse and not actually hooked to any power source.:confused:

I wonder if anything else might not have been researched or just assumed correct from that story.

Well, from the story it appears that he claims more than one person was hooded, placed on a box, and photographed. It does seem illogical that a person who is hooded and being 'strenously questioned' would know if they were being photographed.

Of course the Army maintains that only one person was ever subjected to this specific treatment. Unfortunately, their credibility in this is as questionable as that of Mr. Qaissi.

He must have felt confident that he was the one. How did he know he was being photographed? Who knows?

If the NYT writes a story that backs their template, that Bush sucks and should be impeached, then they look less critically at the facts and the personalities.

If there is a story that might even suggest that Bush was not at fault for the story's subject, they dig in to question and verify everything. Same thing for subjects that are favorable to Bush policy.

Would that be accurate? I'm sure that you disagree.

The military may very well have done the same. I've not read through all the articles and background on this.

I would say that the NYT has shown bias both ways. They certainly did not question the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Are they as biased as Fox? No. I have never heard the NYT use the word 'treason' once. Someone on Fox seems to use it every two weeks.

I would say that the administration's dominance over the press seems to have diminished as it's approval ratings drop and each new revelation of hidden policies is made. It's especially galling when the press is deliberately lied to. They tend to take it personally.

In the interest of my own personal curiosity, I'll make it a point to read and digest more from the NYT in the coming months.

It seems pretty remote that they are biased in both directions but I'd like to evaluate that for myself. It seems to me that in order to be equally biased they would lose the majority of left leaning people that seem to love the NYT. I've not heard anything biased toward Conservatives but I'll make the effort to look.

Can the "gold standard" for print news and a "hillbilly" TV news channel be compared on the level? I dont watch TV, dont know about that.

The Times is biased towards State power but they prefer the State be run by Democrats. They supported the war because they, like most of the left, support a powerful Executive and unfortunately with the advent of 911 the administrations template.

I only wish that Fox was considered a "hillbilly" channel. Unfortunately, they are being considered mainstream. Since their idea of 'balance' is to counter what they see as an overall liberal bias with a deliberate 'conservative' bias, I wish they were thought of as non-mainstream.

So you dislike them because they challenge your opinions, rather than agree with them?

The NY Times had been going through some re-evaluations at the highest levels. The fact that they would do so is healthy. But what bothers me is the silence when it comes to results of that evaluation.

For example, the NY Times was rather shocked at how badly they got the Iraq war and WMDs so wrong. How they had believed president's lies. Part of that evaluation noted how information provided by Judith Miller was given more credence than reports from so many other reporters who we now know were accurate about no WMDs and other justifications for war.

NY Times performed that evaluation. What happened? I have not heard. However we do know some interesting history from what happened at a press club speech by Judith Miller. After being released from prison, she received a standing ovation from her peers. But after telling her story, the applause was described as 'only polite'. Just from facts in her own speech combined with what we knew, the press quickly realized that Judith Miller was a pawn of a political agenda - and not some reporter driving deep for the irrefutable fact. Why then did the NY Times editors not see this?

Well the editors had been suspicious. They tried to redirect Miller to other stories. But her contacts in the White House kept feeding her stories that NY Times editors just could not ignore. Their mistake - they did not demand her notes. And when they eventually did demand those notes, Judith Miller refused. Something that only a reporter with something to hide would do. What did she need hide? Just more to a story and a NY Times executive review we have not learned.

Meanwhile we know this would never happen in Fox News. Such a review would be completely contrary to principles defined by their founder- Murdoch. The well stated purpose of Fox News is to promote a political agenda - as was a purpose, for example, of 1950/1960 CA newspapers.

What we really need understand is why the NY Times was so easily deceived by lies that created the "Mission Accomplished" war.

If you're referring to me and Fox, I just cannot recall any 'news' channel in the past few decades where the hosts accuse members of congress of treason every two weeks.

I don't think I have ever used the T-word to describe anyone I disagree with. I never used it on my conservative friends and acquaintences when they gave their opinions of Clinton.

It's bad enough that an 'outsider' like Coulter uses it, but when regular hosts pull it out show after show, that shows real over-the-top bias to me. I would say the same of any left-wing show that made the same claim about Bush.

Impeachable incompetant, yes. Traitor, no.

BTW, even TW uses the phrase 'anti-American' rather than 'traitor'. There is a difference.

I stopped watching Fox after the first rBGH/Akre/Wilson lawsuit. My opinion of their "news" has gone downhill from there.

