Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. [...]

Among the graphic statements…is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.” [...]

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Now the “kid” in the above example was male, as was the translator who was allegedly busting up his bowels.

Also from The Daily Beast:

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

So the decision that Barack made to block the release of these photos is a little more justified. No matter how many “My Bad”’s you issue after revealing that your government condoned and permitted sexual assault on male and female (sometimes underage) detainees in your charge, you are going to have a tough time “focusing on the future” without answering calls to prosecute military and CIA personnel and also civilian contractors. I really don’t think that there’s any way around prosecutions and further investigations, because I think that there isn’t way to ignore this any further. I read a story yesterday that said essentially Maliki was briefed on these photos and stated, “Bagdad will burn” if the world were to see these images. Releasing the photos without any actions taken to apprehend or answer to the crimes these images depict would probably rush the United States out of the region much sooner than planned, for good or for ill. The longer Obama hesitates to sort out these crimes and bring perpetrators/planners/instigators to justice the more he is complicit in the coverup.

I love how these bastards parse the phrase “pain and suffering” and choose to view both terms as a joint concept with which waterboarding was conveniently not compatible. I’m sure we would all enjoy to have our “pain and suffering” discounted in such a detached and calculated manner. As we all know, suffering = prolonged event. As long as you break one’s suffering into several “seasons” of “episodes” then something like watching “the hills” could not be considering “suffering”, I’m happy to say, by John Yoo’s definition.

Seriously, all these guys need a good stiff jab in the balls.

#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

Sometimes it takes these sorts of comprehensive explanations to nail down that pit in your stomach you feel when you happen upon a recording of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reily that you find particularly hypocritical.

Though, I do find that something that’s missing from this account is the obvious self-aggrandisement of the host’s power or masculinity. It’s definitely the case with Bill O’Reily, who’s sex scandals, subsequent pay-offs, and active “bully” technique do little to mask a petty, fearful man. In regards to the last clip, he would certainly be fearful of losing a shouting match to “a gay“. lol

The simultaneous pandering to country, troops (unless they disagree with you), “Joe Six-Pack“, and anyone from a hero-worshipping, halcyon, by-gone (if it ever even existed) era, exposes the article’s claim of casting listeners as victims. The biggest problem with this, I can see, is that it manufactures an idilic “red-blooded”, “Rock-Ribbed” American archetype that only exists in these hosts’ wet-dreams. Instead of getting upset that a host is speaking to them while assuming that they are a member of this elite, the audience is of course flattered, thus buying into it. It’s what brought us lower-middle-classmen like “Joe the Plumber” arguing from a standpoint of being rich. Somehow he has been trained to be concerned about how people earning well over $250,000. That’s the only reason we have so many poor people supporting the GOP these days. They’ve been tricked into believing that they should be concerned about the Estate Tax, when they would have to inherit an estate valued at over $2,000,000 for that to even be an issue.

This is maddness!

Why isn’t everyone sharpening their pitch forks and grilling these criminals over their attempts to put the United States at a strategic disadvantage? One could go as far to say that it could be constituted as wreckless endangerment. It’s truly obscene the lengths at which the Republican party will go in order to hold onto the reigns of power.

The bitch didn’t know that Africa is a continent not a country!! And Fox News knew about this all a fucking LONG!!!

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being “dangerously weak on crime,” “coddling criminals,” and for voting against “protecting children from danger.”

Williams’ daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it’s located in Hobart, IN.

I’ve sent an e-mail to Americall, considering they are right near my house, telling them how these tactics are to be regarded.

From my e-mail:

To whom it may concern,

It has come to my attention that personnel at the Hobart branch of Americall Group have been directed to disseminate inflammatory and slanderous messages directed at Barack Obama and other Democratic politicians to prospective voters.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/dozens_of_call_center_workers.php

Hearing that telemarketers under your employ are to be denied wages for standing up against these mercenary tactics, if true, is despicable. Being that your Hobart office is blocks away from my house this makes news of these events even more infuriating, that “hired-guns” are spreading lies and misinformation right behind our backs.

I should hope that along with your entrepreneurial aspirations for making money the same effort will be made to maintain ethical business associations, and perhaps attention be given to the accuracy of your messages. Buying into this loop-hole of the robocalling ban makes your corporation no better than paid character assassins.

There’s nothing like being forced by your employers to lie and work against the individual you wish to vote for. Gotta love the last few days in the battleground states.

Fucking Brilliant!

What an old cunt

I know that it’s scripted material but it’s still awesome that he agreed to say it. brilliant!