We're Talking about WJC here, right? I thought that the NYT started running stories about Iraq becoming a threat sometime in 1998.

It Wasn't Just Miller's Story

" A quick search through the Times archives before 2001 produces such headlines as "Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say"(November 1998), "U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan"(August 1998), "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort" (February 2000), "Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration" (February 2000), "Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program" (July 2000)."

Each of these stories need to be verified in my own evaluation of the NYT, but without digging into each story, it seems that the "Bush lied" accusation is on shakey ground.

If there is one thing that I'm totally sure of it's that I'm wrong in thinking this and I'm reasonably sure that you will explain why.

It seems that I have to actually subscribe to get the archives. :blush:

I don't understand your point. Stories about threats from Iraq predated 1990. So what? We are not talking about a time when the NY Times provided both background of the threat and reasons why the threat did not exist. We are discussing a time when the NY Times literally quashed or buried (in back pages) stories that factually demonstrated George Jr myths of a Saddam threat. And no, I never said Judith Miller wrote those stories. But she "kept feeding her stories that NY Times editors just could not ignore." The problem in 2002 was that NY Times editors did not challenge those sources AND did not demand Miller's notes. This also when editors that should have come from where the work gets done were not the editors in charge.

But again, I don't understand your point about 1998 articles. For example, your article from 25 Aug 1998 entitled "US Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan" sat adjacent to another article entitled "A Moderate Thinks US Shot itself in the Foot". So in 1998 the NY Times was providing contrary perspective. We now know that second article was quite accurate. IOW the NY Times back then provided background information from both perspectives - a practice that was not ongoing in 2002.

We know from 2004 articles that much of the information in those 2002 news reports were literally based upon lies and too often fabrications from the George Jr administration. The aluminum tube story is a perfect example of an administration that knew facts to be otherwise - but promoted lies about those aluminum tubes anyway?

Your article from 20 Nov 1998 entitled "Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say" also quote experts such as Charles Duelfer who said the UN Commission and cooperation of adjacent countries insure that Iraq could not build prohibited weapons. Today we know Charles Duelfer was accurate. IOW your cited article cites many rumors BUT also cites why the WMDs were not possible. It goes further to mention offshore contracting was more difficult to detect and police.

But again, the 1998 NY Times article provided multiple perspectives including the perspective that was proven accurate.

Meanwhile what did the NY Times not do in 2002? As scientists repeatedly demonstrated - too many times with too many facts - that those aluminum tubes could not be used for WMDs AND that those aluminum tubes were perfect for counterfeit Medusa rockets. Instead the NY Times did not report that reality until 2004.

Of course I am only repeating what every Cellar Dweller would have known back then or are finally (grudgingly) admitting today. Other sources provided doubts that the NY Times failed to provide; as summarized in a previous post: Where was the NY Times when other sources (writing reports that many here declared as lies) were writing the truth about Iraq? The George Jr administration literally lied to justify a war in Iraq. Those aluminum tubes are the perfect example of how far they would lie.

The NY Times did not report the accurate story; instead gave too much credence to administration lies until 2004 when the NY Times began to suspect what are typically management (editorial) problems. Judith Miller being a symptom of the NY Times unable to see through repeated administration lies about Iraq - and playing catchup starting in 2004.

But again, what is your point? Your previously cited (1998) articles did provide multiple perspectives. The NY Times in 2002 (and apparently under undo influence of people such as Judith Miller) did not provide what we now know to be accurate facts. Those aluminum tubes being a classic example of administration lying (along with uranium from Niger) that the NY Times did not properly report. If that news source did not include what American scientists were saying and did not include those tubes were perfect for manufacturing rockets, then that new service had a problem. 2002 NY Times did not do its job. They parroted what we know now were administration lies.

Meanwhile, Fox News (I bet) still will not admit the lies about those aluminum tubes. A fact that should strike fear in those who still listen to Fox News for accurate reporting.

My point is that I'm going to actually read the NYT completely more often. There have been times that they say things that have turned out to be less than truthful and have been ridiculed for it.

I'm sure that they do excellent reporting in the "old, factual" way. It's now on my favs list to read.


Sorry for the late reply but when I get the call to split, I'm normally scrambling to get on scene and set up for about a month.

Cheney says Wie Gehts....er, I mean Hello.

I remember it better than you do, Mari: it's Savakh.

The Shaw of Iran, I suppose, would be a Farsi-speaking satirical playwright with spectacles and a white beard.

Kinda fun, but come on, people: Google more before you post. You don't have to be this risible, this easily.